Private School or 5.3 Million Dollars?

The choice is clear-ish

Society presents education as a means to various ends: money, success, networking, or even more education. In the below clip, Scott Galloway makes a risky assumption about the worth of education:

In summary, Galloway suggests that rather than sending your kids to an expensive private school, send them to the closest public school. Then, take that tuition money and invest it in the market. The school he mentions is $62,000/year, meaning with an 8% return on the market for the years invested (ages 4–18), the child ends up with $5,300,000 by the time they’re 35 years old. As a “consolation prize” for their education, they get the cash.

First, as Galloway would admit, the tuition for this school is out of reach for most people. Second, his argument is based on a false dilemma. You have two choices here: (1) elite private school or (2) $5.3 million. But what about the broad spectrum of possibilities between those two choices? For example, you could (and probably should) choose a less expensive private school and invest the tuition savings, you could choose public school and invest the tuition money in other ways (notably, time), you could homeschool, etc. (Admittedly, this all wouldn’t fit well on the proposed banner.)

Rather than getting into all the weeds, let’s consider Galloway’s assumed or possibly even unconsidered telos for education. He suggests that the results of an education (whatever they might be) cannot compare to a pile of money by age 35. In other words, even if the child receives a rotten education, at least they have the cash. There’s no rebuttal. The conclusion is obvious.

But is that what an education is worth?

A Bigger View of Education

An education is more than the means for landing a good job or being financially successful. The knowledge instilled through a good education informs all future endeavors, beyond vocation. It trains students in how to think. For example, in my 7th grade logic class, we look at what makes an argument weak or strong, and how to use rhetoric to persuasively argue our position. These skills are far-reaching. Knowledge and the ability to think well serve all of life’s aspirations, career and otherwise.

But education is much more than knowledge. As important and necessary as knowledge is, it bows lowly to wisdom and virtue.¹ Education is not merely the transfer of information. Education shapes how students apply that knowledge and helps form them into what kind of people they will ultimately become.

Wisdom

In the age of AI, much of knowledge acquisition is being accomplished with less human intervention. This is replete with its own problems, of course. That said, it’s not difficult to receive relatively accurate answers to questions or even have an AI tutor to bring us to a place of mastery in a subject area.² This isn’t enough. Wisdom goes further than knowledge. It helps us to live in light of the truth, not simply to know it in a cerebral sense. If we’ve learned anything from the Information Age, it’s that “more” information isn’t always better. Better is the one who knows how to discern right from wrong.

Virtue

James K.A. Smith

defines virtues as “good moral habits,” which “are like internal dispositions to the good.”³ While we like to believe that learning truth will automatically instill virtues, these are better caught than they are taught. A good education instills virtues through various means. A bad education, on the other hand, instills vices. So even though our students can readily receive and sift information, this will not always enable them to walk in the truth. By instilling virtues through good habits and examples, educators help to shape our students’ loves and desires.⁴ It empowers them to be a blessing to others. It potentially makes them into the kind of people who can rightly steward 5.3 million dollars.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that a person’s character and development is of far greater worth than their net worth. This is not to say that children who go to public school won’t get a good education. (I turned out okay, for the most part!) This is also not to say that a private school will be better because it’s expensive. (Raising children into elitist aristocrats is a possibility too.) This is to say that it matters what kind of education children receive. It’s important to take educational decisions seriously by weighing what kind of education children are receiving.

The main point is this: we don’t treat educational decisions as inconsequential. We can’t assume that a 35 year old will be happy as long as they have a big bank account. Proverbs 28:6 says it best: “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.”

1. Ten Essential Principles of Classical Pedagogy

2. Salman Khan, Brave New Words, (New York: Viking, 2024).

3. James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), 16.

4. Ibid., 22–24.

Although this should go without saying, I have no animosity toward Scott Galloway. He has a lot of advice worth considering. I disagree with him on this and he’ll never find out (shh).