Your comment has some similar features to what I commented earlier in this discussion (http://lesswrong.com/lw/col/review_selfish_reasons_to_have_more_kids/6onl?context=1#6onl).
We both grew up in late communist era. Non-elitarianism was both an official moral value, and it also was enforced by mixing up people geographically. The good neighbourhoods and bad neighborhoods were not so strongly different from each other as they are now. I started wondering for a while, if my attitude is caused by the regime I grew in… Maybe in some countries or areas there is almost nothing in the middle between good and bad neighborhoods. But people describing schools in Cambridge, where profesors’ kids mix up with the low class kids seem to have the similar experience as I have.
To summarize my opinion: Creating the bubble is usually unnecessary and deforms the mental image of the world for the child. The child chooses his peers as long as there is some variety available. If the child instinctively wants to go out with little criminals and do wrong things together, it is time to sit together at the table and discuss it in the family. One day the child will grow up and will have to choose his peers on his own, as well as make his own moral decisions. Of course, if reasoning would not work, I would probably proceed to creating a bubble eventually, as a last and desperate measure. But in most cases this stage will never happen, and I would not ruin myself financially to do the bubble thing as the first step.
Your comment has some similar features to what I commented earlier in this discussion (http://lesswrong.com/lw/col/review_selfish_reasons_to_have_more_kids/6onl?context=1#6onl). We both grew up in late communist era. Non-elitarianism was both an official moral value, and it also was enforced by mixing up people geographically. The good neighbourhoods and bad neighborhoods were not so strongly different from each other as they are now. I started wondering for a while, if my attitude is caused by the regime I grew in… Maybe in some countries or areas there is almost nothing in the middle between good and bad neighborhoods. But people describing schools in Cambridge, where profesors’ kids mix up with the low class kids seem to have the similar experience as I have.
To summarize my opinion: Creating the bubble is usually unnecessary and deforms the mental image of the world for the child. The child chooses his peers as long as there is some variety available. If the child instinctively wants to go out with little criminals and do wrong things together, it is time to sit together at the table and discuss it in the family. One day the child will grow up and will have to choose his peers on his own, as well as make his own moral decisions. Of course, if reasoning would not work, I would probably proceed to creating a bubble eventually, as a last and desperate measure. But in most cases this stage will never happen, and I would not ruin myself financially to do the bubble thing as the first step.
Nice thoughts, thanks.