The Complex Social Pressures

If certain parents choose to spend thousands to help their kids meet these criteria, well, that’s their choice. Hence the building of a grade point average system. But the colleges aren’t using them for this reason. They are just defining the criteria for their student sorting process. Middle school, high school, and college have not been designed to grow you. You and your beautiful uniqueness are almost irrelevant to the needs of the educational ecosystem you entered after kindergarten. When Myshel made magna cum laude, she got an honors cord, which she proudly wore at graduation. She worked so hard for that cord. In the real world, of course, her mom wasn’t proud. Stamps such as magna cum laude are like a medal bestowed on a young soldier by a general to distract the soldier from what’s really going on. While Myshel was striving for her stamp, what got lost was who Myshel really is. The stamp serves only the college, as the medal serves only the general.

Surprise Surprise

From a data standpoint, it’s a mess. It sounds obscure, but for you and your child it’s a very meaningful concept. If you give your child’s essay to one teacher and they grade it, and then you give it to another teacher and they grade it, do these two teachers arrive at the same grade? If they do, all is good. And as a result, many of these students would have gotten accepted into very different colleges. By telling our children it’s not junk, we’re messing them up. It is designed and built so that high schools can service their customers, the colleges. But it’s not reliable. And it reveals so very little about the child. We should see classes and curricula focused on the student’s identity. We should see classes that help the student cut through the complex social pressures of their teenage years to identify their own distinct voice, and then guide this student in how to cultivate their voice into something valuable for others. And while this student is learning about their idiosyncrasies and how to contribute them, they would also be learning about how to honor the idiosyncrasies of others. These classes would help the student spot the clues to other people’s uniqueness, and would counsel the student on how to be a supporter, an ally, an amplifier of the uniqueness of others.

Its No Use

But, more importantly, think about how these classes would benefit students. If we were truly worried about the psychological health and development of each student, these are the kinds of classes we would see. At present we don’t see any of them. There is a better way. You want to help your kids thrive, and this ecosystem of schools and colleges is so powerful and so persuasive. But there is a way to push back, to pull down Oz’s branding curtain, as it were, and set your children and yourself up for a very different kind of education. It’s not right to say that we are part of the problem. Here is a top ten list of changes for our kids. This list is not meant to be exhaustive. We keep score with each test taken, each club joined, each summer program attended, each charity volunteered for, and the college acceptance serves as the finish line. In truth, parenting as a competitive sport has no finish line and no winners, only losers, most of them children. Some say that the parents who participated in the college cheating scandal did so because they were entitled.

Don't Get Mad, Get Even

Maybe some did feel this way. But what rings truer to me is that they participated because they were frightened. Know someone’s fear and you’ll know their need. Know their need and you’ll understand their behavior. These parents were frightened for their kids’ future, and so they needed to do something, anything, even cheating and lying, to make that future more secure. And in so doing, they not only committed themselves to a lifetime of lying to their kids, they also spread the deeper lie that fear is bad and any action that reduces it is justified. The truth, of course, is that fear of the future is a sensible and adaptive part of the human condition. The challenge of life is not to reduce fear, but rather to feel it, understand it, and move through it. To admit your fears, to even love them, and yet to still act, to risk and fall and rise to risk again, this is the sign of health. When we strive to reduce fear, we wind up fortifying fear, and weakening children. When we think about how to make change in the world, where is our biggest source of power and control? We have so much power in what we buy and consume. Why don’t we come together as a parent team? What we consume tells society what we deem important. If we stop buying, they stop making. These rankings were put together in order to sell subscriptions and advertising, but now they wield such power that colleges contort themselves to move up a couple of spots, and parents pressure their kids to apply to only the best colleges. The truth is that the data underpinning these rankings is arcane, unreliable, and falsely precise, all noise, no signal, signifying nothing. But it does make good copy. This makes a strong case for continuing with affirmative action to offer places to students with less socioeconomic advantage and to promote more diverse student bodies. There is a great deal of money to be made in the constructing and selling of these tests, but as a tool to reveal the uniqueness of a child’s mind, they are utterly useless. Did I pay for my son’s test prep to ensure he was ready for the tests I find so useless? He studied and was tutored in the hope of a good grade, and he did get a good grade on his first and true attempt at the test.