The crisis of upper-crust sports for college
October 19, 2020 1:22 PM Subscribe
It was like Foucault’s panopticon, except for private-school kids in Dri-Fit. Ruth S. Barrett surveys the increasingly fraught world of niche sports for the college-bound kids of wealthy families, and how competition and COVID-19 have made things harder. (SLAtlantic)
Previously.
Previously.
I blame the parents
posted by scruss at 1:45 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by scruss at 1:45 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
not about the money (Ivy League schools don't offer sports scholarships). Just about a totally warped perspective.
Some of these parents think about mediocre state school the way normal people would think about having a kid go to prison. It's like a threat, "if you don't straighten out and start working hard, you'll have to go to Directional State University".
posted by vogon_poet at 1:52 PM on October 19, 2020 [17 favorites]
Some of these parents think about mediocre state school the way normal people would think about having a kid go to prison. It's like a threat, "if you don't straighten out and start working hard, you'll have to go to Directional State University".
posted by vogon_poet at 1:52 PM on October 19, 2020 [17 favorites]
I have many different reactions to this, as someone who did crew in high school in D.C., was middling at best, but was on the same team as this guy.
It's just one thread of the whole tangled mess of injustice here, but there are kids out there who just really, really love crew or sailing or lacrosse or whatever. This dynamic really sucks for them.
posted by feckless at 1:55 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
It's just one thread of the whole tangled mess of injustice here, but there are kids out there who just really, really love crew or sailing or lacrosse or whatever. This dynamic really sucks for them.
posted by feckless at 1:55 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
I teach in a rich fancy town (in the midwest). There's definitely a pervasive sense that going to The Right College is like, a guarantee of a Good Future (=lawyer/doctor/CEO), and if your kid goes to Directional State University they might have to be......a teacher!!! or something similarly horrifying.
(I went to a Right College and you should see the looks of horror I get when Fancy Town parents/students find out! They absolutely do not know what to do with the idea of someone going to a Right College and then becoming a teacher -- even though most of my college buds do similar work.)
posted by goodbyewaffles at 1:58 PM on October 19, 2020 [44 favorites]
(I went to a Right College and you should see the looks of horror I get when Fancy Town parents/students find out! They absolutely do not know what to do with the idea of someone going to a Right College and then becoming a teacher -- even though most of my college buds do similar work.)
posted by goodbyewaffles at 1:58 PM on October 19, 2020 [44 favorites]
I can't recommend reading this enough. It's so delightfully written, and it just keeps on escalating. The photography is utterly brilliant as well.
posted by simonw at 2:02 PM on October 19, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by simonw at 2:02 PM on October 19, 2020 [16 favorites]
“We thought this is what good parents do. They fight for opportunities for their kids.”The seemingly-blameless ideology of modern parenthood that's ruining the world.
posted by clawsoon at 2:04 PM on October 19, 2020 [48 favorites]
As a Minnesotan whose parents thought soccer was for fancy rich people, I am so intrigued by underground squash bunkers. I don’t even know how squash is played, plus I have a basement shower stall full of winter squash from my garden, so I keep picturing handball being played in a root cellar.
posted by Maarika at 2:15 PM on October 19, 2020 [17 favorites]
posted by Maarika at 2:15 PM on October 19, 2020 [17 favorites]
yeah, a very good detailing of the arms race that is modern US college admissions.
No, it's not at all representative of the admissions processes at the approximately 4,000 colleges and universities that are not in the Ivy League or otherwise considered elite. It's a very interesting story and of course it's important to people who are like those in the story but it's not descriptive of the admissions experience for nearly all of the people who apply to U.S. colleges and universities.
posted by ElKevbo at 2:21 PM on October 19, 2020 [15 favorites]
No, it's not at all representative of the admissions processes at the approximately 4,000 colleges and universities that are not in the Ivy League or otherwise considered elite. It's a very interesting story and of course it's important to people who are like those in the story but it's not descriptive of the admissions experience for nearly all of the people who apply to U.S. colleges and universities.
posted by ElKevbo at 2:21 PM on October 19, 2020 [15 favorites]
I think it was actually Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. Foucault borrowed the concept in his criticisms of clinics and the application of political power and punishment in modern society, but he isn't recognized as the originator of the concept, in the same way that Heidegger wrote about Plato's cave but we don't say "this reminds me of Heidegger's allegory of the cave".
posted by Kinski's Ghost at 2:24 PM on October 19, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by Kinski's Ghost at 2:24 PM on October 19, 2020 [16 favorites]
chef's kiss for the ending para, picking a "sport" that the Greeks and Romans condemned their slaves to, and was the state punishment featured in Les Misérables.
also:
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:26 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
also:
If we could just find $20 million, we could make this work$20M @ 2% throws off $400k/yr. Just sayin'.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:26 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
it's not descriptive of the admissions experience for nearly all of the people who apply to U.S. colleges and universities.
In the specifics, no. But generally the # of applications sent out on average has gone way up. From 2017: According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 36 percent of first-time freshmen applied to seven or more colleges in the fall of 2015. Just 10 years earlier, in the fall of 2005, 17 percent of first-time freshmen applied to seven or more institutions... At my school, the average number of applications per student has grown by almost three over the past 15 years, with last year's number just under eight applications per student.
Even non-elite students (which is a terrible label but I don't know how else to phrase it) spend more time and more money on college applications. And they spend more money on tuition and housing. This is not a problem that's confined to "elite" students.
posted by GuyZero at 2:28 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
In the specifics, no. But generally the # of applications sent out on average has gone way up. From 2017: According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 36 percent of first-time freshmen applied to seven or more colleges in the fall of 2015. Just 10 years earlier, in the fall of 2005, 17 percent of first-time freshmen applied to seven or more institutions... At my school, the average number of applications per student has grown by almost three over the past 15 years, with last year's number just under eight applications per student.
Even non-elite students (which is a terrible label but I don't know how else to phrase it) spend more time and more money on college applications. And they spend more money on tuition and housing. This is not a problem that's confined to "elite" students.
posted by GuyZero at 2:28 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
>The seemingly-blameless ideology of modern parenthood that's ruining the world.
there was an interview on TV about a Utah sports mom defending her son playing HS football in this environment: "It's what got him through the Fall".
That justification can work for any activity!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:30 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
there was an interview on TV about a Utah sports mom defending her son playing HS football in this environment: "It's what got him through the Fall".
That justification can work for any activity!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:30 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
Also, from my own anecdotal evidence: students outside of the US tend to focus on just one thing to get into university: getting good grades. US students write the PSAT, the SAT, the ACT (yes, they probably just write one of the ACT & SAT, but they could do both), they get letters of recommendation, they play varsity sports, they cram their senior year full of AP courses and they have some extracurricular volunteer activity. This didn't happen in the 80's or 90;s or 2000's to the extent it happens now. It's an arms race.
posted by GuyZero at 2:31 PM on October 19, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 2:31 PM on October 19, 2020 [8 favorites]
Some of these parents think about mediocre state school the way normal people would think about having a kid go to prison. It's like a threat, "if you don't straighten out and start working hard, you'll have to go to Directional State University".
We may roll our eyes but these sort of values get instilled in kids who might cognitively disagree. The article quoted the mom about Ohio State sounding like my friend's racist grandmother when he married a black woman, "She's black, but very pretty and educated!"
When that same kid is working on interviewing they're going to get a resume with Ohio State, which is a great school with spirit!, but maybe should go to the bottom of the pile because whomever went to Ohio State didn't have a status obsessed parent.
posted by geoff. at 2:32 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
We may roll our eyes but these sort of values get instilled in kids who might cognitively disagree. The article quoted the mom about Ohio State sounding like my friend's racist grandmother when he married a black woman, "She's black, but very pretty and educated!"
When that same kid is working on interviewing they're going to get a resume with Ohio State, which is a great school with spirit!, but maybe should go to the bottom of the pile because whomever went to Ohio State didn't have a status obsessed parent.
posted by geoff. at 2:32 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
It wouldn't matter so much if entry to the Ivy League wasn't also such an important entry point to political and economic power in the United States. I've ridden this hobby horse before, but one of the best things we did in Canada was defeat the political power of the upper-class American Loyalist immigrants who tried to recreate the private school elite they had back in the American colonies.
posted by clawsoon at 2:35 PM on October 19, 2020 [24 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 2:35 PM on October 19, 2020 [24 favorites]
I think it was actually Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon
Bentham would be spinning in his grave...
posted by howfar at 2:36 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
Bentham would be spinning in his grave...
posted by howfar at 2:36 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
But more commonly, alpha sports parents followed the rules—at least those of the meritocracy—only to discover that they’d built the 80th- or 90th-best lacrosse midfielder in the country.
A harsh lesson. Fervent in the belief that anything is possible with enough will and hard work, people hit against the reality of the gap between top athletes and elite athletes. The 80th best player is surely really, really good, but I bet there's a gap between them and the top 25 or so that is not getting breached, no matter what you do.
posted by thelonius at 2:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
A harsh lesson. Fervent in the belief that anything is possible with enough will and hard work, people hit against the reality of the gap between top athletes and elite athletes. The 80th best player is surely really, really good, but I bet there's a gap between them and the top 25 or so that is not getting breached, no matter what you do.
posted by thelonius at 2:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
Mrs. Know-It-Some worked with a status-school obsessed mother. When she pointed out that she (Mrs. KIS) didn't go to a high-status school and did OK, the mother snapped: "Well, you were just lucky!" The woman was clearly petrified that her children would fall socially. Sure, she was overly concerned, but in an unequal society, the consequences of social descent can be real.
Also: hearing about the squash bunker makes me (and I'm guessing many of you) feel not-so-rich: and these people do have many, many multiples of our income. But there's a reasonable argument that the problem of the inequality between the 0.01 percent and the 5th to 15th percentile (or so) distracts from the inequality between us and those who are truly struggling.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
Also: hearing about the squash bunker makes me (and I'm guessing many of you) feel not-so-rich: and these people do have many, many multiples of our income. But there's a reasonable argument that the problem of the inequality between the 0.01 percent and the 5th to 15th percentile (or so) distracts from the inequality between us and those who are truly struggling.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
but one of the best things we did in Canada was defeat the political power of the upper-class American Loyalist immigrants
uh, UCC and Havergal would like a word.
posted by GuyZero at 2:42 PM on October 19, 2020 [8 favorites]
uh, UCC and Havergal would like a word.
posted by GuyZero at 2:42 PM on October 19, 2020 [8 favorites]
Or, as the Darien parent told me, they’re using athletics to escape “the penalty that comes from being from an advantaged zip code.” She continued: “Being who you are is not enough. It might be enough in Kansas. But not here.”I wonder how the Ivy League admissions rate of Kansas compares to that of Darien.
posted by clawsoon at 2:43 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
All else being equal it would counterfactually be higher. "All else being equal" of course is doing a lot of work here, because all else is very unequal, which is why in reality the admissions rates are lower. But considered very narrowly, if one of those kids from Darien CT could get themselves evaluated as if they're from North Bend NE, they likely would have a much better shot. That probably feels pretty unfair if you're a severely anxious rich parent.
posted by vogon_poet at 2:49 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by vogon_poet at 2:49 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
uh, UCC and Havergal would like a word.
They still have a lot of business power, but my impression is that the number of prime ministers or even cabinet ministers they've produced is a lot smaller than from their American equivalents. In general it seems like the much-less-entrenched nature of elite private schooling in Canada is one reason we have higher social mobility than the US.
posted by clawsoon at 2:50 PM on October 19, 2020
They still have a lot of business power, but my impression is that the number of prime ministers or even cabinet ministers they've produced is a lot smaller than from their American equivalents. In general it seems like the much-less-entrenched nature of elite private schooling in Canada is one reason we have higher social mobility than the US.
posted by clawsoon at 2:50 PM on October 19, 2020
vogon_poet: But considered very narrowly, if one of those kids from Darien CT could get themselves evaluated as if they're from North Bend NE, they likely would have a much better shot. That probably feels pretty unfair if you're a severely anxious rich parent.
Next "meritocratic" strategy to gain Ivy League admission: Move to Kansas in your child's senior year of high school.
posted by clawsoon at 2:51 PM on October 19, 2020 [7 favorites]
Next "meritocratic" strategy to gain Ivy League admission: Move to Kansas in your child's senior year of high school.
posted by clawsoon at 2:51 PM on October 19, 2020 [7 favorites]
I have a couple of friends from high school who are this kind of person, and it's been interesting to follow their kids' activities on Facebook. One of them was dutifully raising her kid to be the kind of athlete who qualifies for Ivy League admissions, and everything was going great until about tenth grade, when he suddenly morphed into the kind of kid who could conceivably make it to the Olympics. He had been a really good athlete, and then he had a growth spurt and gained new focus, and suddenly he was a world-class athlete. And now he's not going to the Ivy League. He's going to the solid public university that happens to have one of the two or three best teams in the sport that he's now one of the best in the world at. I don't know if that counts as success or failure.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:54 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
But considered very narrowly, if one of those kids from Darien CT could get themselves evaluated as if they're from North Bend NE, they likely would have a much better shot.Yeah, no. Not really. Because kids form North Bend NE almost never have the opportunities that the kids from Darien do, and their schools aren't grooming them for college from day 1, so they have a tough time competing with the kids from Darien or the kids from Lincoln or the suburbs of Omaha who have both geographic diversity points and families with the social capital to make them competitive.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:54 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
I wonder how the Ivy League admissions rate of Kansas compares to that of Darien.
I went to a private school in Kansas, there's maybe a half dozen in the entire state and since it is near Kansas City I would go so far to say as probably one of the best schools you can go to. The only person I know that went to Ivy League went to MIT and they were a legacy admission. This was a class close to 1,000.
Having worked in NYC in industries that attract Ivy League types, I'm always surprised by the fact that people who went to Harvard would go there with people from their own high school. The thought was so abstract to me. The Midwest equivalent of Ivy League would maybe Notre Dame in that smart, well-rounded students went there from my school and it wasn't like they won some Ivy League lottery.
Looks like there's an article about how there's a Midwest problem in Ivies. The least of which is probably because no one plays fucking squash outside of the elitist circles in the northeast corridor or a Wes Anderson movie:
“Get ready to be a novelty on the East Coast next year,” he said with a laugh. “I bet there’s less than ten Kansas kids in your Yale class. Actually … I bet there’s less than five.”
So basically legacies. Ivy Leagues also do zero recruitment in the Midwest. I think at the time the schools anyone went to that cared about that thing was Claremont, Notre Dame and other things that many people would consider a safety school.
posted by geoff. at 2:58 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
I went to a private school in Kansas, there's maybe a half dozen in the entire state and since it is near Kansas City I would go so far to say as probably one of the best schools you can go to. The only person I know that went to Ivy League went to MIT and they were a legacy admission. This was a class close to 1,000.
Having worked in NYC in industries that attract Ivy League types, I'm always surprised by the fact that people who went to Harvard would go there with people from their own high school. The thought was so abstract to me. The Midwest equivalent of Ivy League would maybe Notre Dame in that smart, well-rounded students went there from my school and it wasn't like they won some Ivy League lottery.
Looks like there's an article about how there's a Midwest problem in Ivies. The least of which is probably because no one plays fucking squash outside of the elitist circles in the northeast corridor or a Wes Anderson movie:
“Get ready to be a novelty on the East Coast next year,” he said with a laugh. “I bet there’s less than ten Kansas kids in your Yale class. Actually … I bet there’s less than five.”
So basically legacies. Ivy Leagues also do zero recruitment in the Midwest. I think at the time the schools anyone went to that cared about that thing was Claremont, Notre Dame and other things that many people would consider a safety school.
posted by geoff. at 2:58 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
Wait, Ivy League schools do recruitment anywhere?
posted by GuyZero at 2:59 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by GuyZero at 2:59 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Next "meritocratic" strategy to gain Ivy League admission: Move to Kansas in your child's senior year of high school.
You joke but some schools have geographic quotas, so, yeah, maybe.
posted by GuyZero at 3:00 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
You joke but some schools have geographic quotas, so, yeah, maybe.
posted by GuyZero at 3:00 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
Because kids form North Bend NE almost never have the opportunities that the kids from Darien do, and their schools aren't grooming them for college from day 1, so they have a tough time competing with the kids from Darien or the kids from Lincoln or the suburbs of Omaha who have both geographic diversity points and families with the social capital to make them competitive.
Right -- by "evaluated as if" I'm referring to a kid who is in fact from Hedgefundia, New England and has all the opportunities, but can somehow magically get the admissions office to apply the standards they would use for a kid from the middle of the country.
I don't think moving to juice your applications is a widespread strategy but it looks like there is some discussion of it on the College Confidential forum, which is second only to parenting forums for Internet derangement. I guess it is a parenting forum in a way.
posted by vogon_poet at 3:02 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
Right -- by "evaluated as if" I'm referring to a kid who is in fact from Hedgefundia, New England and has all the opportunities, but can somehow magically get the admissions office to apply the standards they would use for a kid from the middle of the country.
I don't think moving to juice your applications is a widespread strategy but it looks like there is some discussion of it on the College Confidential forum, which is second only to parenting forums for Internet derangement. I guess it is a parenting forum in a way.
posted by vogon_poet at 3:02 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
Quite apart from the sheer waste of human effort, to me this is alien because of just how anti-sport it actually is. The whole point, the whole glory of sports to me is that in the game there’s always someone better, but then you shake hands and it doesn’t represent anything about your own virtues as a person, far less your academic potential. It’s not just for fun, necessarily, but it’s something you engage in with other people on the grounds of human equality. If I play tennis against Roger Federer he’s going to absolutely flog me (not least because I don’t know how to play tennis), but that doesn’t mean he’s a better person than me. That attitude would run counter to the whole basis of the game as a ritual.
My country—Australia—notoriously takes sport extremely, even obsessively, seriously, and has a very weird and toxic culture around it, but this is something quite different, about using games as a means to assort human virtue, and I find it alien
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:03 PM on October 19, 2020 [14 favorites]
My country—Australia—notoriously takes sport extremely, even obsessively, seriously, and has a very weird and toxic culture around it, but this is something quite different, about using games as a means to assort human virtue, and I find it alien
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:03 PM on October 19, 2020 [14 favorites]
Wait, Ivy League schools do recruitment anywhere?
Probably not recruitment, but I remember WashU who thinks they're Ivy league did a weird come and interview with alumni sort of thing. I forget the specifics but I assume other elitist schools did the same thing if you go to a private school within a train ride from their school.
posted by geoff. at 3:04 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Probably not recruitment, but I remember WashU who thinks they're Ivy league did a weird come and interview with alumni sort of thing. I forget the specifics but I assume other elitist schools did the same thing if you go to a private school within a train ride from their school.
posted by geoff. at 3:04 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
It's kind of the parents, but kids are doing a lot of this to themselves. More than disappointing their parents they want to avoid looking lame in front of their peers. Talk up your dream of an Ivy or a Top LAC or even a regional Top 50-100 powerhouse too much and you'll be ashamed of your honors program and huge merit scholarship at the #113 school in the country, which might be a great fit personally, might be all your family can afford, and was certainly something to be proud of not too many years ago. Madness.
posted by Cris E at 3:07 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Cris E at 3:07 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
GuyZero: "students outside of the US tend to focus on just one thing to get into university: getting good grades. "
Datapoint: in Chile, it's grades, plus your ranking in your graduating class, plus a nationwide standardized test. Nobody gives a F about what sports you played or what recommendations you have or what 'activities' you partook in. The selection process is automated and there's no input field for these things.
There are some limited spots for sports-people, but there's so few spots that they still need good grades, etc.
There's also not a lot of scholarships of any kind from the good schools. The not-so good and crappy schools often offer you 50%-100% scholarship if your grades/score is good enough for the better schools and you still choose to go to their school.
posted by signal at 3:09 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
Datapoint: in Chile, it's grades, plus your ranking in your graduating class, plus a nationwide standardized test. Nobody gives a F about what sports you played or what recommendations you have or what 'activities' you partook in. The selection process is automated and there's no input field for these things.
There are some limited spots for sports-people, but there's so few spots that they still need good grades, etc.
There's also not a lot of scholarships of any kind from the good schools. The not-so good and crappy schools often offer you 50%-100% scholarship if your grades/score is good enough for the better schools and you still choose to go to their school.
posted by signal at 3:09 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
I find it alien
As a Canadian I find it alien that universities give a shit about athletics. I seriously don't think that any Canadian university bases admissions on any sort of athletic ability. Although apparently U of T has an OUA baseball team made up of nice kids who aged out of US D1 baseball (or got injured?) who just casually crush the rest of the league teams.
posted by GuyZero at 3:10 PM on October 19, 2020 [7 favorites]
As a Canadian I find it alien that universities give a shit about athletics. I seriously don't think that any Canadian university bases admissions on any sort of athletic ability. Although apparently U of T has an OUA baseball team made up of nice kids who aged out of US D1 baseball (or got injured?) who just casually crush the rest of the league teams.
posted by GuyZero at 3:10 PM on October 19, 2020 [7 favorites]
There's gotta be a Darien Gap joke in here somewhere.
posted by clawsoon at 3:11 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 3:11 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
There's gotta be a Darien Gap joke in here somewhere.
The CTE Curtain?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:13 PM on October 19, 2020
The CTE Curtain?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:13 PM on October 19, 2020
Who are all these squash players? I went to both a fancy-pants prep school and a fancy-pants graduate school, and can think of exactly one person I knew at them who played squash.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:15 PM on October 19, 2020
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:15 PM on October 19, 2020
“Parents see the numbers,” says Luke Walton, an Olympic rower and the founder of Rower Academy, a San Diego–based recruiting consultancy for high-school crew athletes.
Founder of the whatnow?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:28 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
Founder of the whatnow?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:28 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
there are kids out there who just really, really love crew or sailing or lacrosse or whatever. This dynamic really sucks for them
The real shame of the rise of travel baseball and club soccer and water polo academies is that those kids start playing at 4 and are often exhausted and burned out (and hate their parents) by the time they're 14. Meanwhile, the type-B kids (or kids with type-B parents) who want to just play for fun are often out of options by 7th grade, when they age out of rec league and Y programs.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 3:28 PM on October 19, 2020 [18 favorites]
The real shame of the rise of travel baseball and club soccer and water polo academies is that those kids start playing at 4 and are often exhausted and burned out (and hate their parents) by the time they're 14. Meanwhile, the type-B kids (or kids with type-B parents) who want to just play for fun are often out of options by 7th grade, when they age out of rec league and Y programs.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 3:28 PM on October 19, 2020 [18 favorites]
Who are all these squash players?
They're here apparently. Also per that page: "Squash is not an official sport of the NCAA so there are no NCAA limits on athletic scholarships for Division I teams." So... it's a scam. Or something.
posted by GuyZero at 3:29 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
They're here apparently. Also per that page: "Squash is not an official sport of the NCAA so there are no NCAA limits on athletic scholarships for Division I teams." So... it's a scam. Or something.
posted by GuyZero at 3:29 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
The only person I know that went to Ivy League went to MIT and they were a legacy admission.
Nitpicking because I can’t help myself: MIT isn’t in the Ivy League, and MIT doesn’t do legacy admissions.
posted by leslietron at 3:29 PM on October 19, 2020 [19 favorites]
Nitpicking because I can’t help myself: MIT isn’t in the Ivy League, and MIT doesn’t do legacy admissions.
posted by leslietron at 3:29 PM on October 19, 2020 [19 favorites]
The Ivy I worked for didn’t offer official sports scholarships, but recruited athletes got shit tons of aid and other benefits other students mysteriously didn’t.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:30 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:30 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
> Meanwhile, the type-B kids (or kids with type-B parents) who want to just play for fun are often out of options by 7th grade, when they age out of rec league and Y programs
It's also difficult to start playing a sport if you didn't pick it up when you were a toddler (it seems). In my city, basketball is a cut sport in middle school. When are they supposed to have learned to play in the first place?
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:31 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
It's also difficult to start playing a sport if you didn't pick it up when you were a toddler (it seems). In my city, basketball is a cut sport in middle school. When are they supposed to have learned to play in the first place?
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:31 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
Some of these parents think about mediocre state school the way normal people would think about having a kid go to prison. It's like a threat, "if you don't straighten out and start working hard, you'll have to go to Directional State University".
That reminds me of the bit in Risky Business where Joel (who lives in Glencoe, a Chicago suburb) blows his chance at Princeton (he thinks) and says, "Looks like the University of Illinois!" Which is the state's flagship university (at least UIUC is), but anyway.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:32 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
That reminds me of the bit in Risky Business where Joel (who lives in Glencoe, a Chicago suburb) blows his chance at Princeton (he thinks) and says, "Looks like the University of Illinois!" Which is the state's flagship university (at least UIUC is), but anyway.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:32 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
My high school library had one of those "Harvard Classics" collections, and I believe it was in there where I read that the point of the ideal university was to create the Well-Rounded Man. A scholar, an athlete, and a gentleman, all in one. I haven't looked very deeply into the history of the idea, but some Googling brings up Theodore Roosevelt as the exemplar of the man that Harvard wished to produce.
There was a great article - probably posted to Metafilter? - which talked about the necessity for the Ivy League to maintain its cool factor as the place where rich people who could go anywhere feel compelled to try to get into. That's why they didn't want Jews, or the "beetle-browed, highly specialized intellectual" then, or too many Asians now. I seem to recall it talked about car dealerships trying to avoid becoming the choice of black women because that would chase away the status-seekers with money to throw around.
I also remember an article - maybe the same one? - which talked about how some Wall Street firms prefer the Ivy League athletes over the Ivy League scholars because the athletes are more into winning. I guess the secret of getting money is sometimes merely the willingness to take it.
posted by clawsoon at 3:33 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
There was a great article - probably posted to Metafilter? - which talked about the necessity for the Ivy League to maintain its cool factor as the place where rich people who could go anywhere feel compelled to try to get into. That's why they didn't want Jews, or the "beetle-browed, highly specialized intellectual" then, or too many Asians now. I seem to recall it talked about car dealerships trying to avoid becoming the choice of black women because that would chase away the status-seekers with money to throw around.
I also remember an article - maybe the same one? - which talked about how some Wall Street firms prefer the Ivy League athletes over the Ivy League scholars because the athletes are more into winning. I guess the secret of getting money is sometimes merely the willingness to take it.
posted by clawsoon at 3:33 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
When are they supposed to have learned to play in the first place?
a) it's not supposed to be for everyone, it's pretty competitive even at that age. You're not naturally good at it, you're cut.
b) before middle school.
School sports in the US are strictly competitive. It's not supposed to be either fun or education as far as I can tell.
My kid played varsity baseball in high school for a team that has won California state championships (insofar as there is no statewide championship as far as I'm aware). He started in elementary school I guess. And he wasn't a very notable player until later in high school. But for sure it wasn't possible to start in grade 8 or 9. Way too late at that point.
posted by GuyZero at 3:37 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
a) it's not supposed to be for everyone, it's pretty competitive even at that age. You're not naturally good at it, you're cut.
b) before middle school.
School sports in the US are strictly competitive. It's not supposed to be either fun or education as far as I can tell.
My kid played varsity baseball in high school for a team that has won California state championships (insofar as there is no statewide championship as far as I'm aware). He started in elementary school I guess. And he wasn't a very notable player until later in high school. But for sure it wasn't possible to start in grade 8 or 9. Way too late at that point.
posted by GuyZero at 3:37 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
My kids got off that treadmill but listening the grind that a co-worker's daughter was going through for a shot at a volleyball scholarship was madness
My son used to be a gymnast—like a lot of gymnasts, he moved into other sports around middle-school-age as he got interested in things like having a social life instead of 20 hours a week of practice, including both Friday night and Saturday morning. A lot of people said they kept their kids in the sport for a chance at a college scholarship, but honestly, it's so expensive to have a gymnast that if you put that money into savings instead, you could just pay for college.
posted by Orlop at 3:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
My son used to be a gymnast—like a lot of gymnasts, he moved into other sports around middle-school-age as he got interested in things like having a social life instead of 20 hours a week of practice, including both Friday night and Saturday morning. A lot of people said they kept their kids in the sport for a chance at a college scholarship, but honestly, it's so expensive to have a gymnast that if you put that money into savings instead, you could just pay for college.
posted by Orlop at 3:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
Bentham would be spinning in his grave...
Bentham doesn't have a grave. They keep him in a cupboard and wheel him out for parties.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [28 favorites]
Bentham doesn't have a grave. They keep him in a cupboard and wheel him out for parties.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [28 favorites]
My son fences. I have bad news for the couple in the article about opportunities to fence in college, and even worse news about scholarships. You basically have to be on the short list for the Olympic Team to get a scholarship at one of the roughly 35 schools that even offer scholarships in fencing. Ironically, Ohio State is one of the top schools for fencing, along with other uncouth state schools like Penn State.
posted by COD at 3:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by COD at 3:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
> My son fences. I have bad news for the couple in the article about opportunities to fence in college, and even worse news about scholarships.
My son is an archer. I am eyeing those 35 scholarships of yours with envy.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:42 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
My son is an archer. I am eyeing those 35 scholarships of yours with envy.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:42 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
My son was (is?) a 6'4" left-handed baseball pitcher. I think he only chance at college scholarships would have been if I had also been a high school pitcher in which case I could have coached him & found appropriate coaches for him. Literally genetics aren't enough to win this game. You need a multiple generations and the money to pay for private coaching.
posted by GuyZero at 3:45 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 3:45 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
GuyZero: School sports in the US are strictly competitive. It's not supposed to be either fun or education as far as I can tell.
I took my first road trip into the US in the summer of my first year of college. (Or thereabouts.) I listened to the radio along the way, lots of public broadcasting, and I remembering thinking that Americans made a competitions out of everything. Hey, nice marching band you got there. Bet my band is better. Let's make a national band competition to determine the best band in the nation. Hey, nice dog you got there. Bet my dog is better. Let's make a national dog competition to determine the best dog in the nation.
I wonder if the US would even have marching bands anymore if it weren't for competition.
posted by clawsoon at 3:46 PM on October 19, 2020 [14 favorites]
I took my first road trip into the US in the summer of my first year of college. (Or thereabouts.) I listened to the radio along the way, lots of public broadcasting, and I remembering thinking that Americans made a competitions out of everything. Hey, nice marching band you got there. Bet my band is better. Let's make a national band competition to determine the best band in the nation. Hey, nice dog you got there. Bet my dog is better. Let's make a national dog competition to determine the best dog in the nation.
I wonder if the US would even have marching bands anymore if it weren't for competition.
posted by clawsoon at 3:46 PM on October 19, 2020 [14 favorites]
AIUI Ivy League schools do something that looks like recruiting but is mostly meant to increase the number of applications.
I cannot imagine how well spreading "I tried to get into $IVY and failed " cements the status of $IVY graduates and faculty, even on axes that have nothing to do with $IVY admission. Worth a lot of canapés in regional capitals, certainly.
posted by clew at 3:51 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
I cannot imagine how well spreading "I tried to get into $IVY and failed " cements the status of $IVY graduates and faculty, even on axes that have nothing to do with $IVY admission. Worth a lot of canapés in regional capitals, certainly.
posted by clew at 3:51 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
The seemingly-blameless ideology of modern parenthood that's ruining the world.
I blame the parents
Sure, why not. Blame the people who are doing the work of creating the society around you (doctors you'll need to live, musicians to amuse you, chefs to fill out the backdrop for your romantic dates...) not only for free, but while being punished financially, personally, socially, and politically for it. And hey, if the people most closely associated with the concept of "parent" are female, and parenting is blamed precisely because it's female-coded, that is surely a total coincidence! /s
There is absolutely nothing more natural in the world than people wanting to do as much as they can for their children. And, as it happens, doing the humongous job of parenting is a completely not-for-profit undertaking, thanks to patriarchy shutting parenting work out of the capitalist market. Anyone who blames parenting and parents for THIS mess needs to take a hard look at who is profiting from it. Follow the money, not the convenient dogwhistle of misogyny.
posted by MiraK at 3:54 PM on October 19, 2020 [21 favorites]
I blame the parents
Sure, why not. Blame the people who are doing the work of creating the society around you (doctors you'll need to live, musicians to amuse you, chefs to fill out the backdrop for your romantic dates...) not only for free, but while being punished financially, personally, socially, and politically for it. And hey, if the people most closely associated with the concept of "parent" are female, and parenting is blamed precisely because it's female-coded, that is surely a total coincidence! /s
There is absolutely nothing more natural in the world than people wanting to do as much as they can for their children. And, as it happens, doing the humongous job of parenting is a completely not-for-profit undertaking, thanks to patriarchy shutting parenting work out of the capitalist market. Anyone who blames parenting and parents for THIS mess needs to take a hard look at who is profiting from it. Follow the money, not the convenient dogwhistle of misogyny.
posted by MiraK at 3:54 PM on October 19, 2020 [21 favorites]
Americans made a competition out of everything.
That's one thing that I missed as an adult: permission to be a dilettante. It seemed that when I was a kid, you could get up a board game or field game with people who were casual players and just have fun. Then, moving into adulthood, it seemed like people either weren't interested or they were nationally ranked players in things like chess. Even if you could get together a casual game of something, there was always that one try-hard guy. RPGs have a rep for min-maxers and power gamers, but if you're careful you can find people who remember to have fun and, you know, actually role play.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:56 PM on October 19, 2020 [8 favorites]
That's one thing that I missed as an adult: permission to be a dilettante. It seemed that when I was a kid, you could get up a board game or field game with people who were casual players and just have fun. Then, moving into adulthood, it seemed like people either weren't interested or they were nationally ranked players in things like chess. Even if you could get together a casual game of something, there was always that one try-hard guy. RPGs have a rep for min-maxers and power gamers, but if you're careful you can find people who remember to have fun and, you know, actually role play.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:56 PM on October 19, 2020 [8 favorites]
My son is an archer. I am eyeing those 35 scholarships of yours with envy.
With some colleges cutting men's gymnastics as part of covid austerity, there are now only I think 14 schools in the whole country that have men's gymnastics teams at all. Two of them are the service academies.
posted by Orlop at 3:58 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
With some colleges cutting men's gymnastics as part of covid austerity, there are now only I think 14 schools in the whole country that have men's gymnastics teams at all. Two of them are the service academies.
posted by Orlop at 3:58 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
>that looks like recruiting but is mostly meant to increase the number of applications
Why colleges aggressively recruit applicants just to turn them down
Evil? Yes!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:03 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
Why colleges aggressively recruit applicants just to turn them down
Evil? Yes!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:03 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
Bentham doesn't have a grave. They keep him in a cupboard and wheel him out for parties
Well gee thanks for explaining my joke to me.
posted by howfar at 4:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
Well gee thanks for explaining my joke to me.
posted by howfar at 4:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
>My son is an archer. I am eyeing those 35 scholarships of yours with envy
well the good news he's odds-on favorite for the inaugural Hunger Games...
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
well the good news he's odds-on favorite for the inaugural Hunger Games...
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [9 favorites]
MiraK: There is absolutely nothing more natural in the world than people wanting to do as much as they can for their children.
I respectfully disagree. There are lots of parents who want to do just enough that their children get by. A few parents are actively malicious toward their children. Some parents want all children, not just their own, to have a decent chance. And a few parents do as much as they can for their children, which means doing it at the expense of other children and society as a whole. What's natural is the whole range of possibilities. I happen to think that last option is pernicious, and it's pernicious that we celebrate it.
Anyone who blames parenting and parents for THIS mess needs to take a hard look at who is profiting from it. Follow the money, not the convenient dogwhistle of misogyny.
Fair point. From this side of the border it seems like who is profiting from it is healthcare companies who want you to feel the terror of falling into an insurance-free chasm if you don't get one of the few remaining Good Jobs. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's one thing that jumps out.
posted by clawsoon at 4:07 PM on October 19, 2020 [26 favorites]
I respectfully disagree. There are lots of parents who want to do just enough that their children get by. A few parents are actively malicious toward their children. Some parents want all children, not just their own, to have a decent chance. And a few parents do as much as they can for their children, which means doing it at the expense of other children and society as a whole. What's natural is the whole range of possibilities. I happen to think that last option is pernicious, and it's pernicious that we celebrate it.
Anyone who blames parenting and parents for THIS mess needs to take a hard look at who is profiting from it. Follow the money, not the convenient dogwhistle of misogyny.
Fair point. From this side of the border it seems like who is profiting from it is healthcare companies who want you to feel the terror of falling into an insurance-free chasm if you don't get one of the few remaining Good Jobs. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's one thing that jumps out.
posted by clawsoon at 4:07 PM on October 19, 2020 [26 favorites]
MiraK: And, as it happens, doing the humongous job of parenting is a completely not-for-profit undertaking, thanks to patriarchy shutting parenting work out of the capitalist market.
I'm curious about where this thought goes. It occurs to me that the parents in the article have put parenting work into the capitalist market maybe more than any other group of parents in history. Private tutors, private coaches, private schools, private sports academies, private therapists, private nannies. They are paying for what they hope is the best parenting money can buy. They are using their capital to multiply the effect of their own already-prodigious efforts.
As the article points out in the section on burnout, it's not entirely clear whether a child can absorb that much multiplied parenting.
posted by clawsoon at 4:20 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm curious about where this thought goes. It occurs to me that the parents in the article have put parenting work into the capitalist market maybe more than any other group of parents in history. Private tutors, private coaches, private schools, private sports academies, private therapists, private nannies. They are paying for what they hope is the best parenting money can buy. They are using their capital to multiply the effect of their own already-prodigious efforts.
As the article points out in the section on burnout, it's not entirely clear whether a child can absorb that much multiplied parenting.
posted by clawsoon at 4:20 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
There are lots of parents who want to do just enough that their children get by. A few parents are actively malicious toward their children.
Yeah, the only competitive sport my Dad was interested in was Spending the Least Possible Amount of Time and Money Raising Children.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:26 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Yeah, the only competitive sport my Dad was interested in was Spending the Least Possible Amount of Time and Money Raising Children.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:26 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
clawsoon: " And a few parents do as much as they can for their children, which means doing it at the expense of other children and society as a whole. "
I would be willing to sacrifice a lot of other people's happiness for my son's, but so far haven't really had a reason or opportunity to do so. There's still time, of course.
posted by signal at 4:33 PM on October 19, 2020
I would be willing to sacrifice a lot of other people's happiness for my son's, but so far haven't really had a reason or opportunity to do so. There's still time, of course.
posted by signal at 4:33 PM on October 19, 2020
One justification that people will give for Ivy League sports is the following:
Somebody at Harvard has to be at the bottom of the class, and that's going to be psychologically tough for them. So just recruit some academically capable but undistinguished athletes, and have them get mediocre grades while pursuing excellence in sports instead. Then the athletes can be proud of themselves, and the academic grinds can be proud of themselves, and everyone is happy and looks good, and has some accomplishments to point to.
I believe this may have been specifically stated policy of some Harvard dean at some point, but I can't find any reference.
posted by vogon_poet at 4:34 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Somebody at Harvard has to be at the bottom of the class, and that's going to be psychologically tough for them. So just recruit some academically capable but undistinguished athletes, and have them get mediocre grades while pursuing excellence in sports instead. Then the athletes can be proud of themselves, and the academic grinds can be proud of themselves, and everyone is happy and looks good, and has some accomplishments to point to.
I believe this may have been specifically stated policy of some Harvard dean at some point, but I can't find any reference.
posted by vogon_poet at 4:34 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
I was surprised that there was so little about the effect on the actual kids here, just a little bit towards the end. At no point that I saw was there even a sentence written about how the kids feel about their lives, aside from some mention of burnout I suppose. How about a quote from a kid, maybe? How do they feel, living in such a pressure-cooker?
I mean... the whole thing is just so off-putting to me. It's like they are talking about livestock, basically objects, instead of subjects.
What is these kids's mental health like? And the severe injuries before they even go off to college? What about the ones who get their bodies ground into pieces and *don't* make it into an elite program? How will their parents feel about them, and how will that make them feel about *themselves*?
Christ, what a minefield. The kids are people, dammit! They have thoughts and dreams of their own, do the parents even care what the kids *actually* want? If one of these kids wants off the treadmill, and to like write poetry or learn to make videos or cook or draw or just read a ton of books for pleasure, or do whatever besides obsessive training for their Chosen Sport, how do the parents react? Do these kids feel loved for who they are, or for their demonstrated skill level in competitions?
Kind of makes me sick, to be quite honest.
posted by cats are weird at 4:38 PM on October 19, 2020 [23 favorites]
I mean... the whole thing is just so off-putting to me. It's like they are talking about livestock, basically objects, instead of subjects.
What is these kids's mental health like? And the severe injuries before they even go off to college? What about the ones who get their bodies ground into pieces and *don't* make it into an elite program? How will their parents feel about them, and how will that make them feel about *themselves*?
Christ, what a minefield. The kids are people, dammit! They have thoughts and dreams of their own, do the parents even care what the kids *actually* want? If one of these kids wants off the treadmill, and to like write poetry or learn to make videos or cook or draw or just read a ton of books for pleasure, or do whatever besides obsessive training for their Chosen Sport, how do the parents react? Do these kids feel loved for who they are, or for their demonstrated skill level in competitions?
Kind of makes me sick, to be quite honest.
posted by cats are weird at 4:38 PM on October 19, 2020 [23 favorites]
Anyone else here reminded of Andrew, the football player kid from the Breakfast Club? Winning was the only thing that mattered to his father, and it really messed him up.
posted by cats are weird at 4:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by cats are weird at 4:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
This is all deeply unfair ... but it also seems cruel to the kids who "benefit" as well. I can't imagine having this kind of relationship with one's parents - more than raising them, it seems like they are grooming them to be prizewinners. I know we only got a glimpse, and only a few parents, but it all seems so relentless on these kids. The way they talk about their kids is so objectifying/dehumanizing.
More than anything else, the parents in this article remind me of stage parents - the measure of success is not that their kids are happy and healthy, or good people, but that they achieve something at a young age that is statistically unlikely.
posted by lunasol at 4:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
More than anything else, the parents in this article remind me of stage parents - the measure of success is not that their kids are happy and healthy, or good people, but that they achieve something at a young age that is statistically unlikely.
posted by lunasol at 4:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
They have thoughts and dreams of their own, do the parents even care what the kids *actually* want?
You know this is about the USA right?
America isn't about making you feel good about yourself.
posted by GuyZero at 4:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
You know this is about the USA right?
America isn't about making you feel good about yourself.
posted by GuyZero at 4:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
If one of these kids wants off the treadmill, and to like write poetry or learn to make videos or cook or draw or just read a ton of books for pleasure, or do whatever besides obsessive training for their Chosen Sport, how do the parents react?
The conversation upthread about how competitive college applications has gotten made me think about my own alma mater, which I definitely would not have gotten into if I were applying today. It's a Top 25 small college, but I wonder how these parents would feel about their kids going there, as it's more a school for smart weirdos than future CEOs. I suppose it would be marginally less embarrassing than Directional State College, but they'd have to chalk it up to their kid being the "free spirit" of the family, and I imagine there'd be even more pressure on the other kids to deliver legible success.
posted by lunasol at 4:45 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
The conversation upthread about how competitive college applications has gotten made me think about my own alma mater, which I definitely would not have gotten into if I were applying today. It's a Top 25 small college, but I wonder how these parents would feel about their kids going there, as it's more a school for smart weirdos than future CEOs. I suppose it would be marginally less embarrassing than Directional State College, but they'd have to chalk it up to their kid being the "free spirit" of the family, and I imagine there'd be even more pressure on the other kids to deliver legible success.
posted by lunasol at 4:45 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
This article also reminds me that fencing, squash, and crew sound fun, and maybe I can try them someday! I think I got to try squash for a month in high school physical education class.
posted by brainwane at 5:04 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by brainwane at 5:04 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
It might be odd to mention (but I scanned the comments and it doesn't appear that anyone has) that the author of this article (Ruth S. Barrett) is the former Ruth Shalit, who had some issues that she was fired from the New Republic for. So, there's that.
posted by 41swans at 5:15 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by 41swans at 5:15 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
One reason Ivies and similar schools are highly invested in their sports programs is that they bring in lots of alumni involvement, which means more donation money.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:17 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:17 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
Out of curiosity, what do these athletes do if they don't get into the college they want? Or what do they do after college is over?
I don't see that many options around to play sports as an adult (other than maybe things like soccer, baseball, and softball leagues). Do people continue playing outside of an educational environment? Because I can image that it must be really disorientating to just stop, after it being such a huge part of your life for your entire childhood.
I'd love to see all the money that goes into college sport going into providing community sports centers instead, where anyone who wanted to take up a sport as an adult could do so. For fun! or for health! It seems everyone would win if we could separate sport from education.
Why should sports just be for children and teenagers, let alone just for college admissions?
posted by EllaEm at 5:32 PM on October 19, 2020 [13 favorites]
I don't see that many options around to play sports as an adult (other than maybe things like soccer, baseball, and softball leagues). Do people continue playing outside of an educational environment? Because I can image that it must be really disorientating to just stop, after it being such a huge part of your life for your entire childhood.
I'd love to see all the money that goes into college sport going into providing community sports centers instead, where anyone who wanted to take up a sport as an adult could do so. For fun! or for health! It seems everyone would win if we could separate sport from education.
Why should sports just be for children and teenagers, let alone just for college admissions?
posted by EllaEm at 5:32 PM on October 19, 2020 [13 favorites]
Options do seem to be out there, but I think you have to be really tuned in to them to know about them. I have a friend running a spacecraft mission who continues to row--if it wasn't for her, I'd have no idea adult crew was a thing.
posted by Four Ds at 5:35 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Four Ds at 5:35 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
When I visited Princeton as a prospective student in the late 90’s, it was parents’ weekend at a lot of east coast prep schools and families used the time for college visits. My group interview (!) was me and five kids who all played lacrosse. Also one of the kids had a bad fever but didn’t stay home for some reason and was just sweating in a blue blazer. I did not get into that school but my ex-boyfriend who was a state champion fencer and whose grades and test scores weren’t as good as mine did get in.
I was bitter at the time but in retrospect skipping the ivies was better for me. Putting together a few thousand 18 year olds who lack all perspective and have spent their whole lives on a treadmill would not have made a healthy environment for my anxious, perfectionist self. Which is to say that as a society we tend to lack perspective about what learning is and what it is for. I would be curious to see what it would feel like if we truly had access to excellent college for everyone in a non-competitive way.
posted by mai at 5:36 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
I was bitter at the time but in retrospect skipping the ivies was better for me. Putting together a few thousand 18 year olds who lack all perspective and have spent their whole lives on a treadmill would not have made a healthy environment for my anxious, perfectionist self. Which is to say that as a society we tend to lack perspective about what learning is and what it is for. I would be curious to see what it would feel like if we truly had access to excellent college for everyone in a non-competitive way.
posted by mai at 5:36 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
I don't think their parents think that they're going to be professional squash players. I think the idea is that squash or fencing will be their ticket into a top college, and then a degree from a top college will be their ticket to success in life. I suspect that is not true, but that's the theory.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:37 PM on October 19, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:37 PM on October 19, 2020 [7 favorites]
It occurs to me that the parents in the article have put parenting work into the capitalist market maybe more than any other group of parents in history. Private tutors, private coaches, private schools, private sports academies, private therapists, private nannies.
True. They do (mis)use their power in the capitalist society ... as the means to achieve their non-capitalist, non-profit goals. They aren't actually getting returns on this investment, was the point I was trying to make. Like, there aren't baby farms created by conglomerates of parents who invest money into growing the most profitable adults so that they may later sit back and earn 8% compounding year on year returns on their investment for however long the adult remains profitable, kwim? There is no money in this project for the parent. Parenting is not a capitalist enterprise in itself; it is profitable for capitalist enterprises.
> There are lots of parents who want to do just enough that their children get by. A few parents are actively malicious toward their children.
Agreed - and this is one of the reasons I used "natural" rather than "universal" to describe the drive.
> Some parents want all children, not just their own, to have a decent chance.
.... ehh, we may SAY so, but do anyone's actions match up? Which parent exists in this world who literally spends as much money on every child in their community or neighborhood or extended family as they do on their own? We all take care of our own, first and foremost, and for whatever multitude of reasons/obligations/limitations (capitalism and patriarchy certainly among them), parenting designed to ensure the welfare of one's own children and political action designed to ensure the welfare of all children are separate spheres of human activity.
This is all deeply unfair ... but it also seems cruel to the kids who "benefit" as well.
This is unfair but also not the least bit unusual. Parents in general always attempt to condition their children for the highest chances of success for whatever environment the kids will enter as adults. In theocratic societies, parents are rigorous about the level of their children's piousness. In misogynistic societies, parents groom their daughters to submit to rape by parent-sanctioned strangers. And here, these parents are putting their children through a punishing sporting competition. It's really all the same. None of the parents are torturing their children in these ways because the parents are evil. They're doing it because they live in a system that mandates this level of child torture as the price of adult success for the child (and/or the parents are unaware of/unable to access the grooming necessary for other means of adult success for the child).
Maybe I'm too cynical, IDK, but really, the idea of a pressure-free grooming-free carefree childhood is an aspirational myth created within the last half century or so - and that only in the most privileged of the world's societies. I wholeheartedly agree it's "unfair" but I always start second-guessing that wholehearted feeling, because fairness is laughably out of reach for almost everyone, everywhere, all through history.
> One reason Ivies and similar schools are highly invested in their sports programs is that they bring in lots of alumni involvement, which means more donation money.
... not to mention all the revenue from televised college sports! It's the colleges and media conglomerates who are making bank from this, honestly, that is where the evil lies.
posted by MiraK at 5:50 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
True. They do (mis)use their power in the capitalist society ... as the means to achieve their non-capitalist, non-profit goals. They aren't actually getting returns on this investment, was the point I was trying to make. Like, there aren't baby farms created by conglomerates of parents who invest money into growing the most profitable adults so that they may later sit back and earn 8% compounding year on year returns on their investment for however long the adult remains profitable, kwim? There is no money in this project for the parent. Parenting is not a capitalist enterprise in itself; it is profitable for capitalist enterprises.
> There are lots of parents who want to do just enough that their children get by. A few parents are actively malicious toward their children.
Agreed - and this is one of the reasons I used "natural" rather than "universal" to describe the drive.
> Some parents want all children, not just their own, to have a decent chance.
.... ehh, we may SAY so, but do anyone's actions match up? Which parent exists in this world who literally spends as much money on every child in their community or neighborhood or extended family as they do on their own? We all take care of our own, first and foremost, and for whatever multitude of reasons/obligations/limitations (capitalism and patriarchy certainly among them), parenting designed to ensure the welfare of one's own children and political action designed to ensure the welfare of all children are separate spheres of human activity.
This is all deeply unfair ... but it also seems cruel to the kids who "benefit" as well.
This is unfair but also not the least bit unusual. Parents in general always attempt to condition their children for the highest chances of success for whatever environment the kids will enter as adults. In theocratic societies, parents are rigorous about the level of their children's piousness. In misogynistic societies, parents groom their daughters to submit to rape by parent-sanctioned strangers. And here, these parents are putting their children through a punishing sporting competition. It's really all the same. None of the parents are torturing their children in these ways because the parents are evil. They're doing it because they live in a system that mandates this level of child torture as the price of adult success for the child (and/or the parents are unaware of/unable to access the grooming necessary for other means of adult success for the child).
Maybe I'm too cynical, IDK, but really, the idea of a pressure-free grooming-free carefree childhood is an aspirational myth created within the last half century or so - and that only in the most privileged of the world's societies. I wholeheartedly agree it's "unfair" but I always start second-guessing that wholehearted feeling, because fairness is laughably out of reach for almost everyone, everywhere, all through history.
> One reason Ivies and similar schools are highly invested in their sports programs is that they bring in lots of alumni involvement, which means more donation money.
... not to mention all the revenue from televised college sports! It's the colleges and media conglomerates who are making bank from this, honestly, that is where the evil lies.
posted by MiraK at 5:50 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
I would be curious to see what it would feel like if we truly had access to excellent college for everyone in a non-competitive way.
We kind of do, at least in the sense that many, many institutions provide excellent experiences for many students. Empirically, we see this best in data collected via the National Survey of Student Engagement where analyses have shown that, at least among the things included in the survey, nearly all of the variation between student responses occurs between students at the same institution and not between students at different institutions. So students at all kinds of institutions have excellent experiences. This is definitely not a perfect answer to your question - many students aren't prepared to seek out the best experiences at institutions or even ask for help, the costs of higher education are hugely problematic and steadily growing worse, etc. - but it's a bit hopeful.
posted by ElKevbo at 5:54 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
We kind of do, at least in the sense that many, many institutions provide excellent experiences for many students. Empirically, we see this best in data collected via the National Survey of Student Engagement where analyses have shown that, at least among the things included in the survey, nearly all of the variation between student responses occurs between students at the same institution and not between students at different institutions. So students at all kinds of institutions have excellent experiences. This is definitely not a perfect answer to your question - many students aren't prepared to seek out the best experiences at institutions or even ask for help, the costs of higher education are hugely problematic and steadily growing worse, etc. - but it's a bit hopeful.
posted by ElKevbo at 5:54 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
Fun fact: The "league" in Ivy League refers to a sports league. "These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities."
posted by clawsoon at 6:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 6:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
There is a direct pipeline from Ivy League squash and other sports to top Wall Street jobs, it's an advantage even after you're in. There are recruiting events that are mysteriously poorly advertised, except somehow word of mouth among athletes.
Other than stuff like that, playing sports in college is not really a good deal -- lot of work for no external benefit. People don't play after they graduate, mostly.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:09 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
Other than stuff like that, playing sports in college is not really a good deal -- lot of work for no external benefit. People don't play after they graduate, mostly.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:09 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
It might be odd to mention (but I scanned the comments and it doesn't appear that anyone has) that the author of this article (Ruth S. Barrett) is the former Ruth Shalit, who had some issues that she was fired from the New Republic for
I read a little about her after seeing this, and re some comments above about the Midwest and Ivies, it's worth noting that she's from Milwaukee and went to Princeton. She also married a tech executive and now lives in Connecticut...she doesn't mention if she's writing about her neighbors, but it seems possible. Really interesting that she continued in journalism after the previous scandals.
posted by pinochiette at 6:12 PM on October 19, 2020
I read a little about her after seeing this, and re some comments above about the Midwest and Ivies, it's worth noting that she's from Milwaukee and went to Princeton. She also married a tech executive and now lives in Connecticut...she doesn't mention if she's writing about her neighbors, but it seems possible. Really interesting that she continued in journalism after the previous scandals.
posted by pinochiette at 6:12 PM on October 19, 2020
So I, went to a mediocre state university and play squash all the time. In fact a lot of my friends in college played squash (or racquetball). Indeed, most of the people I work with now that are interested in sports play squash. Is it really that uncommon? Am I living in a bizarro universe?
posted by Literaryhero at 6:20 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Literaryhero at 6:20 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
I wonder if this piece isn't best read--and in my case, enjoyed--as a fiction about rich people being awful to their kids, in a long tradition that includes Clarissa, The Way of All Flesh and every Victorian will-shaking novel, and the Patrick Melrose books. It's comforting to be reminded that rich people are just as miserable as everyone else.
One of my jobs while getting a PhD at Harvard, a place I never could've gotten into as an undergrad for all the reasons this article explains, was writing nomination letters for undergrads for various endowed awards given out at commencement. Some Mayflower descendant at the turn of the twentieth century endows a prize (some of these were in the four and five figures by the early 2000s) for things like the most distinguished athlete Latin scholar who planned to go to Harvard Law or whatever, and it was my job as an R.A. to write nominations for students who were in my "house". The criteria in the bequests were drafted in the idiom of Matthew Arnold/Teddy Roosevelt Manly College Character, which had sort of slid over the decades into modern American overclass meritocratic allroundedness.
Anyway, I took it seriously and wrote earnest letters, though I don't think I really had the hang of it and our house didn't win many during my years. One part that even at the time I realized was pretty hilarious was calling up the coaches to get testimonials to the character of our nominees. There's just not much to say other than "they try really hard." My favorite was rowing, which, as others have pointed out, was a servile activity for most of human history and still one that is rather less complicated than, say, gymnastics. The rowing coach would always say things like "I thought she wouldn't row fast enough for us to win, but then she tried really hard, and did row fast enough, and then we won. What a kid."
posted by sy at 6:26 PM on October 19, 2020 [17 favorites]
One of my jobs while getting a PhD at Harvard, a place I never could've gotten into as an undergrad for all the reasons this article explains, was writing nomination letters for undergrads for various endowed awards given out at commencement. Some Mayflower descendant at the turn of the twentieth century endows a prize (some of these were in the four and five figures by the early 2000s) for things like the most distinguished athlete Latin scholar who planned to go to Harvard Law or whatever, and it was my job as an R.A. to write nominations for students who were in my "house". The criteria in the bequests were drafted in the idiom of Matthew Arnold/Teddy Roosevelt Manly College Character, which had sort of slid over the decades into modern American overclass meritocratic allroundedness.
Anyway, I took it seriously and wrote earnest letters, though I don't think I really had the hang of it and our house didn't win many during my years. One part that even at the time I realized was pretty hilarious was calling up the coaches to get testimonials to the character of our nominees. There's just not much to say other than "they try really hard." My favorite was rowing, which, as others have pointed out, was a servile activity for most of human history and still one that is rather less complicated than, say, gymnastics. The rowing coach would always say things like "I thought she wouldn't row fast enough for us to win, but then she tried really hard, and did row fast enough, and then we won. What a kid."
posted by sy at 6:26 PM on October 19, 2020 [17 favorites]
Out of curiosity, what do these athletes do if they don't get into the college they want? Or what do they do after college is over?
In the US, we generally just chuck 'em in the pile of stuff that doesn't profit the corporate masters. Depending on the sport, they end up with CTE or something, which we then leave untreated. Overall, the answer is generally "fuck if we care" and that's a whole other problem that needs solving.
posted by mrgoat at 6:27 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
In the US, we generally just chuck 'em in the pile of stuff that doesn't profit the corporate masters. Depending on the sport, they end up with CTE or something, which we then leave untreated. Overall, the answer is generally "fuck if we care" and that's a whole other problem that needs solving.
posted by mrgoat at 6:27 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
my own alma mater, which I definitely would not have gotten into if I were applying today.
Oh, me neither. I am way too dumb to get into mine these days, no question.
I don't see that many options around to play sports as an adult (other than maybe things like soccer, baseball, and softball leagues). Do people continue playing outside of an educational environment? Because I can image that it must be really disorientating to just stop, after it being such a huge part of your life for your entire childhood.
Definitely wondered about this at times, like cheerleading, especially since being a cheerleader for a professional sports team is so freaking awful. I'm not sure what the point of a cheerleading scholarship is since as far as I know cheerleading ends after college for most people?
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Oh, me neither. I am way too dumb to get into mine these days, no question.
I don't see that many options around to play sports as an adult (other than maybe things like soccer, baseball, and softball leagues). Do people continue playing outside of an educational environment? Because I can image that it must be really disorientating to just stop, after it being such a huge part of your life for your entire childhood.
Definitely wondered about this at times, like cheerleading, especially since being a cheerleader for a professional sports team is so freaking awful. I'm not sure what the point of a cheerleading scholarship is since as far as I know cheerleading ends after college for most people?
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:39 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
mrgoat: Depending on the sport, they end up with CTE or something, which we then leave untreated. Overall, the answer is generally "fuck if we care" and that's a whole other problem that needs solving.
This feels like something which happens to a lot more black athletes at football powerhouse schools than it does to white athletes playing squash at Harvard.
I have no idea, though, really. I just assume they all end up as vice president of sales at some hedge fund, but that's based on no data.
posted by clawsoon at 6:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
This feels like something which happens to a lot more black athletes at football powerhouse schools than it does to white athletes playing squash at Harvard.
I have no idea, though, really. I just assume they all end up as vice president of sales at some hedge fund, but that's based on no data.
posted by clawsoon at 6:40 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
Credentials: My kid fenced from middle school through college, was recruited by the (non-Ivy) college they went to, and was captain of the team.
I made it a deliberate choice to let it be my kid's choice. We even sometimes asked if the kid still wanted to do it. I can tell you that the hermetic parental world of the affluent sports parent is an environment that is very hard to survive without buying into the paranoia. It took considerable conscious effort for me to just let it be my kid's sport, and I was often treated with pity. The only thing that made it possible for me was that I had attended two Ivies (undergrad and graduate school) and knew the brass ring they were trying to grab wasn't worth the effort. That, and I took up fencing myself so that I'd stay out of my kid's hair at practice.
The funny thing was, said kid did pretty well in college fencing anyway. Won various things, made NCAAs. Gave it up afterward, though, and took up rugby and then circus arts.
posted by Peach at 6:44 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
I made it a deliberate choice to let it be my kid's choice. We even sometimes asked if the kid still wanted to do it. I can tell you that the hermetic parental world of the affluent sports parent is an environment that is very hard to survive without buying into the paranoia. It took considerable conscious effort for me to just let it be my kid's sport, and I was often treated with pity. The only thing that made it possible for me was that I had attended two Ivies (undergrad and graduate school) and knew the brass ring they were trying to grab wasn't worth the effort. That, and I took up fencing myself so that I'd stay out of my kid's hair at practice.
The funny thing was, said kid did pretty well in college fencing anyway. Won various things, made NCAAs. Gave it up afterward, though, and took up rugby and then circus arts.
posted by Peach at 6:44 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
I thought mrgoat was referring to the (much larger) group of fancy-sport high school kids who *don't* get into an Ivy with it. Lots of numbers in the article and here suggesting that the odds aren't very good even for a fairly successful high-schooler.
The amount of social and economic deadweight in this, expense that does *noone* any good, is mindblowing.
posted by clew at 6:48 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
The amount of social and economic deadweight in this, expense that does *noone* any good, is mindblowing.
posted by clew at 6:48 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
"Wanting the best for your child" is just socially acceptable greed and narcissism.
No one's allowed to admit freely that they want the best for themselves, that they want to hoard money or spend profligately. But if they channel it through their child, suddenly it's socially acceptable.
Fuck that. Whether it's passing down intergenerational wealth through direct inheritance, or doing so through spending a bunch of money so that your child can enjoy intergenerational social privileges (which translate to wealth later), it's bullshit.
We all want the best for our loved ones, but it's not a fits-all-sizes excuse.
posted by explosion at 6:51 PM on October 19, 2020 [14 favorites]
No one's allowed to admit freely that they want the best for themselves, that they want to hoard money or spend profligately. But if they channel it through their child, suddenly it's socially acceptable.
Fuck that. Whether it's passing down intergenerational wealth through direct inheritance, or doing so through spending a bunch of money so that your child can enjoy intergenerational social privileges (which translate to wealth later), it's bullshit.
We all want the best for our loved ones, but it's not a fits-all-sizes excuse.
posted by explosion at 6:51 PM on October 19, 2020 [14 favorites]
"What is these kids's mental health like?"
Often not great. Near hypercompetitive high schools, there will be psychiatrist who specialize in high-achieving adolescents who are depressed or even suicidal because of the pressure of the college admissions race.
"They have thoughts and dreams of their own, do the parents even care what the kids *actually* want? If one of these kids wants off the treadmill,"
A lot of them have almost no exposure to any other options. I mean, yes, theoretically they know other types of lives exist, but low-income schools often emphasize making college seem like a real choice for kids who have little exposure to it; these students at ultra-competitive high schools often have never seen an alternative and have only the haziest idea what it would be like.
I went to a very competitive (public, Midwestern) high school -- 99% of my graduating class went on to 4-year universities -- which I know is nothing like these East Coast private-school enclaves, buuuuuut I literally knew only one classmate who had a parent without a college degree. Almost everyone I knew had two parents with college degrees, and glancing at a demographic website says 40% of residents have an advanced degree, which seems about right. All the adults I knew were doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, bankers, executives at companies like Kraft, engineers, scientist-managers ... lots of people had bonus degrees they didn't use, like a master's degree in art they got in between college and law school, just for fun. I thought college was compulsory, like K-12 education, and that leaving school before earning a BA was "dropping out." I feel like I was in junior high before I realized it wasn't? But I remember the exact moment in my sophomore year of high school when I realized that that meant college wasn't compulsory for me and I could stop killing myself for good grades, and it was such a huge, powerful revelation that I almost couldn't breathe for a minute.
Of course I kept busting my ass for those grades because what else would I have done? And who would have been my friends? Literally everyone was working towards college admissions. I was what I wanted because even after I realized that I was allowed to want other things, I wasn't super-clear on what any of those things would be, or how I would go about them.
And my relationship with all of this is complicated because on the one hand I fucking love school and reading and learning new things and that probably WOULD have been what I wanted to do if I were dropped as a blank slate into high school with a totally free choice. But on the other hand, the competitiveness of the endeavor, and the absolutely unrelenting pace of it was absolutely awful for my mental health and I struggled a lot. In general during the school year I got up at 6 a.m. to make it to early bird jazz band by 6:30, was in school until 2:45, spent about 2 hours after school doing extracurriculars (sometimes right after, sometimes later in the evening), and did homework until 1 a.m. when I literally could not stay awake any longer. I never finished my homework, either; I was always frantically doing my foreign language work in the hallways between classes.
I did not participate in sports.
"I wonder if the US would even have marching bands anymore if it weren't for competition."
To be fair, marching band competitions are hella fun and nobody goes pro in marching band or gets a college scholarship for marching band. You miiiiiiiiiight get a preference or even a bit of money if you play an unusual instrument that's necessary to the symphony (oboe and bassoon are great; viola's also pretty good -- none of which march obvs) really well. And you can major in flute performance as a legitimate academic endeavor, which, not so much in squash. It's kind-of just an excuse to get a bunch of bands together and all enjoy each others' work; otherwise you've basically got parades, where you can't watch each other or do figures, or football games, which, that's just one marching band and only for 8 minutes and you have to watch a lot of terrible high school football on either side of it.
But it does kind-of highlight part of what I think is going on here, which is hijacking the idea of "serious fun." If you enjoy music, competitive marching band is "serious fun." It's FUN to work hard at something and get really good at it, especially when you get to do it with others and build that camaraderie. It's satisfying. It's fun (I'm told) to practice a sport until you get good at it, to master those skills and have teammates and shared experiences and competence. It was FUN to do AP history classes, to get to dig that deep into complex topics.
I think a lot of this high school hypercompetition and college admissions hijacks that drive to have "serious fun" that I think we all have -- the desire to master something, become competent at it, and enjoy doing it in a deep way because of that competency -- and a) perverts it into competition and b) insists EVERYTHING must be "serious fun" and done to that level, totally rejecting the fact that being a dilettante or a spectator is also fun, and it's not fun to have to be amazing at everything. Instead of becoming a high achiever at one or two things we really enjoy and do well, we're expected to becoming high achievers at all the things, or to give it up and find a new activity we do better.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:03 PM on October 19, 2020 [24 favorites]
Often not great. Near hypercompetitive high schools, there will be psychiatrist who specialize in high-achieving adolescents who are depressed or even suicidal because of the pressure of the college admissions race.
"They have thoughts and dreams of their own, do the parents even care what the kids *actually* want? If one of these kids wants off the treadmill,"
A lot of them have almost no exposure to any other options. I mean, yes, theoretically they know other types of lives exist, but low-income schools often emphasize making college seem like a real choice for kids who have little exposure to it; these students at ultra-competitive high schools often have never seen an alternative and have only the haziest idea what it would be like.
I went to a very competitive (public, Midwestern) high school -- 99% of my graduating class went on to 4-year universities -- which I know is nothing like these East Coast private-school enclaves, buuuuuut I literally knew only one classmate who had a parent without a college degree. Almost everyone I knew had two parents with college degrees, and glancing at a demographic website says 40% of residents have an advanced degree, which seems about right. All the adults I knew were doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, bankers, executives at companies like Kraft, engineers, scientist-managers ... lots of people had bonus degrees they didn't use, like a master's degree in art they got in between college and law school, just for fun. I thought college was compulsory, like K-12 education, and that leaving school before earning a BA was "dropping out." I feel like I was in junior high before I realized it wasn't? But I remember the exact moment in my sophomore year of high school when I realized that that meant college wasn't compulsory for me and I could stop killing myself for good grades, and it was such a huge, powerful revelation that I almost couldn't breathe for a minute.
Of course I kept busting my ass for those grades because what else would I have done? And who would have been my friends? Literally everyone was working towards college admissions. I was what I wanted because even after I realized that I was allowed to want other things, I wasn't super-clear on what any of those things would be, or how I would go about them.
And my relationship with all of this is complicated because on the one hand I fucking love school and reading and learning new things and that probably WOULD have been what I wanted to do if I were dropped as a blank slate into high school with a totally free choice. But on the other hand, the competitiveness of the endeavor, and the absolutely unrelenting pace of it was absolutely awful for my mental health and I struggled a lot. In general during the school year I got up at 6 a.m. to make it to early bird jazz band by 6:30, was in school until 2:45, spent about 2 hours after school doing extracurriculars (sometimes right after, sometimes later in the evening), and did homework until 1 a.m. when I literally could not stay awake any longer. I never finished my homework, either; I was always frantically doing my foreign language work in the hallways between classes.
I did not participate in sports.
"I wonder if the US would even have marching bands anymore if it weren't for competition."
To be fair, marching band competitions are hella fun and nobody goes pro in marching band or gets a college scholarship for marching band. You miiiiiiiiiight get a preference or even a bit of money if you play an unusual instrument that's necessary to the symphony (oboe and bassoon are great; viola's also pretty good -- none of which march obvs) really well. And you can major in flute performance as a legitimate academic endeavor, which, not so much in squash. It's kind-of just an excuse to get a bunch of bands together and all enjoy each others' work; otherwise you've basically got parades, where you can't watch each other or do figures, or football games, which, that's just one marching band and only for 8 minutes and you have to watch a lot of terrible high school football on either side of it.
But it does kind-of highlight part of what I think is going on here, which is hijacking the idea of "serious fun." If you enjoy music, competitive marching band is "serious fun." It's FUN to work hard at something and get really good at it, especially when you get to do it with others and build that camaraderie. It's satisfying. It's fun (I'm told) to practice a sport until you get good at it, to master those skills and have teammates and shared experiences and competence. It was FUN to do AP history classes, to get to dig that deep into complex topics.
I think a lot of this high school hypercompetition and college admissions hijacks that drive to have "serious fun" that I think we all have -- the desire to master something, become competent at it, and enjoy doing it in a deep way because of that competency -- and a) perverts it into competition and b) insists EVERYTHING must be "serious fun" and done to that level, totally rejecting the fact that being a dilettante or a spectator is also fun, and it's not fun to have to be amazing at everything. Instead of becoming a high achiever at one or two things we really enjoy and do well, we're expected to becoming high achievers at all the things, or to give it up and find a new activity we do better.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:03 PM on October 19, 2020 [24 favorites]
I'm not sure what the point of a cheerleading scholarship is since as far as I know cheerleading ends after college for most people?
The point of a cheerleading scholarship for the college is to attract the best cheerleaders, and pay them in free education. The point of cheerleading scholarships for students is to get a free education while doing an activity that they enjoy and are good at.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
The point of a cheerleading scholarship for the college is to attract the best cheerleaders, and pay them in free education. The point of cheerleading scholarships for students is to get a free education while doing an activity that they enjoy and are good at.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:05 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
(One day I'm going to get the balls to figure out how to punk these people into thinking competitive Jousting is a thing)
posted by geoff. at 7:08 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 7:08 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
I really things this competitive schooling sets up kids of a myriad of work abuses later on in life . Like high school to get into college was by far the hardest I worked, (to go to a state school!, which was totally fine for my life, I am a happy well rounded individual) Therwas school, we studied on breaks, the study groups, group projects, and then sports. About half way through I gave up the sport stuff, my asthma was just too much of a disability to stay in shape, I kept getting sick and losing a week of training here and there and couldn't keep up. So then I was suppose to work double hard academically, join academic clubs, write extra papers, try and get random awards, etc.
This was in Louisiana . Almost all of us led pretty boring average adult lives. But, it set me up for all these crazy expectations that work should be the exact same way, and that college should be just like that and I'm really glad I somehow got myself into a field in a job with some semblance of work life balance. That I don't have to put in 50 hour work weeks and then another 20 hours a week at home.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:08 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
This was in Louisiana . Almost all of us led pretty boring average adult lives. But, it set me up for all these crazy expectations that work should be the exact same way, and that college should be just like that and I'm really glad I somehow got myself into a field in a job with some semblance of work life balance. That I don't have to put in 50 hour work weeks and then another 20 hours a week at home.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:08 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
I'm not sure what the point of a cheerleading scholarship is since as far as I know cheerleading ends after college for most people?
After graduation you can coach cheerleading.
posted by Cris E at 7:10 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
After graduation you can coach cheerleading.
posted by Cris E at 7:10 PM on October 19, 2020 [4 favorites]
Who was it that pointed out that our elite is getting more and more of the pie by, unlike earlier elites, working harder and harder, and it isn't making them or the rest of us happy?
posted by clawsoon at 7:27 PM on October 19, 2020
posted by clawsoon at 7:27 PM on October 19, 2020
I did grade school in the 70s, raised by smart and hard-working people who (surprisingly) kind of let me choose my own path and more or less avoid a bunch of hard things. So while I had to try band, I was allowed, to the disappointment of my older self, to quit after a year and didn't ever master music in any way. They didn't force me to learn to skate in MN in grade school, which most kids do. I mostly read a lot, played baseball and got good grades in the classes I liked and a C in everything else. My life was like the complete opposite of how several of my kids were raised (he said, in a strikingly passive voice.)
They all play multiple instruments pretty well (because their mother does and it's what you do) and they were all pretty active in sports (because I still am and it's what you do until there's no more teams to play on at your skill level) and you get good grades (so you can choose which schools you want rather than settle for who will take you) and so on. It's been a mixed bag around our house, but I think mostly they think it was successful because they're ending up where they wanted to go (a good LAC, a trade school, one in high school and another in middle school.) I don't know, I'm not sure I'd be me if I'd worked as hard as they do.
Several voices above have said they'd never have gotten into their alma maters these days, but I would have simply because 35 years ago I drifted into a middling local school that fit me like a glove. I guess the world is on a pendulum, swinging from doing what my parents did to never doing what my grandparents did. This generation will eventually throw up their hands when they realize how rigged the game is and we'll end up re-living the 60s and 70s as rigor and measurement are tossed aside for experience and feeling and skipping the certifications and debt of college. It's going to be (another) wild backlash.
posted by Cris E at 7:27 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
They all play multiple instruments pretty well (because their mother does and it's what you do) and they were all pretty active in sports (because I still am and it's what you do until there's no more teams to play on at your skill level) and you get good grades (so you can choose which schools you want rather than settle for who will take you) and so on. It's been a mixed bag around our house, but I think mostly they think it was successful because they're ending up where they wanted to go (a good LAC, a trade school, one in high school and another in middle school.) I don't know, I'm not sure I'd be me if I'd worked as hard as they do.
Several voices above have said they'd never have gotten into their alma maters these days, but I would have simply because 35 years ago I drifted into a middling local school that fit me like a glove. I guess the world is on a pendulum, swinging from doing what my parents did to never doing what my grandparents did. This generation will eventually throw up their hands when they realize how rigged the game is and we'll end up re-living the 60s and 70s as rigor and measurement are tossed aside for experience and feeling and skipping the certifications and debt of college. It's going to be (another) wild backlash.
posted by Cris E at 7:27 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
the idea of a pressure-free grooming-free carefree childhood is an aspirational myth created within the last half century or soSo this (MiraK's comment) is an interesting question—there's a consensus in cultural history that the creation of 'teenager' as a category, as a person who doesn't share the working-parenting responsibilities of an adult, but has an educational path and can be marketed to with commodities, dates to the early 20thC, and really accelerated after the Second World War. Before that a young person of whatever class would simply have been expected to go to work, and/or marry, or pursue some vocation, but in any case start adulthood. Parents either prepared them for it or didn't, but it was in most places a lot simpler, if more brutal, from the child's point of view; elites just gave their children money or land, non-elites did their best in kind, and many societies (as they still do) looked at children as a converse investment, new earners (or potential marriage partners) to support their parents as soon as possible. Older kinds of unfairness, like inheritances falling to older sons and missing the younger ones, have disappeared. But pressure on teenagers themselves to educationally or athletically perform—that's new and specific to meritocracy, and recent. Part of what's going on here is elites realising, in shock, that it's no longer enough to be able to simply give your child a trust fund (and be contemptible idle rich), because elite values nowadays are expressed through specific kinds of extreme virtue-performances of work.
In Western countries the growth of mass education wasn't driven by universities themselves, far less by the parents of elite children, but by Governments, as part of the Cold War. There's a deep and bitter irony that this kind of collective effort (to get more scientists and better engineers than the Russians! To support a more literate middle class!) is now such an accelerating individualist rat-race of pointless task-scoring...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:37 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
It sounds like some of you might like and be in agreement with Richard V. Reeves's book Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What to do About it. It's been in my (immense) pile of books to read but I haven't yet read it so I can't personally comment on its accuracy or persuasiveness.
posted by ElKevbo at 7:47 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by ElKevbo at 7:47 PM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
In Western countries the growth of mass education wasn't driven by universities themselves, far less by the parents of elite children, but by Governments, as part of the Cold War.
In the U.S., that's a rather small part of the story as far as undergraduate enrollments as concerned. The first boom in enrollment in the U.S. came after World War II as "send them to college or job training" was the best answer we had to the "what are we going to do with all of these soldiers when they come back home, especially with so many women now in the workforce?" The Cold War - Sputnik, in particular - drove funding in the sciences but the next big enrollment boom came from opening up opportunities for populations who previously had not been welcomed into college e.g., women, non-Whites, middle class.
But don't worry! We're now entering into the backside of the latest echo from the baby boom so the number of high school graduates is beginning to decrease in much of the country so traditional-age undergraduate enrollment is naturally lowering. (Which in turn is causing many institutions, especially those already struggling to pay their bills or desperately dependent on tuition, to panic and face the possibility of closure as competition is becoming more fierce and they're simply being outcompeted by institutions who can provide more financial aid. COVID-19 is greatly accelerating and complicating this but it was inevitable and beginning to happen before COVID-19 infected anyone.)
posted by ElKevbo at 7:56 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
In the U.S., that's a rather small part of the story as far as undergraduate enrollments as concerned. The first boom in enrollment in the U.S. came after World War II as "send them to college or job training" was the best answer we had to the "what are we going to do with all of these soldiers when they come back home, especially with so many women now in the workforce?" The Cold War - Sputnik, in particular - drove funding in the sciences but the next big enrollment boom came from opening up opportunities for populations who previously had not been welcomed into college e.g., women, non-Whites, middle class.
But don't worry! We're now entering into the backside of the latest echo from the baby boom so the number of high school graduates is beginning to decrease in much of the country so traditional-age undergraduate enrollment is naturally lowering. (Which in turn is causing many institutions, especially those already struggling to pay their bills or desperately dependent on tuition, to panic and face the possibility of closure as competition is becoming more fierce and they're simply being outcompeted by institutions who can provide more financial aid. COVID-19 is greatly accelerating and complicating this but it was inevitable and beginning to happen before COVID-19 infected anyone.)
posted by ElKevbo at 7:56 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
nothing more natural in the world than people wanting to do as much as they can for their children
Parenting, like all other human endeavors, is not simply a "natural" process, nor can it be reduced to universal biological imperative. The expected duties of parents varies in every society in every history, as is what is considered "natural" for parents to do. In many cultures the definition of "their children" extended/extends beyond immediate biological relationships. So yes, the Disney model of childhood is a recent innovation, yes, but so is the insular nuclear family in which it's Your Precious Offspring vs. Everyone Else in a society-wide game of Survivor, complete with alliances and betrayals and getting voted off the island.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:15 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
Parenting, like all other human endeavors, is not simply a "natural" process, nor can it be reduced to universal biological imperative. The expected duties of parents varies in every society in every history, as is what is considered "natural" for parents to do. In many cultures the definition of "their children" extended/extends beyond immediate biological relationships. So yes, the Disney model of childhood is a recent innovation, yes, but so is the insular nuclear family in which it's Your Precious Offspring vs. Everyone Else in a society-wide game of Survivor, complete with alliances and betrayals and getting voted off the island.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:15 PM on October 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
Who are all these squash players?
They're at one of these schools (33 varsity teams and 35 club teams).
Back in the day, I had a classmate who came to school having never played, worked his ass off, and made varsity by senior year. Guessing that wouldn't be possible today.
Speaking as someone who played just a bit recreationally, it's also just a damn fun game; easy to learn, impossible to master.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:47 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
They're at one of these schools (33 varsity teams and 35 club teams).
Back in the day, I had a classmate who came to school having never played, worked his ass off, and made varsity by senior year. Guessing that wouldn't be possible today.
Speaking as someone who played just a bit recreationally, it's also just a damn fun game; easy to learn, impossible to master.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:47 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
The Kids in the Hall examined the case of someone who took his squash a little too seriously.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:56 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:56 PM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
School sports in the US are strictly competitive. It's not supposed to be either fun or education as far as I can tell.
Only sports being played right now (that I can see) are sandlot sports. A whole cohort of kids are giving us the opportunity to burn this motherfucker to the ground.
posted by ocschwar at 9:29 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Only sports being played right now (that I can see) are sandlot sports. A whole cohort of kids are giving us the opportunity to burn this motherfucker to the ground.
posted by ocschwar at 9:29 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
I was an athlete at a D1 school, back a while ago now. The article notes that many of these athletes are foreign. That was me. There was as many kids from my tiny tiny region of Canada on this team as there was kids from the whole state the school was in. So, all this work these folks are pushing their kids through to ultimately complete against the best* the rest of the planet is capable of. Even at the modest program I was in there was a steady pipeline of kids coming out of Canada to compete.
I ended up injured, and I feel like I could fill a book about that - I ended up doing rehab with a group of football players.
*on a good day I was up in the 80% range, so I ain't putting myself up there
posted by zenon at 11:01 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
I ended up injured, and I feel like I could fill a book about that - I ended up doing rehab with a group of football players.
*on a good day I was up in the 80% range, so I ain't putting myself up there
posted by zenon at 11:01 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
There is absolutely nothing more natural in the world than people wanting to do as much as they can for their children.
Victims of hothousing might disagree.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:11 AM on October 20, 2020
Victims of hothousing might disagree.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:11 AM on October 20, 2020
So yes, the Disney model of childhood is a recent innovation, yes, but so is the insular nuclear family in which it's Your Precious Offspring vs. Everyone Else in a society-wide game of Survivor, complete with alliances and betrayals and getting voted off the island.
The nuclear family has been the core unit of society in NW Europe for since the middle ages, so if that's where your ancestors come from then no, the nuclear family is not new. Read any history of that period and watch people obsessively scheme and fight to secure land and position for their children.
What is different is the proliferation of extremely highly paid jobs with high bars for entry. For much of human history, if you wanted your children to do well you literally gave them wealth in the form of land. There was not a vast system of credential gated jobs where (if you got in) you had the opportunity to work incredibly hard and reproduce your class privilege.
This has also led to the crazy arms race characteristics it has now. In the past, anyone who had the money to build their own squash court would be passing on their class position directly by inheritance since there were no jobs that paid that well. That kind of wealth came from inheritance or exceptionally from starting your own business and being very successful. So this kind of status competition to the extent it existed was constrained by the fact that the richest people engaging in it were only employees.
posted by atrazine at 1:46 AM on October 20, 2020
The nuclear family has been the core unit of society in NW Europe for since the middle ages, so if that's where your ancestors come from then no, the nuclear family is not new. Read any history of that period and watch people obsessively scheme and fight to secure land and position for their children.
What is different is the proliferation of extremely highly paid jobs with high bars for entry. For much of human history, if you wanted your children to do well you literally gave them wealth in the form of land. There was not a vast system of credential gated jobs where (if you got in) you had the opportunity to work incredibly hard and reproduce your class privilege.
This has also led to the crazy arms race characteristics it has now. In the past, anyone who had the money to build their own squash court would be passing on their class position directly by inheritance since there were no jobs that paid that well. That kind of wealth came from inheritance or exceptionally from starting your own business and being very successful. So this kind of status competition to the extent it existed was constrained by the fact that the richest people engaging in it were only employees.
posted by atrazine at 1:46 AM on October 20, 2020
Out of curiosity, what do these athletes do if they don't get into the college they want? Or what do they do after college is over?
They make entry into the best non-Ivy colleges more competitive by going there instead. So this stuff starts at the top but it also displaces normal competitive students "down" and therefore has an indirect pressure effect on admissions into other competitively admitting colleges. I mean, one of the parents in the article mentioned Georgetown. That was not a thing 30 years ago, for sure!
posted by atrazine at 1:51 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
They make entry into the best non-Ivy colleges more competitive by going there instead. So this stuff starts at the top but it also displaces normal competitive students "down" and therefore has an indirect pressure effect on admissions into other competitively admitting colleges. I mean, one of the parents in the article mentioned Georgetown. That was not a thing 30 years ago, for sure!
posted by atrazine at 1:51 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
My ten year old fences, very recreationally. I'd been harboring a faint idea in the back of my head that maybe if he got good at it it would be a nice-to-have point of interest for college someday, but whew, this article disabused me of that notion. His current fencing school seems to be going bust from Covid and we're switching him to a new one next month, I'm a little apprehensive about what we're getting into. This does explain why it was really difficult to find a place for kids to fence for fun and not intensely train to become junior olympians! He also just started archery because we are nerds and team sports have not been much fun for him.
I will say that so far my experience with fencing on the parent side has been very pleasant and low-key, and it's been conversations with other local parents about soccer that have been weird and stressful. The youth soccer schedule seems punishing to me- one or two practices a week on weeknights and travel games every weekends. It doesn't fit our life at all. But I've been told that if he isn't playing on a team now as a ten year old, he can forget about playing in middle school or high school. It's soccer! He tried flag football for a few seasons, but because he had never learned how to play, and he started a few years later than other kids, he never got any time on the field, thus never learning to play.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 4:30 AM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
I will say that so far my experience with fencing on the parent side has been very pleasant and low-key, and it's been conversations with other local parents about soccer that have been weird and stressful. The youth soccer schedule seems punishing to me- one or two practices a week on weeknights and travel games every weekends. It doesn't fit our life at all. But I've been told that if he isn't playing on a team now as a ten year old, he can forget about playing in middle school or high school. It's soccer! He tried flag football for a few seasons, but because he had never learned how to play, and he started a few years later than other kids, he never got any time on the field, thus never learning to play.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 4:30 AM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
Chess's cheating crisis: 'paranoia has become the culture'
posted by clawsoon at 5:54 AM on October 20, 2020 [9 favorites]
“It’s the children from the private schools, sadly,” she said. “When I ring their parents they just get angry with me. They’re under such pressure to succeed.”If your child has to win, but doesn't have the talent, the next step is obvious. What impact does that have on the kids when they grow up and enter the leadership roles they've been groomed for?
posted by clawsoon at 5:54 AM on October 20, 2020 [9 favorites]
I'm a former prep schooler and Ivy League squash player, although a walk-on, and I'm happy to answer any questions. I would add two things to the conversation above:
1) This problem has indeed gotten a lot worse in the past 15 years. When I was fresh-faced in the squash world, people would make fun of the few families whose kids only played squash and who hired full-time coaches. Most of us played three sports in high school along with other activities. Being well-rounded was viewed as a must for college, excelling at one activity helpful.
2) I'm sad to see the views against college athletics here. Clearly the US puts too much weight on sports, but in their best form they are great teachers of teamwork, leadership, discipline, health, competition, resilience, friendship, strategy, and the list goes on. If studying were nearly all that mattered in undergrad, we could save a lot of money by locking people in a library for four years.
posted by ecreeves at 7:23 AM on October 20, 2020 [4 favorites]
1) This problem has indeed gotten a lot worse in the past 15 years. When I was fresh-faced in the squash world, people would make fun of the few families whose kids only played squash and who hired full-time coaches. Most of us played three sports in high school along with other activities. Being well-rounded was viewed as a must for college, excelling at one activity helpful.
2) I'm sad to see the views against college athletics here. Clearly the US puts too much weight on sports, but in their best form they are great teachers of teamwork, leadership, discipline, health, competition, resilience, friendship, strategy, and the list goes on. If studying were nearly all that mattered in undergrad, we could save a lot of money by locking people in a library for four years.
posted by ecreeves at 7:23 AM on October 20, 2020 [4 favorites]
ecreeves, did you have opportunities to continue playing after college? If so, did you enjoy it still (or more) when it was outside that environment?
posted by EllaEm at 7:33 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by EllaEm at 7:33 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'm from India, where the type of pressure and competition described in this article was everyday reality for everyone except (financial) elites. It was only the rich folks' kids who had the ability to goof off at school while still being assured of a viable future via the family business. The rest of us got whipped (literally and figuratively) if we scored 95% on a math test in 5th grade. We knew we were competing for a place in the far-too-few functional "real" high schools with actual academic standards and rigorous curricula, a high school whose diploma would be recognized by one of the far-too-few functional "real" colleges. If we didn't get that 100% on our math tests, we risked falling out of any possible path to a good college by being relegated to a high school where the teachers barely showed up to class and state board exams were administered by someone who had been paid to write out all the correct answers on the blackboard for the students to copy out, so that the school still posted decent enough grades to qualify for state funding.
The pressure on us as students was beyond imagining, easily rivaling the pressure on these teenagers in this article. India has the world's highest incidence of suicide among young people -- mostly kids who have failed to perform well enough in their major exams to get into the proper university or the desirable fields of study therein (computer science or medicine, most frequently). To call the competition for placement in these programs cut-throat is barely an exaggeration: if there was a way to ensure a desirable placement for yourself by eliminating your competition, students would do it. As it is, the elite Indian Institutes of Technology get something like 400,000 applicants every year for an available 3500 seats, so taking out hits on your classmates becomes ... unfeasible.
All of this is background to say, this is something a lot of Indians have given A LOT of thought to. I grew up surrounded by adults who were fully aware of what us kids were going through, adults who frequently confessed helplessness about this state of affairs because they did not know a way out of the rat race. Scarcity of resources, lack of functioning institutional structures, a poisonous culture that demanded educational success in your child as the price of social belonging, and hell, the truly real threat of your child falling off THE ONLY available ladder out of poverty... our parents really were powerless to fight all of this. Individuals can do little when so many societal forces are arrayed against us.
And the weird thing about the case of India is that this wasn't/isn't even the fault of capitalism. The India I grew up in (during the 80s and early 90s) was still a socialist country. Even after 1991, when India shed socialism, colleges and universities are quite unlike the ones in USA, in that there are no multi-million dollar rock climing walls or atheletic facilities, there are no overpaid administrators, education is not even a for-profit enterprise for most part. AND YET this pressure and cut-throat competition and relentless rat race persists. Why? Because this rat race is usually the only way for families to get out of poverty.
Once families in India make it into the upper middle classes or upper classes by way of the parents having succeeded at the rat race, the pressure on their kids lessens dramatically. My well-to-do aunts and uncles didn't beat their children for getting low math scores! My parents did, because my parents hadn't (yet) "made it". My well-to-do aunts and uncles raised children who became star athletes, musicians, entrepreneurs... but my parents, who were less confident in their ability to support me in adulthood if my writing career never took off, forced me to study computer engineering in college. My parents put immense pressure on me and forbid me from self-actualizing... only because they were trying to protect me from a hard-scrabble life with more basic needs going unmet.
I think the parents in this article have less of an excuse than parents in India do (or did) for driving their children so hard, because they don't have to worry about survival the way our parents had to. But that's IMO compensated for by the capitalist forces acting on them (which my parents in India didn't have to deal with in quite the same way): all the mercenary colleges and media companies who want to make money off of student athletes; ridiculous tuition rates which doom students to 30+ years of debt if they don't have a scholarship; the lack of (or lack of awareness about) well-paid and socially respectable trades and union jobs which do not require college degrees.
So we're back in the same spot: what is a parent to do? In the very practical and realistic here and now, a parent who wants their child to go to college without debt MUST groom that child in these ways that are pressuring and rat-racey. The only parents who opt out are parents who don't care about their child, or parents who have (or know of) other options and paths for their child. Which is to say, opting out is not the result of being a better parent or having superior morals. It's the result of worse parenting, or of parental privilege.
I don't know the solution to the rat race. None of us get to opt out of capitalism any more than these parents can. In India, maybe, I can see a way out: the specific cultures and communities I was lucky enough to be born into have a strong tradition of anti-materialism, of saying "enough" when one has enough for one's own needs, of valuing spirituality more than comfort, of eschewing consumerism as evil. This type of cultural background can be a strong moderating force counteracting the pressures of the rat race. I believe this is what allowed my well-to-do aunts and uncles to be cool about their kids becoming failed musicians. Americans are not so lucky as to be raised in such cultures, usually, so ... yeah, I don't even know. Perhaps we in America are better suited to focus on political efforts to protect children's rights not to be exploited for college/media companies' profit, eliminate college debt, and recreate strong unions to counter the capitalist forces at work.
Part of what's going on here is elites realising, in shock, that it's no longer enough to be able to simply give your child a trust fund (and be contemptible idle rich), because elite values nowadays are expressed through specific kinds of extreme virtue-performances of work.
I can't help but think that's ... progress?
posted by MiraK at 7:36 AM on October 20, 2020 [25 favorites]
The pressure on us as students was beyond imagining, easily rivaling the pressure on these teenagers in this article. India has the world's highest incidence of suicide among young people -- mostly kids who have failed to perform well enough in their major exams to get into the proper university or the desirable fields of study therein (computer science or medicine, most frequently). To call the competition for placement in these programs cut-throat is barely an exaggeration: if there was a way to ensure a desirable placement for yourself by eliminating your competition, students would do it. As it is, the elite Indian Institutes of Technology get something like 400,000 applicants every year for an available 3500 seats, so taking out hits on your classmates becomes ... unfeasible.
All of this is background to say, this is something a lot of Indians have given A LOT of thought to. I grew up surrounded by adults who were fully aware of what us kids were going through, adults who frequently confessed helplessness about this state of affairs because they did not know a way out of the rat race. Scarcity of resources, lack of functioning institutional structures, a poisonous culture that demanded educational success in your child as the price of social belonging, and hell, the truly real threat of your child falling off THE ONLY available ladder out of poverty... our parents really were powerless to fight all of this. Individuals can do little when so many societal forces are arrayed against us.
And the weird thing about the case of India is that this wasn't/isn't even the fault of capitalism. The India I grew up in (during the 80s and early 90s) was still a socialist country. Even after 1991, when India shed socialism, colleges and universities are quite unlike the ones in USA, in that there are no multi-million dollar rock climing walls or atheletic facilities, there are no overpaid administrators, education is not even a for-profit enterprise for most part. AND YET this pressure and cut-throat competition and relentless rat race persists. Why? Because this rat race is usually the only way for families to get out of poverty.
Once families in India make it into the upper middle classes or upper classes by way of the parents having succeeded at the rat race, the pressure on their kids lessens dramatically. My well-to-do aunts and uncles didn't beat their children for getting low math scores! My parents did, because my parents hadn't (yet) "made it". My well-to-do aunts and uncles raised children who became star athletes, musicians, entrepreneurs... but my parents, who were less confident in their ability to support me in adulthood if my writing career never took off, forced me to study computer engineering in college. My parents put immense pressure on me and forbid me from self-actualizing... only because they were trying to protect me from a hard-scrabble life with more basic needs going unmet.
I think the parents in this article have less of an excuse than parents in India do (or did) for driving their children so hard, because they don't have to worry about survival the way our parents had to. But that's IMO compensated for by the capitalist forces acting on them (which my parents in India didn't have to deal with in quite the same way): all the mercenary colleges and media companies who want to make money off of student athletes; ridiculous tuition rates which doom students to 30+ years of debt if they don't have a scholarship; the lack of (or lack of awareness about) well-paid and socially respectable trades and union jobs which do not require college degrees.
So we're back in the same spot: what is a parent to do? In the very practical and realistic here and now, a parent who wants their child to go to college without debt MUST groom that child in these ways that are pressuring and rat-racey. The only parents who opt out are parents who don't care about their child, or parents who have (or know of) other options and paths for their child. Which is to say, opting out is not the result of being a better parent or having superior morals. It's the result of worse parenting, or of parental privilege.
I don't know the solution to the rat race. None of us get to opt out of capitalism any more than these parents can. In India, maybe, I can see a way out: the specific cultures and communities I was lucky enough to be born into have a strong tradition of anti-materialism, of saying "enough" when one has enough for one's own needs, of valuing spirituality more than comfort, of eschewing consumerism as evil. This type of cultural background can be a strong moderating force counteracting the pressures of the rat race. I believe this is what allowed my well-to-do aunts and uncles to be cool about their kids becoming failed musicians. Americans are not so lucky as to be raised in such cultures, usually, so ... yeah, I don't even know. Perhaps we in America are better suited to focus on political efforts to protect children's rights not to be exploited for college/media companies' profit, eliminate college debt, and recreate strong unions to counter the capitalist forces at work.
Part of what's going on here is elites realising, in shock, that it's no longer enough to be able to simply give your child a trust fund (and be contemptible idle rich), because elite values nowadays are expressed through specific kinds of extreme virtue-performances of work.
I can't help but think that's ... progress?
posted by MiraK at 7:36 AM on October 20, 2020 [25 favorites]
> After graduation you can coach cheerleading.
To be fair, how many of us are using our undergraduate studies any better? I'm certainly not discussing the Sandinistas in my day-to-day life.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:53 AM on October 20, 2020 [8 favorites]
To be fair, how many of us are using our undergraduate studies any better? I'm certainly not discussing the Sandinistas in my day-to-day life.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:53 AM on October 20, 2020 [8 favorites]
EllaEm, yes, I played most days for the 11 years since I graduated, before COVID. Squash is fortunately more of lifelong sport than many, and you only need to find one other person to have a match. I play socially with a variety of friends, including other former college players. I also play competitively in a team league.
I enjoy it now more than ever. I still enjoy competing, trying new things, working hard, win or lose. I've made a lot of progress on my temper in the past decade. And there's a ready-made group of friends brought together by something completely outside the rest of their lives.
The biggest issue playing squash in the US after college is how niche it is. It was brought to the US by WASPs in the late 19th century and despite a lot of efforts the only places courts have reliably survived over the years are WASPy schools and private clubs. This is a bummer because there are a ton players in the US born in India, Pakistan or elsewhere who can't find courts.
posted by ecreeves at 8:58 AM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
I enjoy it now more than ever. I still enjoy competing, trying new things, working hard, win or lose. I've made a lot of progress on my temper in the past decade. And there's a ready-made group of friends brought together by something completely outside the rest of their lives.
The biggest issue playing squash in the US after college is how niche it is. It was brought to the US by WASPs in the late 19th century and despite a lot of efforts the only places courts have reliably survived over the years are WASPy schools and private clubs. This is a bummer because there are a ton players in the US born in India, Pakistan or elsewhere who can't find courts.
posted by ecreeves at 8:58 AM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
EllaEm: Squash is a lifelong sport in my ex's family. His uncle in fact was/is one of the top ranked senior players in the country in his 70s. They all live in PA (the Mainline) and every country club thereabouts has loads of squash courts. So, it's definitely an upper-crust sort of game, since the only way you're going to have access to courts is if you belong to a pricey club.* (As far as I know, anyway; I don't think there are very many public squash courts the way there are public tennis courts and swimming pools.)
* Although, oddly enough, the hospital my ex worked at had a couple of courts for the doctors in the basement.
I never heard of squash until I married into a squash-playing family. But I must say, it's a great sport.
posted by Transl3y at 10:14 AM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
* Although, oddly enough, the hospital my ex worked at had a couple of courts for the doctors in the basement.
I never heard of squash until I married into a squash-playing family. But I must say, it's a great sport.
posted by Transl3y at 10:14 AM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
If your child has to win, but doesn't have the talent, the next step is obvious. What impact does that have on the kids when they grow up and enter the leadership roles they've been groomed for?
posted by clawsoon
Ask Trump after the current campaign is over.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:39 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon
Ask Trump after the current campaign is over.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:39 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Transl3y, yes, public courts are few and far between. Equinox was buying all the ones in NYC and shutting them down, but that trend has been reversing recently.
US Squash is building an 18-court center at Drexel in Philly, which will probably be the biggest public facility in the country. I worry when the influx of money into the sport for college recruiting dries up it will be very tough for the urban after school programs and public facilities that have benefited from it.
posted by ecreeves at 11:06 AM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
US Squash is building an 18-court center at Drexel in Philly, which will probably be the biggest public facility in the country. I worry when the influx of money into the sport for college recruiting dries up it will be very tough for the urban after school programs and public facilities that have benefited from it.
posted by ecreeves at 11:06 AM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
Part of what's going on here is elites realising, in shock, that it's no longer enough to be able to simply give your child a trust fund (and be contemptible idle rich), because elite values nowadays are expressed through specific kinds of extreme virtue-performances of work.
I can't help but think that's ... progress?
Maybe. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to convince yourself that you earned your position running the world if your parents hothoused you this way than it is if you basically inherited your uncle's senate seat.
posted by atrazine at 11:23 AM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
I can't help but think that's ... progress?
Maybe. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to convince yourself that you earned your position running the world if your parents hothoused you this way than it is if you basically inherited your uncle's senate seat.
posted by atrazine at 11:23 AM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
The perspective from India is an interesting one. As I understand it, in India there is a huge drop in the actual quality of education -- and an even larger drop in prestige -- from the elite schools to lower-level schools.
Whereas with these parents, in many cases 1) they can afford to pay for college out of pocket, debt is not a problem, and 2) their kids could just put in a normal amount of effort and have a very easy time getting accepted to a perfectly good public university, where your life prospects will be totally okay if you get good grades and graduate (which these kids are equipped to do easily).
For many of them, there are no material pressures -- just a deranged social environment. Some of the reason for that is external forces but not all of it. There is not actually any scarcity of opportunity except in their minds.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:46 AM on October 20, 2020
Whereas with these parents, in many cases 1) they can afford to pay for college out of pocket, debt is not a problem, and 2) their kids could just put in a normal amount of effort and have a very easy time getting accepted to a perfectly good public university, where your life prospects will be totally okay if you get good grades and graduate (which these kids are equipped to do easily).
For many of them, there are no material pressures -- just a deranged social environment. Some of the reason for that is external forces but not all of it. There is not actually any scarcity of opportunity except in their minds.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:46 AM on October 20, 2020
“As long as you’re keeping score, you’re going to have cheating”.
— Jack LaLanne
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 12:03 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
— Jack LaLanne
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 12:03 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
...it's a lot easier to convince yourself that you earned your position running the world if your parents hothoused you this way ...
"Senator, I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school. Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School. Worked my tail off."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:58 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
"Senator, I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school. Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School. Worked my tail off."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:58 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
This On the Media podcast segment is also enlightening and echoes many of the sentiments here.
posted by fook at 2:35 PM on October 20, 2020
posted by fook at 2:35 PM on October 20, 2020
atrazine I mean, one of the parents in the article mentioned Georgetown. That was not a thing 30 years ago, for sure!
Can you explain what this means?
posted by chaz at 3:06 PM on October 20, 2020
Can you explain what this means?
posted by chaz at 3:06 PM on October 20, 2020
chaz, I think atrazine means that no one was getting recruited to Georgetown for squash 30 years ago, which is very true. No one was getting recruited to Georgetown for squash 15 years ago. And then those squash players make getting into Georgetown more competitive in general. My memory is Georgetown used to have a loosely organized club team made up of regular Georgetown students who happened to play squash.
posted by ecreeves at 4:28 PM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by ecreeves at 4:28 PM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
These parents are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the coaching and the support staff and the construction &c. If they have multiple kids it's probably into 7 figures. They would probably get a better return by just donating all that money to a university and then chatting with the fundraising office when their kids apply.
posted by medusa at 6:56 PM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by medusa at 6:56 PM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
Enough Mefites agree that huge swaths of the US economy are falling into the precariate that I can see an argument that getting a kid into an Ivy would significantly increase the chance of having non-precarious grandchildren. It has been true that graduating from a respectable state university made it possible to have a pleasant US material existence. I assume parents of teens now have read enough articles by underemployed multi-degreed Millennials to fear otherwise.
posted by clew at 10:04 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 10:04 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
chaz, I think atrazine means that no one was getting recruited to Georgetown for squash 30 years ago, which is very true.
My guess is that 30 years ago, more so-so white upper class athletes were getting recruited for the traditional sports, ie football, basketball, baseball, and maybe track. Recruiting for those sports has gotten much more widespread and talent-focused, so niche sports have flourished with less competition from the best athletes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:09 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
My guess is that 30 years ago, more so-so white upper class athletes were getting recruited for the traditional sports, ie football, basketball, baseball, and maybe track. Recruiting for those sports has gotten much more widespread and talent-focused, so niche sports have flourished with less competition from the best athletes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:09 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]
Part of what's going on here is elites realising, in shock, that it's no longer enough to be able to simply give your child a trust fund (and be contemptible idle rich), because elite values nowadays are expressed through specific kinds of extreme virtue-performances of work.
I think what is actually happening is that the effective 'elite' has got a lot smaller. The former is even more true than before, the children richer, idler, more contemptible, and getting away with it more than ever. The latter isn't true; those are not 'elite' values, but the values of people who think they are 'elite' but actually aren't.
(They'd understand better if they discussed Marx in their everyday life.)
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:16 AM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think what is actually happening is that the effective 'elite' has got a lot smaller. The former is even more true than before, the children richer, idler, more contemptible, and getting away with it more than ever. The latter isn't true; those are not 'elite' values, but the values of people who think they are 'elite' but actually aren't.
(They'd understand better if they discussed Marx in their everyday life.)
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:16 AM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
Can you explain what this means?
It's not in the Ivy League and was not a place that highly status conscious parents would aspire to send their children. It would at best have been a safety pick.
Part of the change is a deliberate and very effective campaign by their leadership over the last few decades but another part of it is that the relentless competition for Ivy places has created a market for highly competitive but not quite Ivy/MIT/Stanford universities.
The same thing has happened in the UK with the rise in the perceived position of Durham and St Andrews, they've always been good, academically selective, and respected but the status race to get into Oxford and Cambridge has created a market for somewhere "elite" to go if you can't quite get in. As a result, Brideshead type scenes, which are now almost completely unheard of at Oxford have become part of the fabric of the social experience at Durham.
UK universities don't recruit undergraduates on athletic basis (at least not now) although some Oxford and Cambridge colleges do seem to have a suspiciously high number of Olympic calibre rowers as postgrads studying "muscles and how to get them real big" or whatever.
posted by atrazine at 1:40 AM on October 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
It's not in the Ivy League and was not a place that highly status conscious parents would aspire to send their children. It would at best have been a safety pick.
Part of the change is a deliberate and very effective campaign by their leadership over the last few decades but another part of it is that the relentless competition for Ivy places has created a market for highly competitive but not quite Ivy/MIT/Stanford universities.
The same thing has happened in the UK with the rise in the perceived position of Durham and St Andrews, they've always been good, academically selective, and respected but the status race to get into Oxford and Cambridge has created a market for somewhere "elite" to go if you can't quite get in. As a result, Brideshead type scenes, which are now almost completely unheard of at Oxford have become part of the fabric of the social experience at Durham.
UK universities don't recruit undergraduates on athletic basis (at least not now) although some Oxford and Cambridge colleges do seem to have a suspiciously high number of Olympic calibre rowers as postgrads studying "muscles and how to get them real big" or whatever.
posted by atrazine at 1:40 AM on October 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
atrazine: As a result, Brideshead type scenes, which are now almost completely unheard of at Oxford have become part of the fabric of the social experience at Durham.
Students from northern England facing 'toxic attitude' at Durham University
posted by clawsoon at 6:48 AM on October 21, 2020 [6 favorites]
Students from northern England facing 'toxic attitude' at Durham University
Students from northern England are being ridiculed over their accents and backgrounds at one of the country’s leading universities, and even forced out, according to a report compiled by a Durham student. ...Private education’s role in Durham University disgrace
The student had attended a summer school run by the Sutton Trust, which encourages people from lower socio-economic backgrounds to go into higher education.
She said: “Straight away this became a running joke of the class, that I was a token there. I was told repeatedly that the only reason I was at Durham was because my family were on benefits (my family have worked all their lives). I was accused of stealing, I was told I would never get a job because of the way I speak, I was told that I was a waste of a worthy student’s place. I received this from students and staff alike.”
She said the bullying also went on beyond the lecture theatre. “Another thing I remember is ‘rolling in the muck’. It was a thing a lot of students would say referring to them sleeping with a northern working-class person. I remember there being nights dedicated to [this] where sports teams or societies would go out to try and get with northern working-class people.”
University student ambassador Jack Lines also reported being belittled. “On a night out, I was approached by a female student who said that she would sleep with me as she had a ‘poverty fetish’, and asked me to start a fight to impress her as ‘that’s what you people do, you fight whenever you get drunk,’” he said.
The student, who has been refused entry to college bars by staff who didn’t believe he studied at the university, added: “In the college dining hall I have been called a ‘dirty northerner’, and a ‘chav’... A fellow student asked me: ‘Are you going to take the spare food home to feed your family?’
As one of those concerned about the social and psychological damage caused by class privilege in British society, I am grateful to the Durham University student Lauren White for exposing the abuse she and others have received from some of their fellow students (Students from northern England facing ‘toxic attitude’ at Durham University, 19 October). However, your report does not identify the factor that most, if not all, the abusers will have had in common: their private education.Amazing that the private education kids think that they're the worthy students who got there on their own merits.
For those with experience of universities with similar social compositions to Durham, these students’ experiences will be all too familiar. With the products of private schools constituting well in excess of 30% of students at universities such as Oxford, Bristol, Exeter, St Andrews, Edinburgh and Cambridge, as well as Durham – even though they represent only 7% of the relevant age cohort – the arrogant “culture of condescension” that is a by-product of the private schools’ informal role in the reproduction of class privilege, will be daily in evidence.
Social science research has shown that there are strong linkages between private education and the reproduction of class inequality. If Boris Johnson and his ministerial friends were serious about improving the lives of those in northern England who voted for them in 2019, then dealing with private education – and thus its labour market and cultural consequences – would be on their agenda. But with the privately educated chumocracy in control, there’s no chance of that.
posted by clawsoon at 6:48 AM on October 21, 2020 [6 favorites]
> It might be odd to mention (but I scanned the comments and it doesn't appear that anyone has) that the author of this article (Ruth S. Barrett) is the former Ruth Shalit, who had some issues that she was fired from the New Republic for. So, there's that.
ding ding ding!
posted by tonycpsu at 5:07 PM on October 30, 2020 [6 favorites]
ding ding ding!
The Erik Wemple Blog wrote last week that these counted as freakish events in one of the world’s safest sports. The Atlantic has already issued one correction on the story — a claim about Olympic-size backyard hockey rinks — prompted by this blog’s questions. Now there appear to be yet more problems.Like, a lot of problems.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:07 PM on October 30, 2020 [6 favorites]
For anyone still following this thread, the story has been updated with a long statement from the Atlantic on fabrications by the author, so take the whole thing with a giant grain of salt at this point.
posted by Candleman at 7:16 AM on October 31, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by Candleman at 7:16 AM on October 31, 2020 [6 favorites]
The correction is behind a paywall, which seems sketchy as hell, so to save you the trouble of working around that:
Editor’s Note: After The Atlantic published this article, new information emerged that has raised serious concerns about its accuracy, and about the credibility of the author, Ruth Shalit Barrett.
We have established that Barrett deceived The Atlantic and its readers about a section of the story that concerns a person referred to as “Sloane.” We are sharing with our readers what we have learned so far.
The original version of this article stated that Sloane has a son. Before publication, Sloane confirmed this detail to be true to The Atlantic’s fact-checking department. After publication, when a Washington Post media critic asked us about the accuracy of portions of the article, our fact-checking department reached out to Sloane to recheck certain details. Through her attorney, Sloane informed us that she does not, in fact, have a son. We have independently corroborated that Sloane does not have a son, and we have corrected the story to remove the reference to her having a son.
In explaining Sloane’s reasoning for telling our fact-checker she had a son, Sloane’s attorney told The Atlantic that she wanted to make herself less readily identifiable. Her attorney also said that according to Sloane, Barrett had first proposed the invention of a son, and encouraged Sloane to deceive The Atlantic as a way to protect her anonymity.
When we asked Barrett about these allegations, she initially denied them, saying that Sloane had told her she had a son, and that she had believed Sloane. The next day, when we questioned her again, she admitted that she was “complicit” in “compounding the deception” and that “it would not be fair to Sloane” to blame her alone for deceiving The Atlantic. Barrett denies that the invention of a son was her idea, and denies advising Sloane to mislead The Atlantic’s fact-checkers, but told us that “on some level I did know that it was BS” and “I do take responsibility.”
Sloane’s attorney claimed that there are several other errors about Sloane in the article but declined to provide The Atlantic with examples. Barrett says that the fabricated son is the only detail about which she deceived our fact-checkers and editors. Our fact-checking department is continuing to thoroughly recheck the article.
We have already corrected and clarified other details in the story. During the initial fact-checking process, we corroborated many details of Sloane’s story with sources other than Sloane. But the checking of some details of Sloane’s story relied solely on interviews and other communications with Sloane or her husband or both of them.
We have clarified a detail about a neck injury sustained by Sloane’s middle daughter, to be more precise about its severity. We have corrected a detail about a thigh injury, originally described as a deep gash but more accurately described as a skin rupture that bled through a fencing uniform. And we’ve corrected the location of a lacrosse family mentioned in the article: They do not live in Greenwich, Connecticut, but in another town in Fairfield County.
On October 22, we noted and corrected another error in the story: The article originally referenced Olympic-size backyard hockey rinks, but although the private rinks are large and equipped with floodlights and generators, they are not Olympic-size.
We are also updating Barrett’s byline. Originally, we referred to her as Ruth S. Barrett. When writing recently for other magazines, Barrett was identified by her full name, Ruth Shalit Barrett. (Barrett is her married name.) In 1999, when she was known by Ruth Shalit, she left The New Republic, where she was an associate editor, after plagiarism and inaccurate reporting were discovered in her work. We typically defer to authors on how their byline appears—some authors use middle initials, for example, or shorter versions of their given name. We referred to Barrett as Ruth S. Barrett at her request, but in the interest of transparency, we should have included the name that she used as her byline in the 1990s, when the plagiarism incidents occurred. We have changed the byline on this article to Ruth Shalit Barrett.
We decided to assign Barrett this freelance story in part because more than two decades separated her from her journalistic malpractice at The New Republic and because in recent years her work has appeared in reputable magazines. We took into consideration the argument that Barrett deserved a second chance to write feature stories such as this one. We were wrong to make this assignment, however. It reflects poor judgment on our part, and we regret our decision.
We are continuing to review this article. We will correct any errors we find, and we will communicate our findings to our readers as speedily as possible.
Updated at 11:06 p.m. ET on October 30, 2020.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:19 AM on October 31, 2020 [12 favorites]
Editor’s Note: After The Atlantic published this article, new information emerged that has raised serious concerns about its accuracy, and about the credibility of the author, Ruth Shalit Barrett.
We have established that Barrett deceived The Atlantic and its readers about a section of the story that concerns a person referred to as “Sloane.” We are sharing with our readers what we have learned so far.
The original version of this article stated that Sloane has a son. Before publication, Sloane confirmed this detail to be true to The Atlantic’s fact-checking department. After publication, when a Washington Post media critic asked us about the accuracy of portions of the article, our fact-checking department reached out to Sloane to recheck certain details. Through her attorney, Sloane informed us that she does not, in fact, have a son. We have independently corroborated that Sloane does not have a son, and we have corrected the story to remove the reference to her having a son.
In explaining Sloane’s reasoning for telling our fact-checker she had a son, Sloane’s attorney told The Atlantic that she wanted to make herself less readily identifiable. Her attorney also said that according to Sloane, Barrett had first proposed the invention of a son, and encouraged Sloane to deceive The Atlantic as a way to protect her anonymity.
When we asked Barrett about these allegations, she initially denied them, saying that Sloane had told her she had a son, and that she had believed Sloane. The next day, when we questioned her again, she admitted that she was “complicit” in “compounding the deception” and that “it would not be fair to Sloane” to blame her alone for deceiving The Atlantic. Barrett denies that the invention of a son was her idea, and denies advising Sloane to mislead The Atlantic’s fact-checkers, but told us that “on some level I did know that it was BS” and “I do take responsibility.”
Sloane’s attorney claimed that there are several other errors about Sloane in the article but declined to provide The Atlantic with examples. Barrett says that the fabricated son is the only detail about which she deceived our fact-checkers and editors. Our fact-checking department is continuing to thoroughly recheck the article.
We have already corrected and clarified other details in the story. During the initial fact-checking process, we corroborated many details of Sloane’s story with sources other than Sloane. But the checking of some details of Sloane’s story relied solely on interviews and other communications with Sloane or her husband or both of them.
We have clarified a detail about a neck injury sustained by Sloane’s middle daughter, to be more precise about its severity. We have corrected a detail about a thigh injury, originally described as a deep gash but more accurately described as a skin rupture that bled through a fencing uniform. And we’ve corrected the location of a lacrosse family mentioned in the article: They do not live in Greenwich, Connecticut, but in another town in Fairfield County.
On October 22, we noted and corrected another error in the story: The article originally referenced Olympic-size backyard hockey rinks, but although the private rinks are large and equipped with floodlights and generators, they are not Olympic-size.
We are also updating Barrett’s byline. Originally, we referred to her as Ruth S. Barrett. When writing recently for other magazines, Barrett was identified by her full name, Ruth Shalit Barrett. (Barrett is her married name.) In 1999, when she was known by Ruth Shalit, she left The New Republic, where she was an associate editor, after plagiarism and inaccurate reporting were discovered in her work. We typically defer to authors on how their byline appears—some authors use middle initials, for example, or shorter versions of their given name. We referred to Barrett as Ruth S. Barrett at her request, but in the interest of transparency, we should have included the name that she used as her byline in the 1990s, when the plagiarism incidents occurred. We have changed the byline on this article to Ruth Shalit Barrett.
We decided to assign Barrett this freelance story in part because more than two decades separated her from her journalistic malpractice at The New Republic and because in recent years her work has appeared in reputable magazines. We took into consideration the argument that Barrett deserved a second chance to write feature stories such as this one. We were wrong to make this assignment, however. It reflects poor judgment on our part, and we regret our decision.
We are continuing to review this article. We will correct any errors we find, and we will communicate our findings to our readers as speedily as possible.
Updated at 11:06 p.m. ET on October 30, 2020.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:19 AM on October 31, 2020 [12 favorites]
Goodness
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:44 AM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:44 AM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
See? This is why you should never RTFA.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:05 AM on October 31, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:05 AM on October 31, 2020 [6 favorites]
Wowwwwwwww, wtf?
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:45 PM on October 31, 2020
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:45 PM on October 31, 2020
yeah that's a hell of a correction. like, the correction of the year, possibly the decade.
posted by GuyZero at 10:56 PM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 10:56 PM on October 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
Oopsie-diddle!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:27 AM on November 1, 2020
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:27 AM on November 1, 2020
Washington Post Writer Who Debunked Atlantic Story Says ‘Fencing Injuries’ Tipped Him Off (TheWrap, Oct. 31, 2020; "reprint" at Yahoo News): “I wasn’t fixated initially on the son, frankly, but rather on the fencing injuries,” [Washington Post media critic Erik] Wemple told TheWrap in an email Saturday. “I had a general sense that fencers are really well protected and don’t often suffer injuries as described in that story, and once I started looking around, that appeared to be a fruitful line of inquiry.”
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:37 PM on November 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:37 PM on November 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
Read more of these articles and The Atlantic looks like complete idiots for not fact checking this lady, of all people, and then bragging about their fact checking. I know everyone's broke and can't afford to check, but JESUS.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:09 PM on November 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:09 PM on November 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
Yeah when I initally read that about the fencing injury, I did have a moment of surprise. I've fenced for years and that kind of injury is pretty unheard of. On the other hand, I don't know Sabre as well and it does have a reputation for savagery, also I assumed that the claim that it was "close to major artery" was puffery on the part of the parents rather than a fabrication.
You know, when after a high profile plagiarism scandal, you find your entire journalistic reputation in tatters, and you get a miraculous second chance, one might expect that you are perfectly scrupulous about the details of facts. What did you expect, said the scorpion?
posted by atrazine at 1:50 AM on November 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
You know, when after a high profile plagiarism scandal, you find your entire journalistic reputation in tatters, and you get a miraculous second chance, one might expect that you are perfectly scrupulous about the details of facts. What did you expect, said the scorpion?
posted by atrazine at 1:50 AM on November 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
The Atlantic has withdrawn the story entirely.
posted by box at 1:48 PM on November 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by box at 1:48 PM on November 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
But it's still OK to believe that rich parents are assholes. right?
posted by thelonius at 2:03 PM on November 2, 2020
posted by thelonius at 2:03 PM on November 2, 2020
honestly most of these aggressive-animal-parents are not particularly rich, they're just really pushy
posted by GuyZero at 2:09 PM on November 2, 2020
posted by GuyZero at 2:09 PM on November 2, 2020
Couldn't they have just reclassified it as the hate-read fiction story of the year?
posted by clawsoon at 2:37 PM on November 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 2:37 PM on November 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
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posted by GuyZero at 1:37 PM on October 19, 2020 [12 favorites]