Tag: college

so i’ve been reading up a bit on the college bribes scandal, and boy oh boy, the debates and conversations this has prompted.

there was an article yesterday in Today’s Parent where the author wrote and went on to say that we all do this right from the very beginning right from the moment we tell our kid wearing a mismatched outfit that they look pretty, or making a big deal over our kid’s scribbles.

and now, i wanted to play devil’s advocate because up to a certain point i think (again, I think, my opinion).. she might be right (with a couple caveats.)

I think the moment you become a parent your main goal is to try and do everything humanly possible to make sure your kid does well, has the best opportunities and if it were possible you’d fix the world so the kids would never have to go through the many harsh life experiences they are bound to go through (heartache, a failed match, a bicycle fall, etc), fortunately or not,  as a parent that is your main focus from the moment that baby arrives home from the hospital, to make sure this helpless creature makes it through the night, the weeks, the months, and so on..

so where does it go wrong? and here’s where i think it gets tricky…

for me particularly it goes wrong the moment there’s an exchange of goods (benefits/money/perks) whatever it might be. at that point it becomes a transaction and is no longer a parent looking for their kid’s best opportunity but rather a business exchange.. cost, benefit, and all that accounting terms that i’d rather not get into.

yesterday when i was telling my love about this dilemma she tended to agree more with the author than with me (how dares she!) but i get it. and see, she sided with the author because soon enough we’ll be running into tricky situation when we might have to end up using our dearest friends’ address to get our kiddo to a ‘good school’ (i intentionally used those quotation marks because who can tell nowadays what a good school is, but your parental instinct kicks in and you are going to try all possible to offer your kid the best opportunities.)

so my question was ok, then, should we just send the kiddo to the school in our district which has not so good reviews and a really low rating (2/10)??

do you see why this all becomes a tricky situation? If you had the means, and knew the right person, you’d call that person and asked if there’s a way of getting your kid to a better school, to that great summer camp, or that limited music class… MOST of you would (i won’t say all so i don’t get into as much trouble as the author of that article).. would i pay to have him attend that school? nope, that’s where i’d draw the line.

many of you would say oh you are being a hypocrite because you’d use your friends’ address (and i think i would) but let me put it into perspective, these friends are not just casual acquaintances that i see once a year or that i’d be paying to use their address (as many people do, sometimes even paying strangers in ‘good schools’ districts), these are people who (God forbid) something were to happen to us, would end up in charge of our kiddo, they’d be his legal guardians and are people who spend as much time at our place as we do at theirs. does that make it right? perhaps not..

but as i commented on the Todays Parents’ article, it’s all in the details. if you are purposely paying someone to create merits, or amend grades, or falsify scores so your kids are guaranteed acceptance to one of these elite school, that’s a very different thing in my opinion…it’s like comparing apples and oranges, yes they are both fruits but there are still substantial differences between the two.

until next post!

(image credit: wikepedia.org)