Private School Tuition Hits $25,000 in LA Area
In the Los Angeles Times private school mom expresses doubts: "'Sometimes I feel like they're all going to get into college no matter if I pay $25,000 or if they're in public school. I think the hope is they'll get into a really good college. I guess my hope is they will get into an Ivy League school and not go to Valley College.'"
Why do parents think that going to an Ivy League school will magically transform their children into gods and goddesses while the rest of Valley College peons travail as spiritual and material dwarves, stunted no doubt by lack of parental capital?
Answers at 5!
Why do parents think that going to an Ivy League school will magically transform their children into gods and goddesses while the rest of Valley College peons travail as spiritual and material dwarves, stunted no doubt by lack of parental capital?
Answers at 5!
5 Comments:
I think the prices are so high now because, for whatever reason, college is a social necessity for people of my generation. You are an outcast if you don't go to college, just like you are if you wear strange clothes, sound funny, or do anything at all to step out of line. Absolutely everyone must go to college, not for education, not even to have fun, but because that's the way it is.
As for the parents who think such things about Ivy League schools, chances are decent that they've passed on this innate silliness to their children, which means that their kids are probably excellent elite-school material.
Universities have become virtual personnel offices for various kinds of industry -- investment banking at the top and I don't exactly know what at the bottom -- but I DO know that many humanities grads spend years as temps.
In any case, frightening that college has become, according to Ian, another badge of conformity!
Off the cuff:
When I think about what Ian said, I am reminded of the lyrics of a song that went something like this: "Thats just the way it is, baby." For a time, I thought those words described reality--one that is stark and cold and irrefutable. However, when it comes to steadily climbing education costs, I sense some major helplessness.
I think that most parents will say that they want their children to succeed. Yet, we all know some people who have staked their reputation on where their kids attend college. To a degree, its a matter of social positioning--for themselves and for their children. With that in mind, we are back to what Liu said about the "badge of conformity." Now, though, its harder to conform, since conforming often takes money. What about conformity at any cost? Pay up or stand out and get rejected, even the poorest sod knows that.
Yeah, universities are "virtual personnel offices." They are catering more and more to the private sector. I will have an English degree in 3 months and every week I get an e-mail about a job-fair taking place on campus, some panel with a group of hippie-turned-conformist types who swear by their college degrees. Or, I attend some motivational talk by some Joe Schmo management guru. You know the ones. They have all the answers to employee motivation in the workplace. Yet, its about numbers in the private sector. To hell with motivation. I have worked in different industries and production tops the list. No one cared about how motivated I felt. Numbers, in the sense of production and profits, were all that truly mattered.
Diana,
Motivation is all about managing employees to get more "productivity" out of them. Often this "productivity" itself is not related to profits -- or numbers as you point out correctly, but rather submissiveness to authority. For instance if you're in services rather than sales, how does one measure your "productivity"? Submission to measurement is actually what is extracted. From the very first standardizes test, we "agree" to be placed where the numbers tell us where belong
So you have almost completed this great degree that has helped you think and respond to an increasingly complex world. And these are the things you should be thinking criticallly about -- but instead of being rewarded for it, you will be forced to question everything about yourself that has anything to do with autonomy.
Yes, forced to question any autonomous thought and act as though the self that I think I am has no business existing. At least not in light of what I am told to be, what I am told that I am . . . and for whose benefit? Certainly not my own. What must I become--a puppet f**ker with no mind, no heart, mechanical just like the computer that I operate. All this because I cannot afford not to eat or pay my bills or tolerate, for too long, that sense of being on the outside looking in.
Yet, its largely, now, a silent thing, taking place in my mind . . . and if I act, if I speak, the rules are in place to get me back in line, straighten me out, teach me a lesson or two.
Post a Comment
<< Home