Source
“I don’t think we should be super surprised,” said Bari Norman, the co-founder, and director of counseling at Expert Admissions, a Manhattan-based firm that helps teens around the world prepare for the exams and college applications that will determine the next four years of their lives.
“It speaks to the desperation of parents and just how high stakes college admissions have become,” Norman added. “And unfortunately, it speaks to a lot of the messages we’re sending to kids, which is the most concerning part of this story.”
Reflection
Nowadays, people enjoy an opportunity to speak and write freely and share their thoughts about each other, different events, and situations. They find it normal to break the rules to meet their needs and support interests. In his article, Wallace (2001) said that “the whole point of norms is to help us evaluate our actions” (p. 48). Modern people usually neglect standards to create strong analyses and ideas. After reading the article by Richards (2019), I was confused by a number of diverse and controversial terms. Special attention should be paid to the meaning of such words as “college”, “desperation”, and “parents” because, despite recent improvements and fashion, this combination still sounds awkward and unnatural.
Although today it is normal to read such phrases that college is a “status symbol” or that “education has its price”, it is still hard to understand the meaning of the word “desperation” along with “college” and “parents”. Wallace (2001) underlined possible disagreements with English grammar or style, but never with a meaning. In this case, Richards (2019) does not break any grammar or stylistic rule but challenges human attitude towards education.
College can improve the status of a person or provide parents with more reasons for pride for their children. However, when a person becomes desperate while choosing or applying to college, the whole system may be called into question.
In general, I like the idea to combine such terms as “college” and parents” in one sentence or a text. Still, it is high time to do something to remove the idea of “desperation” from the same context. The chosen article is interesting in a variety of ways, and human emotions and attitudes towards challenges and controversies in education remain a burning issue for discussion.
References
Richards, E. (2019). The college admissions scandal involving Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin was a long time coming. Here’s how the system got so rigged. USA Today. Web.
Wallace, D. F. (2001). Tense present: Democracy, English, and the wars over usage. Harper’s Magazine, 39-58. Web.