The Silicon Valley Suicides by Hanna Rosin

"In these days of assumed meritocracy, where children can be turned into anything, we admire them as displays of remarkable engineering, to be tweaked and fine-tuned into bilingual perfection." - Hanna Rosin, from the article

Children are not products of engineering. Success cannot be manufactured, or future-proofed by tweaking and fine-tuning. Assumed meritocracy is the right characterization, the functional word is 'assumed'. - my response, from this post

Read a powerful feature article in The Atlantic magazine about over-competitive stress in affluent community high schools. Kids driven to suicide by their parents stupid, pointless, all-encompassing expectation to ALL be better than EVERYONE else.



LOL. How is that fucking possible, it's just common sense that it's impossible, especially when everyone at school is ALSO expected to be the best! Out of 100 students, 100 A+'s and all of them #1 in the class. What a crock of bullshit. So what you get is trumped up honors, and phony awards, and suicides.

It's a lengthy article, but I encourage anyone to read it. The description of elitist high school stress, anxiety, and depression hits home for me on several fronts. The piece is well written. The author Hanna Rosin does a good job to discuss relevant influencing factors and expose honest reactions from the students and community.

"Seventy-four percent of Gunn students have at least one parent with a graduate degree. They'd moved their families to that school district because they know how to do their research. Last year, Gunn was ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation's top five STEM schools."

"Chinese patriarchs buy homes in the community and send their families, so their kids can go to school there. Parents sacrifice vacations and plan their budgets carefully so they can afford a house in the district."

You can't force this shit. People don't become elite by being elite. It's stupid controlling thinking. You force kids into tight holes with no room to grow into themselves. Growth should expand outward. This kind of future-proofing to being the best funnels development nowhere.

Truth is, society is not a meritocracy. There's only so much you can hope to gain by simply being the objective best. There's only room for so many skilled servants beneath the oligarchs. Do people who hold power claim to be the best? This over-emphasis on being better at everything in order to survive is flawed.

"Today Gunn is like countless other high-achieving high schools in countless other affluent communities - New York; Washington, D.C.; Dallas; Greenwich, Connecticut; Seattle; Los Angeles"

"The kids were also asked how much they identified with sentences such as 'The fewer mistakes I make, the more people will like me' and 'If someone does a task at work/school better than I, then I feel like I failed the whole task.'"

"Palo Alto, Male, Asian... the demographic most at risk are Asian (Chinese) males in high school." - Andrew Lu, Paly senior.

"East Asian immigrant parents mistakenly transposed the reality of education in, say, China or Korea, which is that how you do on a single test can determine your entire future. Gunn is more than 40 percent Asian, and some non-Asian parents, particularly ones who'd grown u pin town when the Asian population was smaller, felt the shift was poisoning the culture of the entire school."

This is what I've realized about the cultural gap. What worked for Tiger parents doe not work for cubs. The environment and way things work are two worlds apart, yet the Asian parents are stuck on the values and expectations they grew up following. Because the parents are successful and gained success in their culture by following this regimented strict pressure, they expect raising their children in the same way will also ensure success. 

Because their minds were cast by the fire of Maoist propaganda that carried the traditional teachings of generations, they unquestioningly believe that this form of expectation is Right. They don't question that this strategy will NOT work for their children. The question can't even be formed in their mind, whether this is right or wrong, thanks to Mao. (OK, well I'm reaching with this propaganda influence, but you can't deny the culture they grew up in affects their mentality).

"In these days of assumed meritocracy, where children can be turned into anything, we admire them as displays of remarkable engineering, to be tweaked and fine-tuned into bilingual perfection." - Hanna Rosin, the article author. inspired by a Henri Maillardet automaton in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.

The observation the author makes right there cuts straight to the issue. Children are not products of engineering. Success cannot be manufactured, or future-proofed by tweaking and fine-tuning. Assumed meritocracy is the right characterization, the functional word is 'assumed'. Meritocracy is an over-misconception.

Perhaps in a socialist society where an government that dictates every aspect of your career and life, passively honing your talents for the state to notice your merit is the way to a better life. But in this country, it's get out there and take what you want. The bottom line is get us our money, it's up to you to figure out how you get it, not our problem. No one's going to hand you a job because you are good at something. The government doesn't look to see if you're the best or not. It lets those who take, take.

This merit-frenzied education leaves me fucked over when I can't reach impossible expectations, and those expectations don't even work the way parents motivations intended.