Education In A Form Of Madness (Part 4)

This is the 4rd part of the post. The previous parts are here: 1, 2, 3.

Choices and More Choices

I just watched an online video of a young Asian guy coming to the evening news of two weeks ago to defend his conservative Asian organization and its lawsuit, which precipitated the termination of affirmative action by the Supreme Court. Watching it I feel terrible. I mean Asians are invisible in politics, and most of the time our voice is not heard and our face is not shown. And finally when we were given a rare chance to show our face and to say something, it was about our role in this disappointing event, our conservative opinions, and our determination in fighting for a piece of the “admission pie” no matter how small the pie is. I should not have used the word “our” since I don’t agree with “our role”, “our opinion” and “our determination” at all in the previous sentence.

And the three news anchors (of varied race and ethnicity) were all middle-aged, experienced, poised and well-prepared, who understood how to approach a controversial issue in a seemingly well-balanced attitude, who knew how to agree and disagree without losing news ratings, who knew how to avoid political incorrectness while giving the impression of asking tough questions. And these three anchors made the young Asian look like he was some sort of heartless juvenile who didn’t care what he would destroy while pursuing his own goal. At one point, the young man almost lost his cool. In his attempt to win an argument, he displayed a tinge of impatience and annoyance, which could be easily interpreted as arrogance. His inexperience and the anchors’ experience created exactly the kind of impression the new anchors wanted the audience to have.

I can imagine what kind of people populating this conservative Asian organization–good, reasonable, sane Asians will not go near it. If this inexperienced young man can be their chosen spokesman to go on a popular evening news channel, other members of the organization are probably even less experienced and much less articulate.

I don’t think I agree with this young spokesman, but I can’t help wanting him to perform better in front of the shrewd people in the newsroom. I root for him despite our different viewpoints. I think he could have pointed out the systematic unfairness of binding each town’s public schools with the town’s property tax–this system punishes poor kids whose parents can’t afford to live in a town with good schools. He could have said this to make himself look like a progressive force. He could have pointed out the bamboo ceilings for Asians in the workplace, which is one of the reasons why so many Asian parents want to send their kids to top schools, thinking that the top schools will have a halo effect that can open doors and smashing barriers for them. And finally he could have pointed out that the inequality of the society is forcing minorities to fight each other for very limited opportunities. There are so many things he could have said to make himself look good and make me proud of him (despite our differences). I hope I am not too tough on him since he is very young. Well, even if I don’t agree with him, I still want him to win the argument. I don’t know why.

I digressed from what I really want to talk about in this section, which is choice. We don’t have enough choices–many people feel this way and this problem is exasperated among immigrants. If we just look at education–there are 39 public high schools in Middlesex County, where Edison Township is located. And only about 6 to 7 public schools that are competitive. There are 6 magnet schools, which are good but not really competitive. And the rest of the public high schools are no good at all. And in order for immigrant parents to get their children into a competitive high school, they have to pay a lot of property tax or rental fees in order to live in the handful of townships where the high schools are located. These limited townships have seen their housing prices going up and up–a modest house is easily half a million. And there is a chronic shortage of houses that immigrants can afford. I heard stories of people bribing real estate agents in order to get advanced information about the availability of certain houses. It feels like a housing rat race out there, and people have no choice but to enter the race.

Anyway, people don’t feel they have other choices. And this is the reason they have to live in certain townships. After living in these places and paying high property taxes, people feel that they have no choice but to push their children to apply for Harvard or other top schools.

Sometimes I wonder if not having choices is just an illusion. People actually have choices, but they are somehow educated or brought up in a way of believing that only one choice is worth fighting for and all other choices are not worth their time.

(To Be Continued Here)

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Image by Harish Sharma from Pixabay