To Students, Congress Tops ‘American Idol’
College students are regularly criticized as being ignorant, self-absorbed and interested only in pop culture. But a new national study — conducted by Tufts University researchers — found that students know more about politics and civic life than many fear they do, and more than those in the same age group who are not in college.
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The survey was conducted of people aged 18-24 who are not in the military. Half of those surveyed were in college full time and half were not. Demographics matched the population as a whole.
Among the findings:
Half of the college students and 40 percent of the non-college students could name their respective members of Congress. Nearly two-thirds of college students and more than half of the non-college students could name at least one of their two U.S. senators. In contrast, only about 15 percent of the young people knew the name of the most recent winner of “American Idol” and about 10 percent knew the winner of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Approximately 79 percent of college students and more than 73 percent of non-college students said they had voted in the November 2006 elections, but only 10 to 12 percent of respondents reported ever voting in “American Idol” and significantly fewer had voted in “Dancing with the Stars.”
At least some of students’ Web activity is political. On average, college students belonged to almost four Facebook advocacy groups. According to the Tufts study, Facebook tends to be used more for advocacy of Democratic political candidates and liberal or Democratic causes than for Republican candidates or conservative or Republican causes.
More than 61 percent of college students had participated in online political discussions or visited a politically oriented Web site.
Of college students, 58.6 percent reported being somewhat, moderately or very involved in their communities, compared with 36.7 percent for non-students of the same age. More than 47 percent of college students reported involvement with community service organizations compared with slightly more than 24 percent of non-students.
To be sure, surveys abound about the ignorance of college students on key facts of American history and civic life, and the Tufts survey wasn’t trying to find out if students stay up at night arguing over the most significant of the Federalist Papers.
But Tufts researchers were encouraged by the findings. “Young people seem to know more about politics than they know about popular culture,” said Kent E. Portney, project director and professor of political science, in a statement. “This level of political knowledge stands in stark contrast to the image of young people as uninterested in and ignorant about politics and government.”
— Scott Jaschik
Comments
American Idol? Dancing with the Stars?
I’m a college senior and I don’t know a single other student who regularly watches American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. (I also live in DC and don’t have a senator or a real representative so I guess they would have me there.)
Jack, at 10:01 am EDT on April 5, 2007
I always thought it was ridiculous to think that college students were politically apathetic. While it is stupid to watch TV or care about popular culture, in some ways caring too much about politics might hinder a student’s ability to learn analytical skills that would help them later on.
Larry, at 10:25 am EDT on April 5, 2007
No excuses
With the proliferation of information available to students today, we should have the most informed youth in the history of the world. With satelite TV, Radio and the internet, people are inundated with information, both substantive and non-substantive, 24/7.Now, if I could just get my students to identify where there classes are we would have a winner.
Cynic Professor, at 10:26 am EDT on April 5, 2007
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/05/tufts
Showing posts with label social movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social movement. Show all posts
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Living for College
Commentary: Live for Yourself, Not for an Application
Here are some of my reactions to the New York Times article, "For Girls, It's be Yourself, and Be Perfect Too." (See below)
It is very true. Girls--of course boys also--today are pressured to achieve on multiple dimensions and then told to still celebrate their youth.
But I do think it is possible to achieve and still be genuine. Students just have to love what they do. I did all my extracurriculars--theater, ultimate frisbee, chinese harp, newspaper, speech team, Broadway Club, Arista, history club, tutoring, etc.--with smiles on my face because I truly enjoyed everything.
Of course the truth is not everyone enjoy everything and they are being pressured to take up everything for the sake of "being well rounded." I think that everyone will feel a lot better when they take a step back and stop worrying about what they think others want them to do and start focusing on just their own passions. Of course, then they'll think about the admissions officers and will start worrying again!
The biggest problem with this is that people start to lose themselves. They live for others and forget who they are. It's sad when freshmen in high school already start looking around for resume-padders. They should be looking to get involved; but too many do it for the wrong reason. It's great that kids can win national spelling bees knowing the word "ursprache," but did all the participants of The Bee memorize dictionaries because they were interested or because their parents told them that they should be interested? One of the scariest things I can imagine would be for people to wake up one day and realize that they have been living for someone else, that no part of their being really belonged to themselves. But it seems that this very thing happens all the time now.
Of course this is still only dwelling on message #1. Message # 2--Be yourself. Have fun. Don't work too hard--adds even more trouble.
Kaavya Viswanathan's scandal-marred "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" seemed to have been exploring this exact tension. Of course I never got to read the whole book since Little, Brown and Company pulled it from the shelves. But from what I managed to read--the free first chapter--high-achieving Opal got rejected by Harvard for not enjoying her youth and relaxing. (I think her real problem was that she wasn't doing everything she was doing for the sake of doing them, but rather for the sake of getting into Harvard.)
I think this kind of rejection does happen, sometimes unfairly, sometimes not enough (I'm probably going to get jumped for this ::laugh::). It definitely doesn't add to a campus community to have prototype nerds stay up in their dorms or the library all day. A lively college needs students who can do more than do well in classes. Life at college is shaped by those students who are willing to have lives outside of classrooms, libraries and labs.
But then some outstanding friends of mine were probably rejected because they were wrongly classified as uninteresting nerds. That coupled with the acceptance of classmates who did whatever possible to secure the top grades, who club-hopped to pad their resumes, and whose achievements also included underage drinking and drug dealing, really demonstrated to me the unfairness of the whole thing.
In the end, life is imperfect and some injustices simply can't be rectified. What we still have is a world full of enough wonderful things to occupy our time and our mind. When we are happy and in tune with the songs of the universe, we will be able to change the world for the better, a little bit at a time.
When Perfection is Not Enough
For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
In an honors philosophy/literature class, Esther Mobley, center, participates in a discussion of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
By SARA RIMER
Published: April 1, 2007
NEWTON, Mass., March 31 — To anyone who knows 17-year-old Esther Mobley, one of the best students at one of the best public high schools in the country, it is absurd to think she doesn’t measure up. But Esther herself is quick to set the record straight.
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Excerpts: How Applying to College is Like 'The Aeneid,' and Other E-mails (April 1, 2007)
Text: Esther Mobley's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Text: Colby Kennedy's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Transcripts: 'The Appearance of Effortlessness' (April 1, 2007)
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
At Newton North High School in Newton, Mass., a Wonder Woman mural offers a role model to some girls. Newton North, one of the best public high schools in the country, gears its teaching toward gears its teaching toward a wide range of students.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up.’
Kat Jiang
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly. This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.’
Esther Mobley
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‘I’m living up to my own expectations. It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.’
Colby Kennedy
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater. You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.’
Julie Mhlaba
“First of all, I’m a terrible athlete,” she said over lunch one day.
“I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly,” she continued. “This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.”
Esther, a willowy, effervescent senior, turned to her friend Colby Kennedy. Colby, 17, is also a great student, a classical pianist, fluent in Spanish, and a three-season varsity runner and track captain. Did Colby worry, Esther asked, that she fell short in some way?
“Or,” said Esther, and now her tone was a touch sarcastic, “do you just have it all already?”
They both burst out laughing.
Esther and Colby are two of the amazing girls at Newton North High School here in this affluent suburb just outside Boston. “Amazing girls” translation: Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns.) Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do.
But being an amazing girl often doesn’t feel like enough these days when you’re competing with all the other amazing girls around the country who are applying to the same elite colleges that you have been encouraged to aspire to practically all your life.
An athlete, after all, is one of the few things Esther isn’t. A few of the things she is: a standout in Advanced Placement Latin and honors philosophy/literature who can expound on the beauty of the subjunctive tense in Catullus and on Kierkegaard’s existential choices. A writer whose junior thesis for Advanced Placement history won Newton North’s top prize. An actress. President of her church youth group.
To spend several months in a pressure cooker like Newton North is to see what a girl can be — what any young person can be — when encouraged by committed teachers and by engaged parents who can give them wide-ranging opportunities.
It is also to see these girls struggle to navigate the conflicting messages they have been absorbing, if not from their parents then from the culture, since elementary school. The first message: Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college — which doesn’t have to be in the Ivy League, or one of the other elites like Williams, Tufts or Bowdoin, but should be a “name” school.
The second message: Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.
And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart.
You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”
“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.
If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything. What it comes down to, in this place and time, is that the eternal adolescent search for self is going on at the same time as the quest for the perfect résumé. For Esther, as for high school seniors everywhere, this is a big weekend for finding out how your résumé measured up: The college acceptances, and rejections, are rolling in.
“You want to achieve,” Esther said. “But how do you achieve and still be genuine?”
If it all seems overwhelming at times, then the multitasking adults in Newton have the answer: Balance. Strive for balance.
But balance is out the window when you’re a high-achieving senior in the home stretch of the race for which all the years of achieving and the disciplined focusing on the future have been preparing you. These students are aware that because more girls apply to college than boys, amid concerns about gender balance, boys may have an edge at some small selective colleges.
“You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater,” said another of Esther’s 17-year-old classmates, Julie Mhlaba, who aspires to medical school and juggles three Advanced Placement classes, gospel choir and a part-time job as a waitress. “You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.”
“You’re supposed to do all these things,” Julie said, “and not go insane.”
Stress Trumps Relaxation
Newton, which has a population of almost 84,000, is known for a liberal sensibility and a high concentration of professionals like doctors, lawyers and academics. Six miles west of Boston, with its heavily settled neighborhoods, bustling downtowns and high numbers of immigrants, Newton is a suburb with an urban feel.
The main shopping area, in Newton Centre, is a concrete manifestation of the conflicting messages Esther and the other girls are constantly struggling to decode. In one five-block stretch are two Starbucks and one Peets Coffee & Tea, several psychotherapists’ offices, three SAT test-prep services, two after-school math programs, and three yoga studios promising relaxation and inner peace.
Smack in the middle of all of this is Esther’s church, the 227-year-old First Baptist, which welcomes everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation or denomination, and where Esther puts in a lot of time.
The test-prep business is booming. Kaplan (“Be the ideal college applicant!”) is practically around the corner from Chyten (“Our average SAT II score across all subjects is 720!”), which is three blocks from Princeton Review (“We’re all about scoring more!”). My First Yoga (for children 3 and up), with its founder playing up her Harvard degree, is conveniently located above Chyten, which includes the SAT Cafe.
High-priced SAT prep has become almost routine at schools like Newton North. Not to hire the extra help is practically an act of rebellion.
“I think it’s unfair,” Esther said, explaining why she decided against an SAT tutor, though she worried about her score (ultimately getting, as she put it, “above 2000”). “Why do I deserve this leg up?”
Parents view Newton’s expensive real estate — the median house price in 2006 was $730,000 — and high taxes as the price of admission to the prized public schools. There are less affluent parents, small-business owners, carpenters, plumbers, social workers and high school guidance counselors, but many of these families arrived decades ago when it was possible to buy a nice two-story Colonial for $150,000 or less.
Newton North, one of two outstanding public high schools here, is known for its academic rigor, but also its vocational education, reflecting the wide range of its 1,967 students. Nearly 73 percent of them are white, 7.3 percent black, nearly 12 percent Asian and 7.5 percent Hispanic. Many of the black and Hispanic students live in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston, and are bused in under a 35-year-old voluntary integration program.
Newton North has a student theater, winning athletic teams and dozens of after-school clubs (ultimate Frisbee, mock trial, black leadership, Hispanic culture, Israeli dance). There is an emphasis on nonconformity — even if it is often conformity dressed up as nonconformity — and an absence of such high school conventions as, say, homecoming queens, valedictorians and class rankings.
‘Superhuman’ Resistance
Jennifer Price, the Newton North principal, said she and her faculty emphasized to students that they could win admission to many excellent colleges without organizing their entire lives around résumé building. By age 14, Ms. Price said, the school’s highest fliers are already worrying about marketing themselves to colleges: “You almost have to be superhuman to resist the pressure.”
If more students aren’t listening to the message that they can relax a bit, one reason may be that a lot of the people delivering the message went to the elite colleges. Ms. Price has an undergraduate degree from Princeton — she makes a point of saying that she got in because she was recruited to play varsity field hockey — and is a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Many of the teachers have degrees from the Ivy League and other elite schools.
But the message also tends to get drowned out when parents bump into each other at Whole Foods and share news about whose son or daughter just got accepted (or not) at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn or Stanford.
Or when the final edition of the award-winning student newspaper, the Newtonite, comes out every June, with its two-page spread listing all the seniors, and their colleges. For that entire week, Esther says, everyone pores over the names, obsessing about who is going where.
“In a lot of ways, it’s all about that one week,” she said.
There is something about the lives these girls lead — their jam-packed schedules, the amped-up multitasking, the focus on a narrow group of the nation’s most selective colleges — that speaks of a profound anxiety in the young people, but perhaps even more so in their parents, about the ability of the next generation to afford to raise their families in a place like Newton.
Admission to a brand-name college is viewed by many parents, and their children, as holding the best promise of professional success and economic well-being in an increasingly competitive world.
“It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up,” Kat said.
Esther, however, is aiming for a decidedly nonlucrative profession. Inspired by her father, Greg Mobley, who is a Biblical scholar, she wants to be a theologian.
She says she is interested in “Scripture, the Bible, the development of organized religion, thinking about all this, writing about all this, teaching about all this.” More than anything else, she wrote in an e-mail message, she wants to be a writer, “and religion is what I most like to write about.”
“I have such a strong sense of being supported by my faith,” she continued. “It gives me priorities. That’s why I’m not concerned about making money, because I know that there is so much more to living a rich life than having money.”
First Baptist Church counts on Esther. She organizes pancake suppers, tutors a young congregant and helps lead the youth group’s outreach to the poor.
On a springlike Sunday afternoon toward the end of winter, Esther could be found with her father, her two brothers and members of her youth group handing out food to homeless people on Boston Common. She had spent the morning in church.
About 2 p.m., a text message flashed across her cellphone from Gabe Gladstone, a co-captain of mock trial: “Where are you?” Esther, a key member of the group, was needed at a meeting.
Esther messaged back: “I’m feeding the homeless, I’ll come when God’s work is done.”
Fending Off ‘Anorexia of the Soul’
On a Saturday afternoon in late November, Esther and her mother, Page Kelley, sat at the dining room table talking about the contradictions and complexities of life in Newton. Esther’s father was with his sons, Gregory, 15, who plays varsity basketball for Newton North, and Tommy, 10, coaching Tommy’s basketball team.
Ms. Kelley, 47, an assistant federal public defender, and Mr. Mobley, 49, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, grew up in Kentucky and came north for college. Ms. Kelley is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard Law School. Mr. Mobley has two graduate degrees from Harvard.
Amid all the competitiveness and consumerism, and the obsession with achievement in Newton, Ms. Kelley said, “You just hope your child doesn’t have anorexia of the soul.”
“It’s the idea that you end up with this strange drive,” she continued. “One of the great things about Esther is that she does have some kind of spiritual life. You just hope your kid has good priorities. We keep saying to her: ‘The name of the college you go to doesn’t matter. There are a lot of good colleges out there.’ ”
Esther said her mother is her role model. “I think the work she does is very noble,” she said.
“She has these impressive degrees,” Esther said, “and she chooses to do something where she’s not making as much money as she could.”
As close as mother and daughter are, there is one important generational divide. “My mother applied to one college,” Esther said. “She got in, she went.”
Back from basketball practice with his sons, Mr. Mobley joined the conversation. To Mr. Mobley, a formalized, competitive culture pervades everything from youth sports to getting into college. He pointed out to his wife that the lives of their three children were far more directed “than any of the aimless hours I spent in my youth daydreaming and meandering.”
Ms. Kelley asked, “Is that because of us?”
“Yes — and no,” he said. “It’s because of 2006 in America, and the Northeast.”
The bar for achievement keeps being raised for each generation, he said: “Our children start where we finished.”
As the afternoon turned into early evening, Esther went out to meet her best friend, Aliza Edelstein. The family dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Bandit, was underfoot, trolling for affection.
“I’m not worried about Esther because I know her,” Mr. Mobley said. “Esther’s character is sealed in some fundamental way.”
Ms. Kelley, however, wondered aloud: “Don’t you worry that she never rebelled? When I was growing up, you were supposed to rebel.”
But she acknowledged that she had sent her own mixed signals. “As I’m sitting here saying I don’t care what kind of grades she gets, I’m thinking, she comes home with a B, and I say: ‘What’d you get a B for? Who gave you a B? I’m going to talk to them.’
“You do want your child to do well.”
Mr. Mobley nodded. “We’re not above it,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
On a Fierce Mission to Shine
To sit in on classes with Esther in her vibrant high school where, between classes, the central corridor, called Main Street, is a bustling social hub, is to see why these students are genuinely excited about school.
Their teachers are pushing them to wrestle with big questions: What is truth? What does Virgil’s “Aeneid” tell us about destiny and individual happiness? How does DNA work? How is the global economy reshaping the world (subtext: you have to be fluid and highly educated to survive in the new economy)?
Esther’s ethics teacher, Joel Greifinger, spent considerable time this winter on moral theories. An examination of John Rawls’s theory of justice led to extensive discussions about American society and class inequality. Among the reading material Mr. Greifinger presented was research showing the correlation between income and SAT scores.
The class strengthened Esther’s earlier decision not to take private SAT prep.
In her honors philosophy/literature class, Esther has been reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, “Sophie’s Choice” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Amid a discussion of the strangely unsettling emptiness Frankl encountered upon his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Esther quoted Sartre: “You are condemned to freedom.”
Her honors teacher, Mike Fieleke, nodded. “That’s the existential idea. If we don’t awaken to that freedom, then we are slaves to our fate.”
A few weeks earlier, Esther, taking stock of her own life, wrote in an e-mail message: “I feel like I’m on the verge. I feel like I’m just about to get out of high school, to enter into adulthood, to reach some kind of state of independence and peacefulness and enlightenment.”
More immediately, she wrote, Mr. Fieleke had told her “he thought, from reading my papers and hearing me speak in class, that I was just on the verge of some really great idea.”
“I asked him if he thought that idea would come by next Wednesday, when our big Hamlet paper was due. He said I might feel this way all year long.”
The most intensely pressurized academic force field at school is the one surrounding the students on the Advanced Placement and honors track. About 145 of the 500 seniors are taking a combined total of three, four and five Advanced Placement and honors classes, with a few students even juggling six and seven.
Esther’s friend Colby takes four Advanced Placement and one honors class. “I’m living up to my own expectations,” Colby said. “It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.”
Another of Esther’s friends, from student theater, Lee Gerstenhaber, 17, was juggling four Advanced Placement classes with intense late-night rehearsals for her starring role as Maggie, the seductive Southern belle in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” It was too much. About 4 a.m one day last fall, she was still fighting her way through Advanced Placement physics homework. She dissolved in tears.
“I had always been able to do it before,” Lee recalled later. “But I finally said to myself, ‘O.K., I’m not Superwoman.’ ”
She dropped physics — and was incandescent as Maggie.
Esther’s schedule includes two Advanced Placement and one honors class. Among certain of her classmates who are mindful that many elite colleges advise prospective applicants to pursue the most rigorous possible course of study, taking two Advanced Placement classes is viewed as “only two A.P.’s.” But Esther says she is simply taking the subjects she is most interested in.
She also shrugged off advice that it would look better on her résumé to take another science class instead of her passion, A.P. Latin. Like so many of her classmates, Esther started taking Latin in the seventh grade, when everyone was saying Latin would help them with the SAT. But now, except for Esther and a handful of other diehards who are devoted to Latin — and to their teacher, Robert Mitchell — everyone else has moved on.
“I like languages,” said Esther, who also takes Advanced Placement Spanish. “And I really like Latin.”
Who Needs a Boyfriend?
This year Esther has been trying life without a boyfriend. It was her mother’s idea. “She’d say, ‘I think it’s time for you to take a break and discover who you are,’ ” Esther said over lunch with Colby. “She was right. I feel better.”
Esther turned to Colby: she seems to pretty much always have a boyfriend.
“I never felt like having a boyfriend was a burden,” Colby said. “I enjoy just being comfortable with someone, being able to spend time together. I don’t think that means I wouldn’t feel comfortable or confident without one.”
Esther said: “I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing. I’m like you. I never thought, ‘If I don’t have a boyfriend I’ll feel totally forlorn and lost.’ ”
But who needs a boyfriend? “My girlfriends have consistently been more important than my boyfriends,” Esther wrote in an e-mail message. “I mean, girlfriends last longer.”
Boyfriends or not, a deeper question for Esther and Colby is how they negotiate their identities as young women. They have grown up watching their mothers, and their friends’ mothers, juggle family and career. They take it for granted that they will be able to carve out similar paths, even if it doesn’t look easy from their vantage point.
They say they want to be both feminine and assertive, like their mothers. But Colby made the point at lunch that she would rather be considered too assertive and less conventionally feminine than “be totally passive and a bystander in my life.”
Esther agreed. She said she admired Cristina, the spunky resident on “Grey’s Anatomy,” one of her favorite TV shows.
“She really stands up for herself and knows who she is, which I aspire to,” Esther said.
Cristina is also “gorgeous,” Esther laughed. “And when she’s taking off her scrubs, she’s always wearing cute lingerie.”
Speaking of lingerie, part of being feminine is feeling good about how you look. Esther is not trying to be one of Newton North’s trendsetters, the girls who show up every day in Ugg boots, designer jeans — or equally cool jeans from the vintage store — and tight-fitting tank tops under the latest North Face jacket.
She never looks “scrubby,” to use the slang for being a slob, but sometimes comes to school in sweats and moccasins.
“I think sometimes I might be trying a little too hard not to conform,” Esther says.
She says she is one of the few girls in her circle who doesn’t have a credit card. But she is hardly immune to the pressure to be a good consumer.
During the discussion around the dining room table, Esther’s mother expressed her astonishment over her daughter’s expertise in designer jeans. They had been people-watching at the mall. Esther, as it turned out, knew the brand of every pair of jeans that went by.
So what were the coolest jeans at Newton North?
“The coolest jeans are True Religions,” Esther said.
“They look,” she said, and here she smiled sheepishly as she stood up to reveal her denim-clad legs, “like these.”
Aliza and several of Esther’s other friends chipped in to buy them for her 17th birthday, in November.
Encouraged to Ease Up a Little
The amazing boys say they admire girls like Esther and Colby.
“I hate it when girls dumb themselves down,” Gabe Gladstone, the co-captain of mock trial, was saying one morning to the other captain, Cameron Ferrey.
Cameron said he felt the same way.
One of Esther’s close friends is Dan Catomeris, a school theater star. “One of the most attractive things about Esther is how smart she is,” said Dan, whose mother is a professor at Harvard Business School. “There’s always been this intellectual tension between us. I see why she likes Kierkegaard — he’s existential, but still Christian. She really likes Descartes. I was not so into Descartes. I really like Hume, Nietzsche, the existentialist authors. The musician we’re most collectively into is Bob Dylan.”
Sometimes, though, everybody wants some of these hard-charging girls to chill out. Tom DePeter, an Advanced Placement English teacher, wants his students to loosen up so they can write original sentences. The theater director, Adam Brown, wants the girls to “let go” in auditions.
Peter Martin, the girls’ cross-country coach, says girls try so hard to please everyone — coaches, teachers, parents — that he bends over backward not to criticize them. “I tell them, ‘Just go out and run.’ ” His team wins consistently.
But how do you chill out and still get into a highly selective college?
One of Esther’s favorite rituals is to hang out at her house with Aliza, eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching a DVD of a favorite program like “The Office.” Their friendship helped Esther and Aliza keep going last fall, when there was hardly time to hang out. Esther recalled in an e-mail message how one night she had telephoned Aliza, who is also a top student, and a cross-country team captain, to say she was feeling overwhelmed.
“I said, ‘Aliza, this is crazy, I have so much homework to do, and I won’t be able to relax until I do it all. I haven’t gone out in weeks!’ And Aliza (who had also been staying in on Fridays and Saturdays to do homework) pointed out: ‘I’d rather get into college.’ ”
By Dec. 15, Newton North was in a frenzy over early admissions answers. Esther’s friend Phoebe Gardener had been accepted to Dartmouth. Her friend Dan Lurie was in at Brown. Harvard wanted Dan Catomeris.
Esther was in calculus class, the last period of the day when her cellphone rang. It was her father. The letter from Williams College — her ideal of the small, liberal arts school — had arrived.
Her father would be at her brother’s basketball game when she got home. Her mother would still be at the office. Esther did not want to be alone when she opened the letter.
“Dad, can you bring it to school?” she asked.
Ten minutes later, when her father arrived, Esther realized that he had somehow not registered the devastating thinness of the envelope. The admissions office was sorry. Williams had had a record number of highly qualified applicants for early admission this year. Esther had been rejected. Not deferred. Rejected.
Her father hugged her as she cried outside her classroom, and then he drove her home.
Esther said several days later: “Maybe it hurt me that I wasn’t an athlete.”
But she was already moving on. “I chose Williams,” she said, with a shrug. “They didn’t choose me back.”
About that thin envelope: Mr. Mobley, unschooled in such intricacies, said he hadn’t paid much attention to it. He had wanted so much for his daughter to get into Williams, he said, and believed so strongly in her, that it was as if he had wished the letter into being an acceptance.
“It was a setback,” Mr. Mobley said weeks later. “But it’s not a failure.”
And Then One Day, a Letter Arrives
Has this all been a temporary insanity?
Esther’s friend Colby learned in February that she had been accepted at the University of Southern California. Soon, more letters of acceptance rolled in: from the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, Tulane. With the college-application pressure behind her, she can go back to being the pragmatic romantic who opened her journal last August and wrote her “life list,” with 35 goals and dreams, in pink ink.
She wants: To write a novel. Own a (red) Jeep Wrangler. Get into college. Name her firstborn daughter Carmen. Go to carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Learn to surf. Live in a Spanish-speaking country. Learn to play the doppio movimiento of Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat. Own a dog. Be a bridesmaid. Vote for president. Write a really good poem. Never get divorced.
In mid-January Esther was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from Centre College, one of her fallback schools, in Kentucky. But she was still dreaming about her remaining top choices: Amherst, Middlebury, Davidson and Smith, her mother’s alma mater.
Esther’s application to Smith included a letter from her father. He wrote about how, when Esther was a baby, they had gone to his wife’s 10th college reunion. He described the alumni parade as an “angelic procession of women in white, decade by decade, at every stage in the course of human life.”
He wrote about seeing the young women, the middle-aged graduates and, finally, “the elderly women, some with the assistance of canes and wheelchairs, but with no diminution of the confidence that a great education brings.”
“I still remember holding Esther as we watched those saints go marching into the central campus for the commencement ceremony,” he wrote.
“Lord,” he concluded, and he could have been talking about any of the schools his daughter still has her heart set on, “I want Esther to be in that number.”
Epilogue: Esther learned last week that she had gotten into Smith. She learned on Saturday that she had been rejected by Amherst and Middlebury. She is still hoping for Davidson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/us/01girls.html?ei=5070&en=8542ef1a2b8dc3e1&ex=1176436800&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all
Here are some of my reactions to the New York Times article, "For Girls, It's be Yourself, and Be Perfect Too." (See below)
It is very true. Girls--of course boys also--today are pressured to achieve on multiple dimensions and then told to still celebrate their youth.
But I do think it is possible to achieve and still be genuine. Students just have to love what they do. I did all my extracurriculars--theater, ultimate frisbee, chinese harp, newspaper, speech team, Broadway Club, Arista, history club, tutoring, etc.--with smiles on my face because I truly enjoyed everything.
Of course the truth is not everyone enjoy everything and they are being pressured to take up everything for the sake of "being well rounded." I think that everyone will feel a lot better when they take a step back and stop worrying about what they think others want them to do and start focusing on just their own passions. Of course, then they'll think about the admissions officers and will start worrying again!
The biggest problem with this is that people start to lose themselves. They live for others and forget who they are. It's sad when freshmen in high school already start looking around for resume-padders. They should be looking to get involved; but too many do it for the wrong reason. It's great that kids can win national spelling bees knowing the word "ursprache," but did all the participants of The Bee memorize dictionaries because they were interested or because their parents told them that they should be interested? One of the scariest things I can imagine would be for people to wake up one day and realize that they have been living for someone else, that no part of their being really belonged to themselves. But it seems that this very thing happens all the time now.
Of course this is still only dwelling on message #1. Message # 2--Be yourself. Have fun. Don't work too hard--adds even more trouble.
Kaavya Viswanathan's scandal-marred "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" seemed to have been exploring this exact tension. Of course I never got to read the whole book since Little, Brown and Company pulled it from the shelves. But from what I managed to read--the free first chapter--high-achieving Opal got rejected by Harvard for not enjoying her youth and relaxing. (I think her real problem was that she wasn't doing everything she was doing for the sake of doing them, but rather for the sake of getting into Harvard.)
I think this kind of rejection does happen, sometimes unfairly, sometimes not enough (I'm probably going to get jumped for this ::laugh::). It definitely doesn't add to a campus community to have prototype nerds stay up in their dorms or the library all day. A lively college needs students who can do more than do well in classes. Life at college is shaped by those students who are willing to have lives outside of classrooms, libraries and labs.
But then some outstanding friends of mine were probably rejected because they were wrongly classified as uninteresting nerds. That coupled with the acceptance of classmates who did whatever possible to secure the top grades, who club-hopped to pad their resumes, and whose achievements also included underage drinking and drug dealing, really demonstrated to me the unfairness of the whole thing.
In the end, life is imperfect and some injustices simply can't be rectified. What we still have is a world full of enough wonderful things to occupy our time and our mind. When we are happy and in tune with the songs of the universe, we will be able to change the world for the better, a little bit at a time.
When Perfection is Not Enough
For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
In an honors philosophy/literature class, Esther Mobley, center, participates in a discussion of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
By SARA RIMER
Published: April 1, 2007
NEWTON, Mass., March 31 — To anyone who knows 17-year-old Esther Mobley, one of the best students at one of the best public high schools in the country, it is absurd to think she doesn’t measure up. But Esther herself is quick to set the record straight.
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Excerpts: How Applying to College is Like 'The Aeneid,' and Other E-mails (April 1, 2007)
Text: Esther Mobley's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Text: Colby Kennedy's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Transcripts: 'The Appearance of Effortlessness' (April 1, 2007)
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
At Newton North High School in Newton, Mass., a Wonder Woman mural offers a role model to some girls. Newton North, one of the best public high schools in the country, gears its teaching toward gears its teaching toward a wide range of students.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up.’
Kat Jiang
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly. This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.’
Esther Mobley
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‘I’m living up to my own expectations. It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.’
Colby Kennedy
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater. You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.’
Julie Mhlaba
“First of all, I’m a terrible athlete,” she said over lunch one day.
“I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly,” she continued. “This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.”
Esther, a willowy, effervescent senior, turned to her friend Colby Kennedy. Colby, 17, is also a great student, a classical pianist, fluent in Spanish, and a three-season varsity runner and track captain. Did Colby worry, Esther asked, that she fell short in some way?
“Or,” said Esther, and now her tone was a touch sarcastic, “do you just have it all already?”
They both burst out laughing.
Esther and Colby are two of the amazing girls at Newton North High School here in this affluent suburb just outside Boston. “Amazing girls” translation: Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns.) Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do.
But being an amazing girl often doesn’t feel like enough these days when you’re competing with all the other amazing girls around the country who are applying to the same elite colleges that you have been encouraged to aspire to practically all your life.
An athlete, after all, is one of the few things Esther isn’t. A few of the things she is: a standout in Advanced Placement Latin and honors philosophy/literature who can expound on the beauty of the subjunctive tense in Catullus and on Kierkegaard’s existential choices. A writer whose junior thesis for Advanced Placement history won Newton North’s top prize. An actress. President of her church youth group.
To spend several months in a pressure cooker like Newton North is to see what a girl can be — what any young person can be — when encouraged by committed teachers and by engaged parents who can give them wide-ranging opportunities.
It is also to see these girls struggle to navigate the conflicting messages they have been absorbing, if not from their parents then from the culture, since elementary school. The first message: Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college — which doesn’t have to be in the Ivy League, or one of the other elites like Williams, Tufts or Bowdoin, but should be a “name” school.
The second message: Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.
And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart.
You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”
“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.
If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything. What it comes down to, in this place and time, is that the eternal adolescent search for self is going on at the same time as the quest for the perfect résumé. For Esther, as for high school seniors everywhere, this is a big weekend for finding out how your résumé measured up: The college acceptances, and rejections, are rolling in.
“You want to achieve,” Esther said. “But how do you achieve and still be genuine?”
If it all seems overwhelming at times, then the multitasking adults in Newton have the answer: Balance. Strive for balance.
But balance is out the window when you’re a high-achieving senior in the home stretch of the race for which all the years of achieving and the disciplined focusing on the future have been preparing you. These students are aware that because more girls apply to college than boys, amid concerns about gender balance, boys may have an edge at some small selective colleges.
“You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater,” said another of Esther’s 17-year-old classmates, Julie Mhlaba, who aspires to medical school and juggles three Advanced Placement classes, gospel choir and a part-time job as a waitress. “You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.”
“You’re supposed to do all these things,” Julie said, “and not go insane.”
Stress Trumps Relaxation
Newton, which has a population of almost 84,000, is known for a liberal sensibility and a high concentration of professionals like doctors, lawyers and academics. Six miles west of Boston, with its heavily settled neighborhoods, bustling downtowns and high numbers of immigrants, Newton is a suburb with an urban feel.
The main shopping area, in Newton Centre, is a concrete manifestation of the conflicting messages Esther and the other girls are constantly struggling to decode. In one five-block stretch are two Starbucks and one Peets Coffee & Tea, several psychotherapists’ offices, three SAT test-prep services, two after-school math programs, and three yoga studios promising relaxation and inner peace.
Smack in the middle of all of this is Esther’s church, the 227-year-old First Baptist, which welcomes everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation or denomination, and where Esther puts in a lot of time.
The test-prep business is booming. Kaplan (“Be the ideal college applicant!”) is practically around the corner from Chyten (“Our average SAT II score across all subjects is 720!”), which is three blocks from Princeton Review (“We’re all about scoring more!”). My First Yoga (for children 3 and up), with its founder playing up her Harvard degree, is conveniently located above Chyten, which includes the SAT Cafe.
High-priced SAT prep has become almost routine at schools like Newton North. Not to hire the extra help is practically an act of rebellion.
“I think it’s unfair,” Esther said, explaining why she decided against an SAT tutor, though she worried about her score (ultimately getting, as she put it, “above 2000”). “Why do I deserve this leg up?”
Parents view Newton’s expensive real estate — the median house price in 2006 was $730,000 — and high taxes as the price of admission to the prized public schools. There are less affluent parents, small-business owners, carpenters, plumbers, social workers and high school guidance counselors, but many of these families arrived decades ago when it was possible to buy a nice two-story Colonial for $150,000 or less.
Newton North, one of two outstanding public high schools here, is known for its academic rigor, but also its vocational education, reflecting the wide range of its 1,967 students. Nearly 73 percent of them are white, 7.3 percent black, nearly 12 percent Asian and 7.5 percent Hispanic. Many of the black and Hispanic students live in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston, and are bused in under a 35-year-old voluntary integration program.
Newton North has a student theater, winning athletic teams and dozens of after-school clubs (ultimate Frisbee, mock trial, black leadership, Hispanic culture, Israeli dance). There is an emphasis on nonconformity — even if it is often conformity dressed up as nonconformity — and an absence of such high school conventions as, say, homecoming queens, valedictorians and class rankings.
‘Superhuman’ Resistance
Jennifer Price, the Newton North principal, said she and her faculty emphasized to students that they could win admission to many excellent colleges without organizing their entire lives around résumé building. By age 14, Ms. Price said, the school’s highest fliers are already worrying about marketing themselves to colleges: “You almost have to be superhuman to resist the pressure.”
If more students aren’t listening to the message that they can relax a bit, one reason may be that a lot of the people delivering the message went to the elite colleges. Ms. Price has an undergraduate degree from Princeton — she makes a point of saying that she got in because she was recruited to play varsity field hockey — and is a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Many of the teachers have degrees from the Ivy League and other elite schools.
But the message also tends to get drowned out when parents bump into each other at Whole Foods and share news about whose son or daughter just got accepted (or not) at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn or Stanford.
Or when the final edition of the award-winning student newspaper, the Newtonite, comes out every June, with its two-page spread listing all the seniors, and their colleges. For that entire week, Esther says, everyone pores over the names, obsessing about who is going where.
“In a lot of ways, it’s all about that one week,” she said.
There is something about the lives these girls lead — their jam-packed schedules, the amped-up multitasking, the focus on a narrow group of the nation’s most selective colleges — that speaks of a profound anxiety in the young people, but perhaps even more so in their parents, about the ability of the next generation to afford to raise their families in a place like Newton.
Admission to a brand-name college is viewed by many parents, and their children, as holding the best promise of professional success and economic well-being in an increasingly competitive world.
“It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up,” Kat said.
Esther, however, is aiming for a decidedly nonlucrative profession. Inspired by her father, Greg Mobley, who is a Biblical scholar, she wants to be a theologian.
She says she is interested in “Scripture, the Bible, the development of organized religion, thinking about all this, writing about all this, teaching about all this.” More than anything else, she wrote in an e-mail message, she wants to be a writer, “and religion is what I most like to write about.”
“I have such a strong sense of being supported by my faith,” she continued. “It gives me priorities. That’s why I’m not concerned about making money, because I know that there is so much more to living a rich life than having money.”
First Baptist Church counts on Esther. She organizes pancake suppers, tutors a young congregant and helps lead the youth group’s outreach to the poor.
On a springlike Sunday afternoon toward the end of winter, Esther could be found with her father, her two brothers and members of her youth group handing out food to homeless people on Boston Common. She had spent the morning in church.
About 2 p.m., a text message flashed across her cellphone from Gabe Gladstone, a co-captain of mock trial: “Where are you?” Esther, a key member of the group, was needed at a meeting.
Esther messaged back: “I’m feeding the homeless, I’ll come when God’s work is done.”
Fending Off ‘Anorexia of the Soul’
On a Saturday afternoon in late November, Esther and her mother, Page Kelley, sat at the dining room table talking about the contradictions and complexities of life in Newton. Esther’s father was with his sons, Gregory, 15, who plays varsity basketball for Newton North, and Tommy, 10, coaching Tommy’s basketball team.
Ms. Kelley, 47, an assistant federal public defender, and Mr. Mobley, 49, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, grew up in Kentucky and came north for college. Ms. Kelley is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard Law School. Mr. Mobley has two graduate degrees from Harvard.
Amid all the competitiveness and consumerism, and the obsession with achievement in Newton, Ms. Kelley said, “You just hope your child doesn’t have anorexia of the soul.”
“It’s the idea that you end up with this strange drive,” she continued. “One of the great things about Esther is that she does have some kind of spiritual life. You just hope your kid has good priorities. We keep saying to her: ‘The name of the college you go to doesn’t matter. There are a lot of good colleges out there.’ ”
Esther said her mother is her role model. “I think the work she does is very noble,” she said.
“She has these impressive degrees,” Esther said, “and she chooses to do something where she’s not making as much money as she could.”
As close as mother and daughter are, there is one important generational divide. “My mother applied to one college,” Esther said. “She got in, she went.”
Back from basketball practice with his sons, Mr. Mobley joined the conversation. To Mr. Mobley, a formalized, competitive culture pervades everything from youth sports to getting into college. He pointed out to his wife that the lives of their three children were far more directed “than any of the aimless hours I spent in my youth daydreaming and meandering.”
Ms. Kelley asked, “Is that because of us?”
“Yes — and no,” he said. “It’s because of 2006 in America, and the Northeast.”
The bar for achievement keeps being raised for each generation, he said: “Our children start where we finished.”
As the afternoon turned into early evening, Esther went out to meet her best friend, Aliza Edelstein. The family dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Bandit, was underfoot, trolling for affection.
“I’m not worried about Esther because I know her,” Mr. Mobley said. “Esther’s character is sealed in some fundamental way.”
Ms. Kelley, however, wondered aloud: “Don’t you worry that she never rebelled? When I was growing up, you were supposed to rebel.”
But she acknowledged that she had sent her own mixed signals. “As I’m sitting here saying I don’t care what kind of grades she gets, I’m thinking, she comes home with a B, and I say: ‘What’d you get a B for? Who gave you a B? I’m going to talk to them.’
“You do want your child to do well.”
Mr. Mobley nodded. “We’re not above it,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
On a Fierce Mission to Shine
To sit in on classes with Esther in her vibrant high school where, between classes, the central corridor, called Main Street, is a bustling social hub, is to see why these students are genuinely excited about school.
Their teachers are pushing them to wrestle with big questions: What is truth? What does Virgil’s “Aeneid” tell us about destiny and individual happiness? How does DNA work? How is the global economy reshaping the world (subtext: you have to be fluid and highly educated to survive in the new economy)?
Esther’s ethics teacher, Joel Greifinger, spent considerable time this winter on moral theories. An examination of John Rawls’s theory of justice led to extensive discussions about American society and class inequality. Among the reading material Mr. Greifinger presented was research showing the correlation between income and SAT scores.
The class strengthened Esther’s earlier decision not to take private SAT prep.
In her honors philosophy/literature class, Esther has been reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, “Sophie’s Choice” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Amid a discussion of the strangely unsettling emptiness Frankl encountered upon his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Esther quoted Sartre: “You are condemned to freedom.”
Her honors teacher, Mike Fieleke, nodded. “That’s the existential idea. If we don’t awaken to that freedom, then we are slaves to our fate.”
A few weeks earlier, Esther, taking stock of her own life, wrote in an e-mail message: “I feel like I’m on the verge. I feel like I’m just about to get out of high school, to enter into adulthood, to reach some kind of state of independence and peacefulness and enlightenment.”
More immediately, she wrote, Mr. Fieleke had told her “he thought, from reading my papers and hearing me speak in class, that I was just on the verge of some really great idea.”
“I asked him if he thought that idea would come by next Wednesday, when our big Hamlet paper was due. He said I might feel this way all year long.”
The most intensely pressurized academic force field at school is the one surrounding the students on the Advanced Placement and honors track. About 145 of the 500 seniors are taking a combined total of three, four and five Advanced Placement and honors classes, with a few students even juggling six and seven.
Esther’s friend Colby takes four Advanced Placement and one honors class. “I’m living up to my own expectations,” Colby said. “It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.”
Another of Esther’s friends, from student theater, Lee Gerstenhaber, 17, was juggling four Advanced Placement classes with intense late-night rehearsals for her starring role as Maggie, the seductive Southern belle in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” It was too much. About 4 a.m one day last fall, she was still fighting her way through Advanced Placement physics homework. She dissolved in tears.
“I had always been able to do it before,” Lee recalled later. “But I finally said to myself, ‘O.K., I’m not Superwoman.’ ”
She dropped physics — and was incandescent as Maggie.
Esther’s schedule includes two Advanced Placement and one honors class. Among certain of her classmates who are mindful that many elite colleges advise prospective applicants to pursue the most rigorous possible course of study, taking two Advanced Placement classes is viewed as “only two A.P.’s.” But Esther says she is simply taking the subjects she is most interested in.
She also shrugged off advice that it would look better on her résumé to take another science class instead of her passion, A.P. Latin. Like so many of her classmates, Esther started taking Latin in the seventh grade, when everyone was saying Latin would help them with the SAT. But now, except for Esther and a handful of other diehards who are devoted to Latin — and to their teacher, Robert Mitchell — everyone else has moved on.
“I like languages,” said Esther, who also takes Advanced Placement Spanish. “And I really like Latin.”
Who Needs a Boyfriend?
This year Esther has been trying life without a boyfriend. It was her mother’s idea. “She’d say, ‘I think it’s time for you to take a break and discover who you are,’ ” Esther said over lunch with Colby. “She was right. I feel better.”
Esther turned to Colby: she seems to pretty much always have a boyfriend.
“I never felt like having a boyfriend was a burden,” Colby said. “I enjoy just being comfortable with someone, being able to spend time together. I don’t think that means I wouldn’t feel comfortable or confident without one.”
Esther said: “I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing. I’m like you. I never thought, ‘If I don’t have a boyfriend I’ll feel totally forlorn and lost.’ ”
But who needs a boyfriend? “My girlfriends have consistently been more important than my boyfriends,” Esther wrote in an e-mail message. “I mean, girlfriends last longer.”
Boyfriends or not, a deeper question for Esther and Colby is how they negotiate their identities as young women. They have grown up watching their mothers, and their friends’ mothers, juggle family and career. They take it for granted that they will be able to carve out similar paths, even if it doesn’t look easy from their vantage point.
They say they want to be both feminine and assertive, like their mothers. But Colby made the point at lunch that she would rather be considered too assertive and less conventionally feminine than “be totally passive and a bystander in my life.”
Esther agreed. She said she admired Cristina, the spunky resident on “Grey’s Anatomy,” one of her favorite TV shows.
“She really stands up for herself and knows who she is, which I aspire to,” Esther said.
Cristina is also “gorgeous,” Esther laughed. “And when she’s taking off her scrubs, she’s always wearing cute lingerie.”
Speaking of lingerie, part of being feminine is feeling good about how you look. Esther is not trying to be one of Newton North’s trendsetters, the girls who show up every day in Ugg boots, designer jeans — or equally cool jeans from the vintage store — and tight-fitting tank tops under the latest North Face jacket.
She never looks “scrubby,” to use the slang for being a slob, but sometimes comes to school in sweats and moccasins.
“I think sometimes I might be trying a little too hard not to conform,” Esther says.
She says she is one of the few girls in her circle who doesn’t have a credit card. But she is hardly immune to the pressure to be a good consumer.
During the discussion around the dining room table, Esther’s mother expressed her astonishment over her daughter’s expertise in designer jeans. They had been people-watching at the mall. Esther, as it turned out, knew the brand of every pair of jeans that went by.
So what were the coolest jeans at Newton North?
“The coolest jeans are True Religions,” Esther said.
“They look,” she said, and here she smiled sheepishly as she stood up to reveal her denim-clad legs, “like these.”
Aliza and several of Esther’s other friends chipped in to buy them for her 17th birthday, in November.
Encouraged to Ease Up a Little
The amazing boys say they admire girls like Esther and Colby.
“I hate it when girls dumb themselves down,” Gabe Gladstone, the co-captain of mock trial, was saying one morning to the other captain, Cameron Ferrey.
Cameron said he felt the same way.
One of Esther’s close friends is Dan Catomeris, a school theater star. “One of the most attractive things about Esther is how smart she is,” said Dan, whose mother is a professor at Harvard Business School. “There’s always been this intellectual tension between us. I see why she likes Kierkegaard — he’s existential, but still Christian. She really likes Descartes. I was not so into Descartes. I really like Hume, Nietzsche, the existentialist authors. The musician we’re most collectively into is Bob Dylan.”
Sometimes, though, everybody wants some of these hard-charging girls to chill out. Tom DePeter, an Advanced Placement English teacher, wants his students to loosen up so they can write original sentences. The theater director, Adam Brown, wants the girls to “let go” in auditions.
Peter Martin, the girls’ cross-country coach, says girls try so hard to please everyone — coaches, teachers, parents — that he bends over backward not to criticize them. “I tell them, ‘Just go out and run.’ ” His team wins consistently.
But how do you chill out and still get into a highly selective college?
One of Esther’s favorite rituals is to hang out at her house with Aliza, eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching a DVD of a favorite program like “The Office.” Their friendship helped Esther and Aliza keep going last fall, when there was hardly time to hang out. Esther recalled in an e-mail message how one night she had telephoned Aliza, who is also a top student, and a cross-country team captain, to say she was feeling overwhelmed.
“I said, ‘Aliza, this is crazy, I have so much homework to do, and I won’t be able to relax until I do it all. I haven’t gone out in weeks!’ And Aliza (who had also been staying in on Fridays and Saturdays to do homework) pointed out: ‘I’d rather get into college.’ ”
By Dec. 15, Newton North was in a frenzy over early admissions answers. Esther’s friend Phoebe Gardener had been accepted to Dartmouth. Her friend Dan Lurie was in at Brown. Harvard wanted Dan Catomeris.
Esther was in calculus class, the last period of the day when her cellphone rang. It was her father. The letter from Williams College — her ideal of the small, liberal arts school — had arrived.
Her father would be at her brother’s basketball game when she got home. Her mother would still be at the office. Esther did not want to be alone when she opened the letter.
“Dad, can you bring it to school?” she asked.
Ten minutes later, when her father arrived, Esther realized that he had somehow not registered the devastating thinness of the envelope. The admissions office was sorry. Williams had had a record number of highly qualified applicants for early admission this year. Esther had been rejected. Not deferred. Rejected.
Her father hugged her as she cried outside her classroom, and then he drove her home.
Esther said several days later: “Maybe it hurt me that I wasn’t an athlete.”
But she was already moving on. “I chose Williams,” she said, with a shrug. “They didn’t choose me back.”
About that thin envelope: Mr. Mobley, unschooled in such intricacies, said he hadn’t paid much attention to it. He had wanted so much for his daughter to get into Williams, he said, and believed so strongly in her, that it was as if he had wished the letter into being an acceptance.
“It was a setback,” Mr. Mobley said weeks later. “But it’s not a failure.”
And Then One Day, a Letter Arrives
Has this all been a temporary insanity?
Esther’s friend Colby learned in February that she had been accepted at the University of Southern California. Soon, more letters of acceptance rolled in: from the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, Tulane. With the college-application pressure behind her, she can go back to being the pragmatic romantic who opened her journal last August and wrote her “life list,” with 35 goals and dreams, in pink ink.
She wants: To write a novel. Own a (red) Jeep Wrangler. Get into college. Name her firstborn daughter Carmen. Go to carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Learn to surf. Live in a Spanish-speaking country. Learn to play the doppio movimiento of Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat. Own a dog. Be a bridesmaid. Vote for president. Write a really good poem. Never get divorced.
In mid-January Esther was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from Centre College, one of her fallback schools, in Kentucky. But she was still dreaming about her remaining top choices: Amherst, Middlebury, Davidson and Smith, her mother’s alma mater.
Esther’s application to Smith included a letter from her father. He wrote about how, when Esther was a baby, they had gone to his wife’s 10th college reunion. He described the alumni parade as an “angelic procession of women in white, decade by decade, at every stage in the course of human life.”
He wrote about seeing the young women, the middle-aged graduates and, finally, “the elderly women, some with the assistance of canes and wheelchairs, but with no diminution of the confidence that a great education brings.”
“I still remember holding Esther as we watched those saints go marching into the central campus for the commencement ceremony,” he wrote.
“Lord,” he concluded, and he could have been talking about any of the schools his daughter still has her heart set on, “I want Esther to be in that number.”
Epilogue: Esther learned last week that she had gotten into Smith. She learned on Saturday that she had been rejected by Amherst and Middlebury. She is still hoping for Davidson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/us/01girls.html?ei=5070&en=8542ef1a2b8dc3e1&ex=1176436800&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Harvard Club Says "Don't Do It"
Harvard club promotes abstinence By JESSE HARLAN ALDERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Mar 22, 2:39 PM ET
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Sometime between the founding of a student-run porn magazine and the day the campus health center advertised "Free Lube," Harvard University seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray decided to fight back against what they see as too much mindless sex at the Ivy League school.
ADVERTISEMENT
They founded a student group called True Love Revolution to promote abstinence on campus. The group, created earlier this school year, has more than 90 members on its Facebook.com page and drew about half that many to an ice cream social.
Harvard treats sex — or "hooking up" — so casually that "sometimes I wonder if sex is even a remotely serious thing," said Kinsella, who is dating Murray.
Other schools around the country have small groups devoted to abstinence. On most campuses, they are religious organizations. Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have Anscombe Societies, secular organizations named after an English philosopher and Roman Catholic. True Love Revolution is secular as well.
Some feminists, in particular, have criticized True Love Revolution's message.
Harvard student Rebecca Singh said she was offended by a valentine the group sent to the dormitory mailboxes of all freshmen. It read: "Why wait? Because you're worth it."
"I think they thought that we might not be `ruined' yet," Singh said. "It's a symptom of that culture we have that values a woman on her purity. It's a relic."
Others on campus have mocked the group. Murray said his friends take pleasure in loudly, and graphically, discussing their sex lives just to taunt him.
"On campus there is such a strong attitude of pluralism and acceptance, but then it doesn't extend to this," Kinsella said.
In the student paper, The Harvard Crimson, columnist Jessica C. Coggins praised the group's low-key approach and scolded Harvard students for their "laughter at the virgin." She said students on the campus, which has 6,700 undergraduates, should "find a different confidence booster than making fun of celibate peers."
True Love Revolution members say the problem starts with the university. They say Harvard has implicitly led students to believe that having sex at college is a foregone conclusion by requiring incoming freshman to attend a seminar on date-rape that does not mention abstinence, by placing condoms in freshmen dorms, and by hosting racy lecturers. (Harvard students have also launched H-Bomb, a magazine featuring racy photos of undergraduates.)
"Sometimes that voice on campus is so overwhelming that students committed to abstinence almost feel compelled to abandon their convictions," Murray said. He acknowledged he "slipped up" and had sex earlier in college but said he has returned to abstinence with Kinsella.
Dr. David Rosenthal, director of Harvard health services, disputed the notion that the university promotes sex.
He said students mistakenly think everyone on campus is having sex. The National College Health Assessment Survey, which included Harvard and hundreds of other campuses, found that about 29 percent of students reported not having sex in the past school year. For the 71 percent who are having sex, it is crucial to promote safety, Rosenthal said.
"Some students may have a feeling that acknowledgment is condoning," he said, "and it's not."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070322/ap_on_re_us/harvard_abstinence
Thu Mar 22, 2:39 PM ET
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Sometime between the founding of a student-run porn magazine and the day the campus health center advertised "Free Lube," Harvard University seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray decided to fight back against what they see as too much mindless sex at the Ivy League school.
ADVERTISEMENT
They founded a student group called True Love Revolution to promote abstinence on campus. The group, created earlier this school year, has more than 90 members on its Facebook.com page and drew about half that many to an ice cream social.
Harvard treats sex — or "hooking up" — so casually that "sometimes I wonder if sex is even a remotely serious thing," said Kinsella, who is dating Murray.
Other schools around the country have small groups devoted to abstinence. On most campuses, they are religious organizations. Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have Anscombe Societies, secular organizations named after an English philosopher and Roman Catholic. True Love Revolution is secular as well.
Some feminists, in particular, have criticized True Love Revolution's message.
Harvard student Rebecca Singh said she was offended by a valentine the group sent to the dormitory mailboxes of all freshmen. It read: "Why wait? Because you're worth it."
"I think they thought that we might not be `ruined' yet," Singh said. "It's a symptom of that culture we have that values a woman on her purity. It's a relic."
Others on campus have mocked the group. Murray said his friends take pleasure in loudly, and graphically, discussing their sex lives just to taunt him.
"On campus there is such a strong attitude of pluralism and acceptance, but then it doesn't extend to this," Kinsella said.
In the student paper, The Harvard Crimson, columnist Jessica C. Coggins praised the group's low-key approach and scolded Harvard students for their "laughter at the virgin." She said students on the campus, which has 6,700 undergraduates, should "find a different confidence booster than making fun of celibate peers."
True Love Revolution members say the problem starts with the university. They say Harvard has implicitly led students to believe that having sex at college is a foregone conclusion by requiring incoming freshman to attend a seminar on date-rape that does not mention abstinence, by placing condoms in freshmen dorms, and by hosting racy lecturers. (Harvard students have also launched H-Bomb, a magazine featuring racy photos of undergraduates.)
"Sometimes that voice on campus is so overwhelming that students committed to abstinence almost feel compelled to abandon their convictions," Murray said. He acknowledged he "slipped up" and had sex earlier in college but said he has returned to abstinence with Kinsella.
Dr. David Rosenthal, director of Harvard health services, disputed the notion that the university promotes sex.
He said students mistakenly think everyone on campus is having sex. The National College Health Assessment Survey, which included Harvard and hundreds of other campuses, found that about 29 percent of students reported not having sex in the past school year. For the 71 percent who are having sex, it is crucial to promote safety, Rosenthal said.
"Some students may have a feeling that acknowledgment is condoning," he said, "and it's not."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070322/ap_on_re_us/harvard_abstinence
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Northeast Student Energy Summit
Northeast Student Energy Summit
Imagine being a part of history. Imagine walking in the street with hundreds of people demanding immediate, comprehensive and bold global warming policies. Imagine being a part of the largest climate demonstration to date in the country. Imagine spending a day being trained by top level organizers about how you can take action against global warming on your campus, in your community and in your state… Sound good?
Join us on March 23-25 in Boston, MA for the 5th Annual Northeast Student Energy Summit and make history.
REGISTER FOR THE SUMMIT HERE
The Interfaith March for Climate Rescue is a moral call for swift, bold, and comprehensive political action to address global warming. It starts in Western Massachusetts on March 16, 2007 and ends in Boston on March 24, 2007. On March 24 th there will be an interfaith service and a rally in downtown Boston. We’re hoping to make it the biggest climate action in the United States to date.
The 5th Annual Northeast Student Climate Summit is a way for students to join the Interfaith March activities, meet students across the Northeast working on similar issues and receive trainings about how to join the youth clean energy movement and push for clean energy policies on your campus, in your community and in your state. We’ll be joining the March 24 th climate actions. We’ll also be organizing an amazing series of skills trainings at Boston University throughout the whole weekend so youth will leave the Northeast Climate Summit ready to take on the challenge of a generation- global warming.
It’s time for youth to join together and demand a just, sustainable and clean energy future. Come to the Northeast Student Climate Summit. Bring yourself. Bring your friends. Bring your organization. Bring a busload of people from your campus. We’re rising to the challenge and we all need to be there.
REGISTER FOR THE SUMMIT HERE
Please try to find housing in Boston. If you can’t get housing on your own, we can provide it. Food will be provided. Registration fee is $15-50, on a sliding scale. You can probably get this money from your school- ask your student affairs office! If you aren’t able to afford the registration fee, please contact maura [at] ssc.org for information about travel scholarships.
Want to be a part of the Interfaith March for Climate Rescue?
For more information and to register, check out www.climatewalk.org. Join the ENERGY ACTION MARCHING TEAM and march with other folks from the youth clean energy movement.
CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES! We’ll keep the site updated with all the info you need to know about the Northeast Student Climate Summit.
To volunteer for the Northeast Student Climate Summit please contact Maura Cowley at maura [at] ssc.org. We think you’re super awesome and cool when you volunteer!
Join the SSC Northeast Forum - connect with fellow activists in the Northeast:
Name:
E-mail address:
http://www.ssc.org/nesummit/
Imagine being a part of history. Imagine walking in the street with hundreds of people demanding immediate, comprehensive and bold global warming policies. Imagine being a part of the largest climate demonstration to date in the country. Imagine spending a day being trained by top level organizers about how you can take action against global warming on your campus, in your community and in your state… Sound good?
Join us on March 23-25 in Boston, MA for the 5th Annual Northeast Student Energy Summit and make history.
REGISTER FOR THE SUMMIT HERE
The Interfaith March for Climate Rescue is a moral call for swift, bold, and comprehensive political action to address global warming. It starts in Western Massachusetts on March 16, 2007 and ends in Boston on March 24, 2007. On March 24 th there will be an interfaith service and a rally in downtown Boston. We’re hoping to make it the biggest climate action in the United States to date.
The 5th Annual Northeast Student Climate Summit is a way for students to join the Interfaith March activities, meet students across the Northeast working on similar issues and receive trainings about how to join the youth clean energy movement and push for clean energy policies on your campus, in your community and in your state. We’ll be joining the March 24 th climate actions. We’ll also be organizing an amazing series of skills trainings at Boston University throughout the whole weekend so youth will leave the Northeast Climate Summit ready to take on the challenge of a generation- global warming.
It’s time for youth to join together and demand a just, sustainable and clean energy future. Come to the Northeast Student Climate Summit. Bring yourself. Bring your friends. Bring your organization. Bring a busload of people from your campus. We’re rising to the challenge and we all need to be there.
REGISTER FOR THE SUMMIT HERE
Please try to find housing in Boston. If you can’t get housing on your own, we can provide it. Food will be provided. Registration fee is $15-50, on a sliding scale. You can probably get this money from your school- ask your student affairs office! If you aren’t able to afford the registration fee, please contact maura [at] ssc.org for information about travel scholarships.
Want to be a part of the Interfaith March for Climate Rescue?
For more information and to register, check out www.climatewalk.org. Join the ENERGY ACTION MARCHING TEAM and march with other folks from the youth clean energy movement.
CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES! We’ll keep the site updated with all the info you need to know about the Northeast Student Climate Summit.
To volunteer for the Northeast Student Climate Summit please contact Maura Cowley at maura [at] ssc.org. We think you’re super awesome and cool when you volunteer!
Join the SSC Northeast Forum - connect with fellow activists in the Northeast:
Name:
E-mail address:
http://www.ssc.org/nesummit/
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
AAMC on Current Status of the Higher Education Act
Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act
Related Resources
Compilation of Federal Education Laws (House Education and Workforce Committee)
May 26, 2004, ACE Letter to the House on Reauthorization
H.R. 609
S. 1614
AAMC Documents
AAMC Letter on Accreditation Provisions of HEA Reauthorization (PDF, 3 pages - 49KB)
AAMC Letter to the Senate on HEA Reauthorization (PDF, 3 pages - 47KB)
Medical Educational Costs and Student Debt: A Working Group Report to the AAMC Governance (PDF, 17 pages - 1.52MB)
This page contains documents in Portable Document Format (PDF). The Adobe Acrobat® Reader® is required to view PDF documents. Download Acrobat® Reader®.
Current Status
Current authority for the Higher Education Act (HEA) expired on Sept. 30, 2003, however several extensions have been enacted, making no policy changes but allowing uninterrupted administration of the programs. President Bush Sept. 30 signed the "Second Higher Education Extension Act of 2006" (P.L. 109-238) to extend temporarily HEA through June 30, 2007. The House and Senate education committees are expected to resume consideration of HEA reauthorization in 2007.
The President Feb. 8, 2006, signed the "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005" (S. 1932, P.L. 109-171), which includes many of the student loan provisions from HEA reauthorization (H.R. 609, S. 1614). The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the changes to the higher education programs in P.L. 109-171 will generate a net $11.9 billion in savings between 2006 and 2010 and $29.0 billion in savings between 2006 and 2015. While the law's provisions mandate savings of over $20 billion between 2006 and 2010 from higher education programs, $9 billion is recycled back into student aid. A majority of the savings are generated through increases to borrowers' interest rates and changes to lender-yield formulas.
Of particular interest to medical schools, the new law:
extends authority for Family Federal Education Loan Program (FFELP) through 2012;
expands the loan eligibility for the federal Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) loan program to include graduate and professional students;
increases annual unsubsidized Stafford loan limits for graduate and professional students from $10,000 to $12,000;
increases the interest rate for a PLUS loan in the FFELP from 7.9 percent to 8.5 percent;
creates a parallel fee structure for the FFELP and Direct Loan (DL) programs, incrementally reducing net borrower loan fees in both the FFELP and DL over the next 5 years to 1 percent in 2010;
prevents reconsolidation of previously consolidated loans under both the FFELP and DL programs unless they are being consolidated with additional student loans;
repeals spousal and in-school consolidation of FFELP and DL loans;
limits "School as Lender" programs to Stafford Loans to graduate and professional students;
allows the one time cost of obtaining the first professional credentials to be included in total cost of attendance for students enrolled in a program requiring professional licensure or certification;
disqualifies students from eligibility for FFELP or DL student aid if they have committed a crime involving fraud in obtaining Title IV funds and have not fully repaid those funds; and
limits the suspension of eligibility for students convicted of drug offenses to those that occurred during the period the student received FFELP or DL student aid.
The President June 15 signed a FY 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill (H.R. 4939), repealing the single-holder rule. The single-holder rule restricted consolidation of loans under the Federal Family Educational Loan Program (FFELP) by prohibiting borrowers whose FFELP loans are currently with a single lender from consolidating under different lenders.
Congressional Activity
The House March 30 approved the College Access and Opportunity Act of 2005 (H.R. 609), which reauthorizes HEA through 2012. The night before its consideration on the House Floor, House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chair Howard "Buck" McKeon struck two provisions from the bill. One provision would have revised the formula used to allocate funds for the government's campus-based student-aid programs. The other would have allowed the Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General to audit the financial records of institutions that repeatedly raise their tuition by more than twice the rate of inflation.
H.R. 609 includes two studies on medical education. A provision introduced by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), an orthopedic surgeon, requires the "Secretary of Education to conduct a study of the indebtedness of medical students, asking the question of whether the cost of medical school is becoming prohibitive and whether the best and brightest individuals are not choosing careers in medicine because of the potential debt burden." Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), a heart surgeon, and Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) sponsored a second study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to evaluate and determine reasons for the decline in the number of medical school graduates entering residency programs lasting more than 5 years.
Rep. Boustany and Rep. Andrews also sponsored an approved amendment that adds "medical specialists" to a new loan forgiveness program for service in "areas of national need." Eligible medical residents must be enrolled in a residency program that requires more than 5 years of graduate medical education training and has fewer US medical school graduate applicants than the total number of training and fellowship positions available. Participants in the loan forgiveness program will be eligible for $5,000 each year of training after their 5th year.
H.R. 609 also requires that accrediting associations or agencies enforce standards that "consider the stated missions of institutions of higher education, including religious missions."
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions unanimously approved without amendment its version of HEA reauthorization Sept. 8, 2005. It is unclear whether this bill will be considered for a Senate vote this year.
AAMC Activity
With the high debt levels of medical school graduates, many medical students come up against the annual and even the aggregate limits for federal Stafford education loans. Because the current limits have not been raised in over a decade, the Association believes that these limits should be adjusted to have at least kept up with the cost of inflation. Additionally, the unique nature of residency training makes repayment of these high debt burdens difficult in the years immediately following medical school graduation. Specifically, the AAMC advocacy agenda for the HEA reauthorization has been to support increasing the annual limit on subsidized Stafford loans from the current $8,500 to at least $12,000, and to extend the Economic Hardship Deferment throughout the initial residency period for individuals that continue to qualify. The Association also supports including all school-certified educational debt in the calculation used to determine eligibility for the deferment.
The AAMC sent a comment letter Nov 15, 2005, to the House and Senate Education Committees expressing concerns regarding the accreditation provisions of the HEA reauthorization bills (H.R. 609, S. 1614). The letter focuses on several changes in accrediting bodies' reporting requirements and recommends that public disclosure of sensitive findings remain at the discretion of the institution. Additionally, the AAMC recommends the deletion of provisions that require accrediting associations or agencies to enforce standards based on the institution's mission.
Contact
Matthew Shick, Legislative Analyst
AAMC Office of Governmental Relations
mshick@aamc.org
(202) 828-0525
Related Resources
Compilation of Federal Education Laws (House Education and Workforce Committee)
May 26, 2004, ACE Letter to the House on Reauthorization
H.R. 609
S. 1614
AAMC Documents
AAMC Letter on Accreditation Provisions of HEA Reauthorization (PDF, 3 pages - 49KB)
AAMC Letter to the Senate on HEA Reauthorization (PDF, 3 pages - 47KB)
Medical Educational Costs and Student Debt: A Working Group Report to the AAMC Governance (PDF, 17 pages - 1.52MB)
This page contains documents in Portable Document Format (PDF). The Adobe Acrobat® Reader® is required to view PDF documents. Download Acrobat® Reader®.
Current Status
Current authority for the Higher Education Act (HEA) expired on Sept. 30, 2003, however several extensions have been enacted, making no policy changes but allowing uninterrupted administration of the programs. President Bush Sept. 30 signed the "Second Higher Education Extension Act of 2006" (P.L. 109-238) to extend temporarily HEA through June 30, 2007. The House and Senate education committees are expected to resume consideration of HEA reauthorization in 2007.
The President Feb. 8, 2006, signed the "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005" (S. 1932, P.L. 109-171), which includes many of the student loan provisions from HEA reauthorization (H.R. 609, S. 1614). The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the changes to the higher education programs in P.L. 109-171 will generate a net $11.9 billion in savings between 2006 and 2010 and $29.0 billion in savings between 2006 and 2015. While the law's provisions mandate savings of over $20 billion between 2006 and 2010 from higher education programs, $9 billion is recycled back into student aid. A majority of the savings are generated through increases to borrowers' interest rates and changes to lender-yield formulas.
Of particular interest to medical schools, the new law:
extends authority for Family Federal Education Loan Program (FFELP) through 2012;
expands the loan eligibility for the federal Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) loan program to include graduate and professional students;
increases annual unsubsidized Stafford loan limits for graduate and professional students from $10,000 to $12,000;
increases the interest rate for a PLUS loan in the FFELP from 7.9 percent to 8.5 percent;
creates a parallel fee structure for the FFELP and Direct Loan (DL) programs, incrementally reducing net borrower loan fees in both the FFELP and DL over the next 5 years to 1 percent in 2010;
prevents reconsolidation of previously consolidated loans under both the FFELP and DL programs unless they are being consolidated with additional student loans;
repeals spousal and in-school consolidation of FFELP and DL loans;
limits "School as Lender" programs to Stafford Loans to graduate and professional students;
allows the one time cost of obtaining the first professional credentials to be included in total cost of attendance for students enrolled in a program requiring professional licensure or certification;
disqualifies students from eligibility for FFELP or DL student aid if they have committed a crime involving fraud in obtaining Title IV funds and have not fully repaid those funds; and
limits the suspension of eligibility for students convicted of drug offenses to those that occurred during the period the student received FFELP or DL student aid.
The President June 15 signed a FY 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill (H.R. 4939), repealing the single-holder rule. The single-holder rule restricted consolidation of loans under the Federal Family Educational Loan Program (FFELP) by prohibiting borrowers whose FFELP loans are currently with a single lender from consolidating under different lenders.
Congressional Activity
The House March 30 approved the College Access and Opportunity Act of 2005 (H.R. 609), which reauthorizes HEA through 2012. The night before its consideration on the House Floor, House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chair Howard "Buck" McKeon struck two provisions from the bill. One provision would have revised the formula used to allocate funds for the government's campus-based student-aid programs. The other would have allowed the Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General to audit the financial records of institutions that repeatedly raise their tuition by more than twice the rate of inflation.
H.R. 609 includes two studies on medical education. A provision introduced by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), an orthopedic surgeon, requires the "Secretary of Education to conduct a study of the indebtedness of medical students, asking the question of whether the cost of medical school is becoming prohibitive and whether the best and brightest individuals are not choosing careers in medicine because of the potential debt burden." Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), a heart surgeon, and Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) sponsored a second study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to evaluate and determine reasons for the decline in the number of medical school graduates entering residency programs lasting more than 5 years.
Rep. Boustany and Rep. Andrews also sponsored an approved amendment that adds "medical specialists" to a new loan forgiveness program for service in "areas of national need." Eligible medical residents must be enrolled in a residency program that requires more than 5 years of graduate medical education training and has fewer US medical school graduate applicants than the total number of training and fellowship positions available. Participants in the loan forgiveness program will be eligible for $5,000 each year of training after their 5th year.
H.R. 609 also requires that accrediting associations or agencies enforce standards that "consider the stated missions of institutions of higher education, including religious missions."
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions unanimously approved without amendment its version of HEA reauthorization Sept. 8, 2005. It is unclear whether this bill will be considered for a Senate vote this year.
AAMC Activity
With the high debt levels of medical school graduates, many medical students come up against the annual and even the aggregate limits for federal Stafford education loans. Because the current limits have not been raised in over a decade, the Association believes that these limits should be adjusted to have at least kept up with the cost of inflation. Additionally, the unique nature of residency training makes repayment of these high debt burdens difficult in the years immediately following medical school graduation. Specifically, the AAMC advocacy agenda for the HEA reauthorization has been to support increasing the annual limit on subsidized Stafford loans from the current $8,500 to at least $12,000, and to extend the Economic Hardship Deferment throughout the initial residency period for individuals that continue to qualify. The Association also supports including all school-certified educational debt in the calculation used to determine eligibility for the deferment.
The AAMC sent a comment letter Nov 15, 2005, to the House and Senate Education Committees expressing concerns regarding the accreditation provisions of the HEA reauthorization bills (H.R. 609, S. 1614). The letter focuses on several changes in accrediting bodies' reporting requirements and recommends that public disclosure of sensitive findings remain at the discretion of the institution. Additionally, the AAMC recommends the deletion of provisions that require accrediting associations or agencies to enforce standards based on the institution's mission.
Contact
Matthew Shick, Legislative Analyst
AAMC Office of Governmental Relations
mshick@aamc.org
(202) 828-0525
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Philanthropy's Good for Business and Community
Philanthropy: Good for business and the community
Aflac Chairman, CEO Amos picks up major award for cancer center work
BY ANDREA HERNANDEZ and TONY ADAMS
Staff Writers
Special to the Ledger-Enquirer
Aflac Chairman Dan Amos is shown with Payton Samples during an Atlanta Braves outing for the families from the Aflac Cancer Center. Helping children with cancer, funding scholarships for students, sprucing up the houses of military "heroes," and building an arts and cultural center downtown. They're all so different, yet they are classic examples of philanthropy by the Columbus business community.
Today is National Corporate Philanthropy Day. But it really isn't something accomplished in a day, a week, a month or a year -- it's a long-term commitment over generations.
"The large businesses are enormously generous and they give a lot of money. They also give employee time, and they give of their own credibility," said Betsy Covington, executive director of The Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley. "These are hallmarks for companies out to promote big pictures for the community."
One major player in this era of social responsibility was honored Saturday night with the honoring of Aflac Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Amos. The executive, which has ridden the popular Aflac duck's tail feathers to consistent profits, received the 2007 Star Award from the Atlanta chapter of Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation.
The non-profit organization -- which helps critically ill children and their families cope through entertainment, education and other activities -- recognized Amos and the company for its long list of philanthropic contributions and efforts, including Aflac's overall $30 million contribution to the Aflac Cancer Center at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Amos' personal contribution of more than $3 million.
Aflac's philanthropy
In 2006, Aflac and The Aflac Foundation -- headed by Amos' wife, Kathelen -- shelled out more than $5.9 million for charitable causes.
At the supplemental insurance company, employees participate in a variety of company-backed volunteer projects and events, including Habitat for Humanity, Relay for Life, Columbus State University's servant leadership program, and a summer reading program at Columbus Public Library.
Last year, employees volunteered a total of 5,724 hours.
They are also invited to fundraisers for juvenile diabetes, pediatric cancer and other causes -- many of which are proposed by the employees themselves.
"Really, it starts at the top," said Audrey Tillman, senior vice president and director of corporate services. "You look at the work in the community the Amos brothers did; you look at what Dan and Kathelen are doing right now -- that's not surprising to any of the employees because it's filtered throughout our organization."
On a national level, pediatric cancer is a particular focus for Aflac, which also has a cancer center in its name in Atlanta. Last year, more than $3.5 million of total donations went to the cause.
Since 1995, Aflac field force agents have contributed more than $17 million toward pediatric cancer treatment and research.
"Money doesn't save your life, but it can save someone else's through research," Amos said. "You're really encouraging people for the future."
The cause particularly strikes a cord with a supplemental insurance company familiar with the taxing costs of medical care.
"So many of our employees are touched by cancer diagnosis, and pediatric, in particular, is underfunded," said Buffy Swinehart, manager of cause marketing and philanthropy at Aflac. "Being part of a health-care industry, it just makes sense to us."
Seeking 'returnsin the future'
"Businesses contribute to their community for many reasons, and some are altruistic and some aren't," Covington said.
Corporate giving could yield something in return -- although not necessarily in the form of funds or business deals.
"I don't view people or companies who are giving as giving handouts. I view it as making investments in what you care about," Covington said. "And if your investments are in your community... you're hoping for returns in the future."
Amos said this is especially applicable in regard to education.
"The quality of our work force depends on how good an education they get," Amos said. "The vast majority of employees are educated right in Columbus, Ga., so what Columbus Tech or Columbus State does is very important."
In January, Dan and Kathelen announced a $1 million donation to Columbus Technical College's campaign to develop health-care professionals.
Swinehart said company-wide employee volunteerism also promotes a loyal work force at Aflac.
"It's part of our social responsibility," Amos said. "Our first and foremost responsibility is to give a great return to our shareholders. Then, we also want to make it a good place for our employees."
Improving the quality of life -- from promoting cultural events to supporting education -- can entice employees to stay and reduce turnover, Amos said.
It's that quality of life that has kept Brian Abeyta, Aflac's second vice president of information technology, at the company. Abeyta has participated in a number of Aflac volunteer projects, including Relay for Life and the CSU servant-leadership program. He has also raised more than $8,000 for the Aflac Cancer Center through marathon and Ironman triathlon sponsorships.
Abeyta -- whose volunteer work is mostly done during his off hours -- said time management is key for balancing work and volunteering. And making time pays off.
"It gives me a better sense of community," said Abeyta, who moved to Columbus from Atlanta in 2001. "That's something that was important to me when I moved to Columbus -- to see my fingerprints on the community."
United Way andscholarships
Corporate philanthropy indeed takes many forms throughout the area. There is giving to the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley, a campaign that raises money for several dozen agencies and organizations.
For instance, TSYS, the electronic payment processor and a subsidiary of bankholding firm Synovus Financial Corp., is a huge contributor to United Way, having raised $1.1 million in the 2006 campaign.
The bulk of that, about $800,000, was pledged to local charities, while the remainder was donated at TSYS offices in Tempe, Ariz., Atlanta, Boise, Idaho, and St. Catharines, Ontario.
Columbus-based Synovus and TSYS also have the Jack Parker Scholarship Program, named in honor of the late Jack B. Parker, whose career with Synovus spanned 44 years. Gathering money in a grass-roots way to fund the education of staffers' children, the program awarded 100 scholarships totaling more than $190,000.
Since its inception in 1988, the foundation has awarded more than $1 million in scholarships.
"The money is raised by employees," said TSYS spokesman Eric Bruner. "They do lots of little fundraisers all year long, and it's a respectable sum of money for a scholarship program that started that way."
Unlike Aflac, which makes big donations to medical causes and issues, Bruner said TSYS is geared more toward community-based giving and causes.
"We're making community building-type investments because our people live here, our corporate home is here, all of the people that work here live here, and they intend for Columbus to be a nice place to live, raising the quality of life," he said.
Foundations playmajor role
There's also the Synovus Foundation, which was incorporated in 1998 to decide what groups and organizations receive money for worthwhile activities and projects. Its roots date back to 1969, with the founding of CB&T Charitable Trust.
Examples of its philanthropic donations throughout the area in recent years include:
• $140,000 for a new technology center at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation in Warm Springs, Ga.
• Partial funding of a $1.25 million endowment for LaGrange College in LaGrange, Ga.
• Helping to fund a $2.5 million endowment to start up the Chattahoochee Valley Community Foundation.
• $100,000 for the construction of a Columbus Hospice in-patient care center.
• $30,000 to help launch a credit union in the struggling Beallwood area of Columbus.
• $100,000 to construct a new Easter Seals facility on the north side of Columbus.
On a larger scale is the Bradley-Turner Foundation, which takes a low-key approach to donating money throughout the community. The foundation's funding comes from the businesses W.C. Bradley Co., Synovus, Columbus Bank & Trust, and investments through the years, including stock in soft drink giant Coca-Cola.
Examples of its giving in recent years include:
• $25 million to the Columbus State University Foundation capital campaign that helped fund the arts and theater facilities in downtown
• $6.5 million to the National Infantry Museum being constructed on the border of Columbus and Fort Benning. Schuster Enterprises, the local Burger King operator, also donated $1 million.
• $20 million to help construct the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts downtown.
• $4 million to the University of Georgia Terry College of Business to pay for student programs in the Institute for Leadership Advancement.
At the time of the UGA gift in 2001, it was reported that the Bradley-Turner Foundation had donated more than $150 million to cultural, educational and religious organizations since 1943.
Charity workgood for business
Although Columbus Bank & Trust Co., a Synovus affiliate, raised $91,500 for United Way, Helen Johnson believes local philanthropy goes far beyond the dollar signs. The vice president of community development with CB&T says it's about volunteering time. For instance, the Habitat for Humanity and House of Heroes programs, aimed at constructing and remodeling housing, respectively, are popular with employees.
"Our team members love working for a company that they can be proud of what the company's doing," she said. "That cannot be discounted in today's workplace because people like to be part of something that they feel hits the overall good."
CB&T and Synovus Foundation receive plenty of requests for charitable contributions, Johnson said. Areas that get plenty of consideration include arts and culture, children and youth, community enrichment, education and human services, such as those with medical needs.
"But the questions we almost always ask: Does it address an under-served group -- usually economically -- and will this program that we're going to support help improve their situation," she said.
And, yes, CB&T does foster the notion that donating time and money throughout Columbus is good business and does benefit the financial bottom line, Johnson said. It's part of the company's philosophy and strategy -- trying to always keep the community's major needs in mind.
"On a business side, it's the right thing for us to do because we've made our money here," she said. "If the community's not successful, we're not successful, and we know that. We also know that we want to keep the community strong, so our corporate donations are looked at strictly at reinvesting in this community. We do that based on programs that will help the most people, that will enrich their lives, that will help education, that will help them grow financially."
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/business/16787079.htm?source=rss&channel=ledgerenquirer_business
Aflac Chairman, CEO Amos picks up major award for cancer center work
BY ANDREA HERNANDEZ and TONY ADAMS
Staff Writers
Special to the Ledger-Enquirer
Aflac Chairman Dan Amos is shown with Payton Samples during an Atlanta Braves outing for the families from the Aflac Cancer Center. Helping children with cancer, funding scholarships for students, sprucing up the houses of military "heroes," and building an arts and cultural center downtown. They're all so different, yet they are classic examples of philanthropy by the Columbus business community.
Today is National Corporate Philanthropy Day. But it really isn't something accomplished in a day, a week, a month or a year -- it's a long-term commitment over generations.
"The large businesses are enormously generous and they give a lot of money. They also give employee time, and they give of their own credibility," said Betsy Covington, executive director of The Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley. "These are hallmarks for companies out to promote big pictures for the community."
One major player in this era of social responsibility was honored Saturday night with the honoring of Aflac Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Amos. The executive, which has ridden the popular Aflac duck's tail feathers to consistent profits, received the 2007 Star Award from the Atlanta chapter of Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation.
The non-profit organization -- which helps critically ill children and their families cope through entertainment, education and other activities -- recognized Amos and the company for its long list of philanthropic contributions and efforts, including Aflac's overall $30 million contribution to the Aflac Cancer Center at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Amos' personal contribution of more than $3 million.
Aflac's philanthropy
In 2006, Aflac and The Aflac Foundation -- headed by Amos' wife, Kathelen -- shelled out more than $5.9 million for charitable causes.
At the supplemental insurance company, employees participate in a variety of company-backed volunteer projects and events, including Habitat for Humanity, Relay for Life, Columbus State University's servant leadership program, and a summer reading program at Columbus Public Library.
Last year, employees volunteered a total of 5,724 hours.
They are also invited to fundraisers for juvenile diabetes, pediatric cancer and other causes -- many of which are proposed by the employees themselves.
"Really, it starts at the top," said Audrey Tillman, senior vice president and director of corporate services. "You look at the work in the community the Amos brothers did; you look at what Dan and Kathelen are doing right now -- that's not surprising to any of the employees because it's filtered throughout our organization."
On a national level, pediatric cancer is a particular focus for Aflac, which also has a cancer center in its name in Atlanta. Last year, more than $3.5 million of total donations went to the cause.
Since 1995, Aflac field force agents have contributed more than $17 million toward pediatric cancer treatment and research.
"Money doesn't save your life, but it can save someone else's through research," Amos said. "You're really encouraging people for the future."
The cause particularly strikes a cord with a supplemental insurance company familiar with the taxing costs of medical care.
"So many of our employees are touched by cancer diagnosis, and pediatric, in particular, is underfunded," said Buffy Swinehart, manager of cause marketing and philanthropy at Aflac. "Being part of a health-care industry, it just makes sense to us."
Seeking 'returnsin the future'
"Businesses contribute to their community for many reasons, and some are altruistic and some aren't," Covington said.
Corporate giving could yield something in return -- although not necessarily in the form of funds or business deals.
"I don't view people or companies who are giving as giving handouts. I view it as making investments in what you care about," Covington said. "And if your investments are in your community... you're hoping for returns in the future."
Amos said this is especially applicable in regard to education.
"The quality of our work force depends on how good an education they get," Amos said. "The vast majority of employees are educated right in Columbus, Ga., so what Columbus Tech or Columbus State does is very important."
In January, Dan and Kathelen announced a $1 million donation to Columbus Technical College's campaign to develop health-care professionals.
Swinehart said company-wide employee volunteerism also promotes a loyal work force at Aflac.
"It's part of our social responsibility," Amos said. "Our first and foremost responsibility is to give a great return to our shareholders. Then, we also want to make it a good place for our employees."
Improving the quality of life -- from promoting cultural events to supporting education -- can entice employees to stay and reduce turnover, Amos said.
It's that quality of life that has kept Brian Abeyta, Aflac's second vice president of information technology, at the company. Abeyta has participated in a number of Aflac volunteer projects, including Relay for Life and the CSU servant-leadership program. He has also raised more than $8,000 for the Aflac Cancer Center through marathon and Ironman triathlon sponsorships.
Abeyta -- whose volunteer work is mostly done during his off hours -- said time management is key for balancing work and volunteering. And making time pays off.
"It gives me a better sense of community," said Abeyta, who moved to Columbus from Atlanta in 2001. "That's something that was important to me when I moved to Columbus -- to see my fingerprints on the community."
United Way andscholarships
Corporate philanthropy indeed takes many forms throughout the area. There is giving to the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley, a campaign that raises money for several dozen agencies and organizations.
For instance, TSYS, the electronic payment processor and a subsidiary of bankholding firm Synovus Financial Corp., is a huge contributor to United Way, having raised $1.1 million in the 2006 campaign.
The bulk of that, about $800,000, was pledged to local charities, while the remainder was donated at TSYS offices in Tempe, Ariz., Atlanta, Boise, Idaho, and St. Catharines, Ontario.
Columbus-based Synovus and TSYS also have the Jack Parker Scholarship Program, named in honor of the late Jack B. Parker, whose career with Synovus spanned 44 years. Gathering money in a grass-roots way to fund the education of staffers' children, the program awarded 100 scholarships totaling more than $190,000.
Since its inception in 1988, the foundation has awarded more than $1 million in scholarships.
"The money is raised by employees," said TSYS spokesman Eric Bruner. "They do lots of little fundraisers all year long, and it's a respectable sum of money for a scholarship program that started that way."
Unlike Aflac, which makes big donations to medical causes and issues, Bruner said TSYS is geared more toward community-based giving and causes.
"We're making community building-type investments because our people live here, our corporate home is here, all of the people that work here live here, and they intend for Columbus to be a nice place to live, raising the quality of life," he said.
Foundations playmajor role
There's also the Synovus Foundation, which was incorporated in 1998 to decide what groups and organizations receive money for worthwhile activities and projects. Its roots date back to 1969, with the founding of CB&T Charitable Trust.
Examples of its philanthropic donations throughout the area in recent years include:
• $140,000 for a new technology center at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation in Warm Springs, Ga.
• Partial funding of a $1.25 million endowment for LaGrange College in LaGrange, Ga.
• Helping to fund a $2.5 million endowment to start up the Chattahoochee Valley Community Foundation.
• $100,000 for the construction of a Columbus Hospice in-patient care center.
• $30,000 to help launch a credit union in the struggling Beallwood area of Columbus.
• $100,000 to construct a new Easter Seals facility on the north side of Columbus.
On a larger scale is the Bradley-Turner Foundation, which takes a low-key approach to donating money throughout the community. The foundation's funding comes from the businesses W.C. Bradley Co., Synovus, Columbus Bank & Trust, and investments through the years, including stock in soft drink giant Coca-Cola.
Examples of its giving in recent years include:
• $25 million to the Columbus State University Foundation capital campaign that helped fund the arts and theater facilities in downtown
• $6.5 million to the National Infantry Museum being constructed on the border of Columbus and Fort Benning. Schuster Enterprises, the local Burger King operator, also donated $1 million.
• $20 million to help construct the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts downtown.
• $4 million to the University of Georgia Terry College of Business to pay for student programs in the Institute for Leadership Advancement.
At the time of the UGA gift in 2001, it was reported that the Bradley-Turner Foundation had donated more than $150 million to cultural, educational and religious organizations since 1943.
Charity workgood for business
Although Columbus Bank & Trust Co., a Synovus affiliate, raised $91,500 for United Way, Helen Johnson believes local philanthropy goes far beyond the dollar signs. The vice president of community development with CB&T says it's about volunteering time. For instance, the Habitat for Humanity and House of Heroes programs, aimed at constructing and remodeling housing, respectively, are popular with employees.
"Our team members love working for a company that they can be proud of what the company's doing," she said. "That cannot be discounted in today's workplace because people like to be part of something that they feel hits the overall good."
CB&T and Synovus Foundation receive plenty of requests for charitable contributions, Johnson said. Areas that get plenty of consideration include arts and culture, children and youth, community enrichment, education and human services, such as those with medical needs.
"But the questions we almost always ask: Does it address an under-served group -- usually economically -- and will this program that we're going to support help improve their situation," she said.
And, yes, CB&T does foster the notion that donating time and money throughout Columbus is good business and does benefit the financial bottom line, Johnson said. It's part of the company's philosophy and strategy -- trying to always keep the community's major needs in mind.
"On a business side, it's the right thing for us to do because we've made our money here," she said. "If the community's not successful, we're not successful, and we know that. We also know that we want to keep the community strong, so our corporate donations are looked at strictly at reinvesting in this community. We do that based on programs that will help the most people, that will enrich their lives, that will help education, that will help them grow financially."
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/business/16787079.htm?source=rss&channel=ledgerenquirer_business
Book It! Challenged as Exploitation
Critics Target Pizza Hut Reading ProgramBy DAVID CRARY | 02 Mar 2007 | 09:44 PMFont size: NEW YORK - You've read the book, now eat the pizza. Since 1985, that's been the gist of Pizza Hut's Book It, an incentive program used by 50,000 schools nationwide to reward young readers with free pizzas. The program is now under attack by child-development experts who say it promotes bad eating habits and turns teachers into corporate promoters.
Book It, which reaches about 22 million children a year, "epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
"In the name of education, it promotes junk food consumption to a captive audience ... and undermines parents by positioning family visits to Pizza Hut as an integral component of raising literate children," Linn said.
This week, Linn's organization called on parents to end their schools' participation in the long-standing program.
Though some activists have previously questioned Book It, Linn said Friday that only after the recent upsurge of concern over child obesity and junk food did her group feel it could make headway with a formal protest campaign. She said many schools are trying to reduce students' access to soda, and contended that Book It should face similar scrutiny.
But the program _ which has given away more than 200 million pizzas _ has deep roots and many admirers at the highest levels of politics and education. It won a citation in 1988 from President Reagan, and its advisory board includes representatives of prominent education groups, including teachers unions and the American Library Association.
"We're really proud of the program," said Leslie Tubbs, its director for the past five years. "We get hundreds of e-mails from alumni who praise it and say it helped them get started with reading."
Dallas-based Pizza Hut says Book It is the nation's largest reading motivation program _ conducted annually in about 925,000 elementary school classrooms from Oct. 1 through March 31. A two-month program is offered for preschoolers.
Participating teachers set a monthly reading goal for each student; those who meet the goal get a certificate they can redeem at Pizza Hut for a free Personal Pan Pizza. Families often accompany the winners, turning the event into a celebration that can boost business for the restaurant.
Teachers find the program an enjoyable way to build interest in reading, Tubbs said. "We're helping them to do their jobs," she said.
At Strafford Elementary School in Strafford, Mo., the roughly 500 students collectively read 30,000 books a year with Book It's help, said principal Lucille Cogdill.
"I don't have any negative things at all to say about it," Cogdill said. "I know there's concern about obesity, but Book It is not causing it, and the schools aren't causing it."
Chris Carney, principal at Bennett Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., also is a Book It fan, saying it encourages family togetherness and provides a tool for persuading children to try books instead of video games.
"I don't want to see kids gorging pizzas," he said. "But the positive effects outweigh other effects."
Among those campaigning against Book It is Alfie Kohn, an author whose 11 books on education and parenting include "Punished By Rewards, which questions the value of incentive programs.
"The more kids see books as a way to get pizza or some other prize, the less interest they'll have in reading itself," Kohn, a former teacher, said in a telephone interview. "They tend to choose easier books to get through faster."
Another critic of Book It and the broader phenomenon of corporate incursions into schools is Alex Molnar, director of the Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University.
He described Book It as a "dreadful program" that puts pressure on parents to celebrate with their reward-winning children at Pizza Huts.
"This is corporate America using the schools as a crow bar to get inside the front doors of students' homes," he said. "It's very hard for children whose parents who don't want to engage in this to not feel ostracized."
Molnar acknowledged that Book It is well-regarded by many educators and politicians, but said it might be reevaluated in light of rising concerns about child obesity.
"To the extent that this program is correctly identified as part of the problem, then there's a chance of reducing its scope," he said.
___
Book It: http://www.bookitprogram.com/
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: http://www.commercialexploitation.org/
http://www.cnbc.com/id/17422004/for/cnbc/
Book It, which reaches about 22 million children a year, "epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
"In the name of education, it promotes junk food consumption to a captive audience ... and undermines parents by positioning family visits to Pizza Hut as an integral component of raising literate children," Linn said.
This week, Linn's organization called on parents to end their schools' participation in the long-standing program.
Though some activists have previously questioned Book It, Linn said Friday that only after the recent upsurge of concern over child obesity and junk food did her group feel it could make headway with a formal protest campaign. She said many schools are trying to reduce students' access to soda, and contended that Book It should face similar scrutiny.
But the program _ which has given away more than 200 million pizzas _ has deep roots and many admirers at the highest levels of politics and education. It won a citation in 1988 from President Reagan, and its advisory board includes representatives of prominent education groups, including teachers unions and the American Library Association.
"We're really proud of the program," said Leslie Tubbs, its director for the past five years. "We get hundreds of e-mails from alumni who praise it and say it helped them get started with reading."
Dallas-based Pizza Hut says Book It is the nation's largest reading motivation program _ conducted annually in about 925,000 elementary school classrooms from Oct. 1 through March 31. A two-month program is offered for preschoolers.
Participating teachers set a monthly reading goal for each student; those who meet the goal get a certificate they can redeem at Pizza Hut for a free Personal Pan Pizza. Families often accompany the winners, turning the event into a celebration that can boost business for the restaurant.
Teachers find the program an enjoyable way to build interest in reading, Tubbs said. "We're helping them to do their jobs," she said.
At Strafford Elementary School in Strafford, Mo., the roughly 500 students collectively read 30,000 books a year with Book It's help, said principal Lucille Cogdill.
"I don't have any negative things at all to say about it," Cogdill said. "I know there's concern about obesity, but Book It is not causing it, and the schools aren't causing it."
Chris Carney, principal at Bennett Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., also is a Book It fan, saying it encourages family togetherness and provides a tool for persuading children to try books instead of video games.
"I don't want to see kids gorging pizzas," he said. "But the positive effects outweigh other effects."
Among those campaigning against Book It is Alfie Kohn, an author whose 11 books on education and parenting include "Punished By Rewards, which questions the value of incentive programs.
"The more kids see books as a way to get pizza or some other prize, the less interest they'll have in reading itself," Kohn, a former teacher, said in a telephone interview. "They tend to choose easier books to get through faster."
Another critic of Book It and the broader phenomenon of corporate incursions into schools is Alex Molnar, director of the Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University.
He described Book It as a "dreadful program" that puts pressure on parents to celebrate with their reward-winning children at Pizza Huts.
"This is corporate America using the schools as a crow bar to get inside the front doors of students' homes," he said. "It's very hard for children whose parents who don't want to engage in this to not feel ostracized."
Molnar acknowledged that Book It is well-regarded by many educators and politicians, but said it might be reevaluated in light of rising concerns about child obesity.
"To the extent that this program is correctly identified as part of the problem, then there's a chance of reducing its scope," he said.
___
Book It: http://www.bookitprogram.com/
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: http://www.commercialexploitation.org/
http://www.cnbc.com/id/17422004/for/cnbc/
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood
Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood (formerly Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children) is a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups and concerned parents who counter the harmful effects of marketing to children through action, advocacy, education, research, and collaboration. We support the rights of children to grow up – and the rights of parents to raise them – without being undermined by rampant consumerism. CCFC is headquartered at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston.
Be Informed
CCFC TAKES A SLICE OUT OF
PIZZA HUT'S BOOK IT! PROGRAM
Urges schools and preschools to stop promoting
fast food in the name of literacy
Tell Scholastic: No Bratz in Schools!
Highly Sexualized Dolls Promoted Through Book Fairs and Book Clubs
CCFC to President Bush:
Luring Babies to Screens is Not Heroic
President Uses SOTU to Provide Free Infomercial for Baby Einstein
A Guide to Commercial-Free Book Fairs
How and Why to Do Hold a Book Fair At Your School
Without Corporate Marketing or Media Tie-Ins!
Raffi Cavoukian, winner of the 2006 Fred Rogers Integrity Award,
at CCFC's protest against BusRadio.
Click here to learn what you can do to stop BusRadio
Violent Video Game Ads in Public Space
CCFC & PTC to Denver RTD
Stop Advertising Violent Video Games
Broad Coalition asks RTD to Change Advertising Policy
MBTA Changes Policy: No More Violent
Videogame Ads on Boston Mass Transit
Decision follows CCFC letter signed by Mayor Menino,
Legislators, Community Leaders and Public Health Advocates
In the News
Parents push to boot Bratz books from Scholastic fairs
Message and the Media: Our girls deserve better
Diaper Demographic: TV, Video Programming for the Under-2 Market Grows Despite Lack of Clear Educational Benefit
As Pop Culture Targets Ever Younger Girls, Psychologists Worry About a Premature Focus on Sex and Appearance
Attorneys General of 21 States Lash Out at Bud.tv Age Checks
Cell Phone Makers Accused of Tween Targeting
Toy companies are playing Internet game for all it's worth
Holiday of Love an Opportunity to Teach Charity
Toy Fair Resembles CES for Kids
Snack-Ad Attack
A Shopping-Cart-Ad Plan That Might Actually Work
M&M's maker to stop marketing to kids
Envy, Anxiety, Secrecy, Taboos: The Subject Must Be Money
Are Canadian babies ready for their own TV channel?
Shrek Flip-flops in Obesity Fight
Fruit shown on label often not in the box, kids' food study says
Baby Einstein and the Bush Administration: There's More than Meets the Eye
'More News . . .
Info Box
Stay informed. Join our mailing list. Subscribers receive no more than 1-2 emails per week.
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Books by CCFC Steering Committee Members
The Body Myth by Psychology and Consumer Consuming Kids by The War Play Dilemma
CCFC's Joe Kelly Culture. CCFC's Allen CCFC's Susan Linn by CCFC's Diane Levin
and Margo Maine Kanner & Tim Kasser, Eds. Now in Paperback! & Nancy Carlsson Paige
http://www.commercialexploitation.org/
Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood (formerly Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children) is a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups and concerned parents who counter the harmful effects of marketing to children through action, advocacy, education, research, and collaboration. We support the rights of children to grow up – and the rights of parents to raise them – without being undermined by rampant consumerism. CCFC is headquartered at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston.
Be Informed
CCFC TAKES A SLICE OUT OF
PIZZA HUT'S BOOK IT! PROGRAM
Urges schools and preschools to stop promoting
fast food in the name of literacy
Tell Scholastic: No Bratz in Schools!
Highly Sexualized Dolls Promoted Through Book Fairs and Book Clubs
CCFC to President Bush:
Luring Babies to Screens is Not Heroic
President Uses SOTU to Provide Free Infomercial for Baby Einstein
A Guide to Commercial-Free Book Fairs
How and Why to Do Hold a Book Fair At Your School
Without Corporate Marketing or Media Tie-Ins!
Raffi Cavoukian, winner of the 2006 Fred Rogers Integrity Award,
at CCFC's protest against BusRadio.
Click here to learn what you can do to stop BusRadio
Violent Video Game Ads in Public Space
CCFC & PTC to Denver RTD
Stop Advertising Violent Video Games
Broad Coalition asks RTD to Change Advertising Policy
MBTA Changes Policy: No More Violent
Videogame Ads on Boston Mass Transit
Decision follows CCFC letter signed by Mayor Menino,
Legislators, Community Leaders and Public Health Advocates
In the News
Parents push to boot Bratz books from Scholastic fairs
Message and the Media: Our girls deserve better
Diaper Demographic: TV, Video Programming for the Under-2 Market Grows Despite Lack of Clear Educational Benefit
As Pop Culture Targets Ever Younger Girls, Psychologists Worry About a Premature Focus on Sex and Appearance
Attorneys General of 21 States Lash Out at Bud.tv Age Checks
Cell Phone Makers Accused of Tween Targeting
Toy companies are playing Internet game for all it's worth
Holiday of Love an Opportunity to Teach Charity
Toy Fair Resembles CES for Kids
Snack-Ad Attack
A Shopping-Cart-Ad Plan That Might Actually Work
M&M's maker to stop marketing to kids
Envy, Anxiety, Secrecy, Taboos: The Subject Must Be Money
Are Canadian babies ready for their own TV channel?
Shrek Flip-flops in Obesity Fight
Fruit shown on label often not in the box, kids' food study says
Baby Einstein and the Bush Administration: There's More than Meets the Eye
'More News . . .
Info Box
Stay informed. Join our mailing list. Subscribers receive no more than 1-2 emails per week.
State Select One... Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware D.C. Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Other
Books by CCFC Steering Committee Members
The Body Myth by Psychology and Consumer Consuming Kids by The War Play Dilemma
CCFC's Joe Kelly Culture. CCFC's Allen CCFC's Susan Linn by CCFC's Diane Levin
and Margo Maine Kanner & Tim Kasser, Eds. Now in Paperback! & Nancy Carlsson Paige
http://www.commercialexploitation.org/
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