Prep School Recruitments

I was skimming the Washington Post's website after having subscribed to its full access pass type deal, when my eyes locked on the words "prep" and "schools." I've been hearing this word combination often as of late, what with my brother applying and choosing amongst private schools and my friends debating the merits of a prep school education to a public one in the college admissions process. I was surprised to see it in the news. I think of prep schools as being old news. They're dated institutions that often seem reluctant to change, and seeing an article about prep schools in the national news section of the Washington Post surprised me. The article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032903514.html), written by Michael Alison Chandler, was titled, "U.S. prep schools push to recruit foreign students." As I read the article I tried to determine the author's reasons for writing it, as well as his opinion on prep schools and their recent actions. I looked for the bad guys and the good guys. In general, the author seemed to view many bad guys in the situation. The main gist of the article is that prep schools are actively recruiting individuals from oversees in order to supplement money lost from the economy. I got the sense that the author believed the prep schools to be desperate, and the foreign students to be weak, naive prey. He gave reasons for the apparent attraction to prep schools, saying that job security and elite college diplomas were promised by American prep schools. At first the American prep schools seemed to villains touting false promises and looking for a pay check. He wrote, "aggressive international efforts are becoming more common for other U.S. prep schools eager to recruit from among rising numbers of East Asian students capable of paying full fare." The language renders prep schools cold and manipulative. They care about money, and are not receiving the big bucks from financially floundering Americans.

For a bit of the article, the Asian students were portrayed as victims, schemed into attending schools that would do little. A third party discussed were the parents of foreign students sent to the U.S.A. He described Chinese parents as "interested in giving their children a running start toward a prized American college diploma." This sentence is not overtly condescending but it makes the parents seem a little bit kooky or aggressive even, setting their kids up to get a job so early in life. The "running start" analogy is a bit offensive as these students don't just get released into America with a few suitcases and a pocket full of 40,000 dollar checks. They are talented students, musicians, athletes. If the Asian parents and American schools are aggressors, then the students are victims in Chandler's mind. Chandler places emphasis on how they have to leave home to go to boarding school far away.

By the end of the article the tone seemed to shift to one of not envy exactly but maybe scorn or even anger. Chandler seemed to believe that foreign students were crowing American boarding schools, and infringing on the American job market. Of course, he never explicitly said this, and maybe I've inferred incorrectly, but his tone most certainly shifts. He writes, "Arriving alone and with limited English skills, foreign students add new and weighty responsibilities to schools." This might be very true. Taking care of young teenagers away from home is a huge deal, but he neglects to acknowledge how much these students give to often homogenous American prep schools. Andover is incredibly lucky to find foreign students who are amazingly smart, and offer wonderful additions to the school, but these students usually speak english. If they don't, that makes them all the more special. They aren't threats or burdens, which Chandler seems to view them as. I wonder what schools Chandler is studying. He listed no data pertaining to the whole "the students don't speak a word of english" claim. The prep schools he listed were all concentrated in the South, primarily in Virginia, Florida, and one school from Maryland. The article seemed under researched. It's goal seemed to be to provide information to the American public on the goings on in the prep school world, the results of a diminished economy on American schools and foreign students, yet I mostly just felt I was being involved in a battle of manipulations and bad parenting. While the article was "informative," a few schools were studied, it cited only a select few schools and it seemed to serve as an unnecessary warning. Why does Chandler seem to believe that foreign students are being wooed to American prep schools, unaware of what they are really like. He seemed insensitive, and often kept his analytical skills at bay while presenting some examples. While he could have analyzed and explained the context of a quote, he left some hanging, allowing him to instill meaning by not explaining further. He ended the article by writing, "Min So Kim, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Chungbuk, South Korea, explained her parents' decision to send her to live with relatives in Haymarket this way: 'My father hopes I study English very well and become a famous person.'" This quote says a lot left at the end as such. He seems to be enforcing his claims that foreign exchange students don't know english and are out searching for something unattainable, even with a prep school diploma. In reality, the girl is probably uncovering many parents' reasons for sending their kids to prep school, they want them to do well. Many parents seem to think that their children will be happier if they have stable jobs and incomes when they're older. Her parents don't seem to be aggressors, they seem to be parents. Chandler forgets to mention where this girl is living. Is she living in a war zone? A decrepit house? Are her parents wealthy but absent? He makes her seem like just another poor innocent soul shipped off by greedy, conniving parents looking to make the big bucks off of the precocious child. There are hundreds of reasons people go to prep school, and yes one of them is in order to secure a diploma that looks good on a job resume. Is there something innately wrong with that? I would love to get a job when I get older, and if I end up having children, I'll want them to work. Working doesn't just fulfill financial needs, it gives a person purpose and is often times emotionally and socially fulfilling. Maybe Min So Kim will receive a more comprehensive education in American that in her town. Maybe she wasn't accepted to any schools near her home. She's in eighth grade and is probably 13 or 14 years old. To quote her saying why her parents sent her to boarding school in order to support an under-researched claim seems silly and misguided. Overall, this news article seemed like a big hunk of bias. I understand many of Chandler's points, and he's a clear and concise writer, but he seemed overtly and terribly biased, and many of his biases seem to affect the quality of this news article.