1. Escalating Arms Race for Top Colleges: An essay from a parent's perspective. What are your thoughts on the topic? Do you think the cycle is created by the colleges or the parents? What about the execution of her ideas. Do you think this is well written? Well argued?
2. Teenagers, Friends & Bad Decisions: This is all about you! Comment on the content (do you agree or disagree) and then comment on the execution (is this well written, clearly presented, well balanced).
4 comments:
"The Escalating Arms Race for Top Colleges"
This discussion of the idiocy the college application process just goes around in a circle. Sure while I agree with Ms. Moses that it is absolutely ridiculous and unfair that the stakes for admission into top colleges is becoming more and more expensive, I also don't see anybody taking a stand against it. While Ms. Moses is obviously appalled at how much she and her husband paid for SAT tutoring and college counseling and college trips, she still did it. I also bet if she hadn't done it and paid all of that money for all of those unnecessary luxuries and her kids didn't get into the college of their choice she would have regretted it and blamed it on her frugality. Unfortunately this is just how the game is played right now and until policy or even just public action changes, the price of applying to college will become even more expensive and competitive, and therefore even more inaccessible for all of the applicants who come from families with less money.
"Teenagers, Friends and Bad Decisions"
I think it's really interesting that even without friends/peers in the room, the teenaged test subjects still took those risks of running yellow lights and probably just driving faster and more recklessly. I think that this is a really significant aspect of peer pressure that doesn't really cross your mind. But if you think about kids and say drinking for example, kids don't only get peer pressured in the moment, but just the thoughts of what other kids might think or say or do if another kid decides not to drink is the same kind of indirect peer pressure seen in the driving game experiment. So whether or not a kid wants to drink or run the yellow light, the thoughts of potential reactions of their peers can very well impact their decision of whether or not to do it, even if their peers aren't around.
Arms Race:
As Vanessa said, it is ridiculous and unfair, but Ms. Moses still agreed to participate and perpetuate the "arms race." If she or anyone wants this to change, then they have to be willing to not go through the process as a way of protest. That being said, I think that paranoia plays a small part in this. As far as writing, I think she did a fairly good job.
Decisions:
This, sadly, makes sense. When your friends are either with you or watching you, you generally want to do something that will impress them. As far as me, I'd like to say that I wouldn't be susceptible to this, but I honestly don't know how I'd behave because I haven't been in this situation very much. I'd like to think that I would keep my wits about me, but I just don't know. The execution of the article was, overall good. The author got her point across concisely and presented facts to support it, but I would have liked to hear the teenagers' impressions of how they did on the test.
1) "The Escalating Arms Race for Top Colleges"
As I approach the end of the beginning of my college process, as outlined by Ms. Moses in her article, I believe in the questions and concerns directed at the college system and the insecurities that they stem from. I also think that the issues raised in this article are prevalent within the MA community: most of my friends are in the midst of planning their college trips over spring break, and I cannot think of one junior who is not currently receiving extra help for the SAT and/or ACT standardized tests. Though Moses argues that the cycle is maintained by parents who “will do everything in [their] power to make it happen [for their children,]” I think that the cycle also thrives off of students’ insecurities and fears regarding the college process. At the same time, it is important to note that this fear has to be rooted in the colleges themselves, since the system revolves around their needs as institutions. It seems as though colleges could do more to reform the cycle: for example, Moses writes that “guidance counselors warned us that some college admissions offices look askance at those applicants who haven't bothered to see the campus in person.” These sorts of actions do little to appropriate the stereotypes and fear around the college system and contribute to the “arms race” Moses refers to in her article. Overall I think Moses’ is effective in the delivery of her arguments in her article, and I thought the decision to include the prices of the specific weapons that make up the “arms race” was ingenious.
2) "Teenagers, Friends, and Bad Decisions"
While I am not necessarily shocked by results of the influence of peer pressure I am somewhat surprised that the subjects acted the way they did simply based on the presence of their peers rather than any direct interaction with them. This article makes me think about the ways I am influenced by my peers on a day-to-day basis and how much of an effect they may have on my behavior: while I care about how people may think of me, for example, I do not necessarily want to act certain ways because of their presence. The author does a good job of presenting the data from the experiment and then discussing the impacts of such data for families with teenagers. At the same time, I think that reactions from other teens (or subjects in the experiment) would have strengthened both the meaning behind the data as well as Parker-Pope’s depiction of adolescence in general. I also wonder what the results of such an experiment would be if the subjects were our parents’ and grandparents’ age. Parker-Pope’s conclusion or Dr. Steinberg’s message to parents is another way that this article, in my opinion, lacks balance.
"Escalating Arms Race for Top Colleges: An essay from a parent's perspective." I completely agree with Vanessa. The entire college process is ridiculous. One of my cousins, who also happens to be a senior, lives in Canada. The difference between the system here in the US and the one in Canada is night and day. When I went back to visit in June she had not even started looking at colleges, I had already been on four or five different trips to multiple parts of the country. I had done hours of ACT prep, taken the ACT in April and in June (I think…) and she had done nothing. While I was at first in complete shock believing that she her life would never go anywhere, and that she would never get into college, and how crazy she must be to be that unprepared, I realized that in fact we are the crazy ones. We are the ones who apply to on average upwards of 14, 15, 16 schools while I think my cousin applied three or four. We are the ones who have a “higher education” test where almost everyone does some sort of insane prep (tutoring or religious work from a ridiculously thick book) there is no SAT or ACT type test there. There is no proof that just because here in the US people spend upwards of $3,000 searching for “the one” that kids here enjoy college that much more then kids in Canada. Their system is much more practical.
"Teenagers, Friends & Bad Decisions:" I agree with what other people said about this article, that it was really interesting how much of an effect thinking that your friends were watching had on teenagers. As I have gone through school I have heard countless lessons on not folding to peer pressure, but it almost seems that it is subconscious too and that even if you do not intend to cave you still can without realizing it. We probably do so much, without realizing it, because we think other people will agree with it more.
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