Cathy Seipp of the National Review is taking some odd flack for writing about her daughter's journey in the college admissions process:
A couple of days ago, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed by me about Maia’s rejection-letter dejection before she was accepted at UC San Diego as a Russian/Soviet Studies major. This inspired one Times reader to e-mail... he added, “regardless of whether you had her consent (which as a minor she cannot give without your consent — which would be conflicted), your disclosure of your daughter’s personal information was a shocking and unjustifiable invasion of her privacy. I hope it was worth it for you"...For the record, of course I had Maia's consent to write about her grades and test scores in the Times, so no privacy was invaded.
Other web discussion suggests that Maia's right to privacy wasn't really the issue:
But after Maia sent me a link to a lengthy discussion of my piece on the frighteningly addictive College Confidential, I discovered that many parents disapproved of far more than her graduating early. Some thought she was uppity for expecting to get into any UC except maybe Riverside or Merced — although, as one of the reasonable commenters noted, since Maia was indeed accepted to UC San Diego her hopes couldn't have been that unrealistic. Others accused me of being naive, or "gaming" the system — presumably by raising a daughter who unfairly impressed admissions officers with all those after-school college Russian classes.
Why am I not surprised that a student who works hard and shoot for the best possible college risks being called "uppity", or that parents who push their children are accused of "gaming the system"? No wonder some conservative parents are unwilling to document their experiences with the educational system. Joanne Jacobs on the other hand, writes about her daughter all the time, although she notes that her daughter is just too hopelessly well-adjusted to be a useful subject for a book.
Posted by kswygert at March 30, 2006 11:40 AM