Wednesday's Most Active Threads

Despite the college admissions season mostly coming to a close, college admissions topics are not going to disappear. Two separate college admissions topics were among the most active threads yesterday. I've been thinking about this because so many college topics come up in these blog posts and it occurred to me that, since DCUM is now over 20 years old, most of our original members have children of college-age or older. I don't think younger parents are as interested in forum discussions and, instead, spend their time on TikTok and Instagram. So, I think we have fewer posters interested in discussing newborn issues and more who want to talk about colleges. As a side note, I suspect that we are getting close to having, if we have not already had, second-generation DCUMers with posters who are the children of DCUM posters now becoming parents.

The first of today's college threads was titled, "No, test optional isn’t the reason your kid didn’t get in." and, of course, posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster links to a letter to a New York Times advice columnist back in 2019 in which the writer expresses considerable unhappiness about being rejected from all of his top college choices. As the original poster points out, this occurred prior to the COVID pandemic and before test optional admissions were introduced. The poster, who expresses sympathy for students who were not accepted to their preferred schools, goes on to say that parents do their children no favors by blaming disappointing admissions results on test optional admissions and suggesting that a lesser student took a place that was rightfully theirs. The original poster represents a common viewpoint in the college forum which, as expressed by another poster, is that about 20% of the applicants of top universities are highly desired by those institutions. The other 80% are basically toss-ups. That 80% is drawn from a huge pool of highly-qualified candidates. The contrary view is that universities now place diversity above all else and, therefore, applicants with lower qualifications are being selected because they check a particular box. As one poster succinctly puts it, "It’s what happen when schools seek out diversity instead of the best and brightest." The arguments in this thread have been repeated ad nauseam. One side sees grade point averages, class rank, standardized test scores, and advanced placement classes as objective measures of academic ability. The other side believes parents have prioritized those factors to the detriment of all else and, moreover, have gamed the system in many cases (e.g. taking tests multiple times, taking prep classes, and even cheating). The first group thinks the rules have been changed in ways that unfairly disadvantage them, often by intention. The second group thinks that the system has always been unfair and that the first group is only upset because it is no longer rigged in their favor. The only thing for sure is that this is not the last we have heard of this debate.

Yesterday's second most active thread is an older one that received new interest recently, adding 8 pages of responses yesterday. Posted in the "VA Public Schools other than FCPS" forum and titled, "APS black student singled out to play cotton picking game", the thread focuses on a controversy involving an Arlington Public Schools middle school student. The facts, as best I understand them, are that a substitute teacher for some reason wanted the class to play a game that involved a student coating his nose with Vaseline and picking up cottonballs with his nose. The teacher apparently asked for volunteers but then singled out the only Black student in class to play the game. The student and his mother felt that singling out the lone Black student to "pick cotton" was inappropriate and the mother addressed the issue with the school's administration. Subsequently, the teacher confronted the student, both privately and publicly in front of the class, asking him if she is a racist. After that, the student was removed from the class and required to study the subject, which happens to be French, independently in the school's library. A longstanding phenomenon on DCUM that has been very apparent to me is the tremendous capacity of posters to point out something that someone thinks is racist is "actually" not racist. The "actually" posters showed up in droves in this thread. "Actually", the posters proclaimed, this was not "picking cotton" but rather "picking up cotton". Actually, they continued, the Black student was not singled out because other students played the same game (the student insists this is not the case). Actually, they went on, this could have been easily resolved if the mother did not go to the press (the mother tried to resolve it before going to the press and it resulted in her son being removed from the class). The family has now filed a lawsuit against the school district, contending that her son is being singled out and bullied and that the school has been ineffective in protecting him. This has resulted in mass head explosions among the "actually" crowd who now contend that, actually, this is a greedy money grab with no justification whatsoever. Actually, the boy is being bullied because of his mother's actions. Also, actually, the mother lives in Maryland and should be prosecuted for tax fraud. As for that last point, the family is being represented by former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax. I suspect that it is unlikely that he would take a case without a solid legal basis, especially one in which his client was committing fraud. The one thing that I would note is that in a thread full of people insisting this incident doesn't involve racism, there is, actually, a lot of racism being expressed. I've been kept busy removing it.

The second of today's college-related topics was titled, "Please post where your DC is headed and the highest math course taken in HS" and posted, of course, in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster explains that her child wants to take an accelerated math track in order to enhance college admissions opportunities. The original poster believes that the child's extracurricular activities and other priorities such as SAT preparation make a less strenuous, but still advanced, math track preferable. But, it is her impression that the most of those being accepted to top universities have completed the most advanced math track and she wants to learn about other's experiences. There have been a few of these threads recently in which the original posters are very specific about the type of responses they are seeking. I have been surprised at how well most of the responders cooperate. There are pages of posts providing exactly the information for which the original posters asked. There are a few posts commenting about related topics such as which math classes are offered where and the various requirements of different universities. A college thread would not be complete without at least a few complaints about "grade inflation" and this thread is completed by a few such posts. On a personal level, I am astonished at the high level of math classes many of these posters report their children taking in high school. Pre-calculus is treated like basic algebra might have been back in my day. Even more astonishing is that the original poster says that her child will pursue a humanities major. As a holder of such a degree, I wonder why calculus would even be needed, let alone something more advanced. Times have apparently changed.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum and titled, "Child told to walk last in line for final quarter". Apparently, the original poster's elementary school child was told to walk at the end of the line for the rest of the school year because the teacher is tired of telling the child to stop talking when in line. The original poster wants to know if this is an appropriate action. Most of those who respond seem to think that there is nothing wrong with this consequence of not following the rules and that it might even provide a good life lesson. As far as I can tell, the original poster bailed out of the thread almost immediately, so almost all of the discussion involved other posters. There appears to be a small minority of posters who don't believe that schools should conduct any discipline at all. As one poster says, "The only lesson a teacher should teach your child is a lesson plan". Most posters are not supportive, to say the least, of that sentiment. Despite having left the thread, the original poster is targeted by considerable criticism and upheld as an example of what is wrong with parents today and evidence of why teachers are leaving the profession. A few posters express concern that the teacher apparently choose a punishment that is humiliating to the child. Again, very few posters have much sympathy for this suggestion. Many posters, in fact, remember being at the end of the line in elementary school to be desirable and, hence, don't really consider this to be a punishment at all. As is pointed out in the thread, DCUM posters frequently complain about a lack of discipline in school but are now complaining about discipline when it is applied. One poster responded to say that they meant other people's children should be punished, not their own. While this may seem true on the surface, most posters in this thread were supportive of the consequences in this case and it is not really possible to know if the posters arguing for stricter punishment elsewhere are the same ones complaining about discipline in this case.