I read the most fascinating review today about, well, gifted parents at Powell's Books (from the Atlantic Monthly) after running across a review of the review in Conversational Reading (how's that for "weaving"?). This type of thing was not a big problem in the school in which I taught, but the review reminds me of how Tom Cruise got into Princeton in Risky Business.
Give yourself a few minutes to read this article because it's long but well worth the effort. I'll quote the part that made me laugh out loud...but then think:
It could just be me -- once highly gifted, now fallen from grace, bombed GRE scores in hand, barely able to complete a Sudoku puzzle -- but when I read the following passage of Marilee Jones's USA Today essay, I think of Dustin Hoffman in a bus bumping down a dusty road at the end of The Graduate:
Last April, a few weeks after sending the acceptance/rejection letters for the Class of 2006, I received a reply from a father of one of our applicants. It was curt and written on his corporate letterhead: "You rejected my son. He's devastated. See you in court." … The very next day, I received another letter, but this time from the man's son. It read: "Thank you for not admitting me to MIT. This is the best day of my life."
