A Parable of ‘Privilege-Hoarding.’ By GEORGE WILL
Excerpt: Nestled on the Front Range of the Rockies, the city of Crystal was a largely upper-middle-class paradise, chock full of health-conscious and socially conscious — meaning, of course, impeccably progressive — Coloradans. Then in slithered a serpent in the form of a proposal for a new school, to be called “Crystal Academy,” for “accelerated and exceptional learners.” Suddenly it was paradise lost. This “deliciously repulsive” story (one reviewer’s scrumptious description) with “Big Little Lies” overtones (the same reviewer) is told in Bruce Holsinger’s compulsively readable new novel The Gifted School. It is perfect back-to-school reading, especially for parents of students in grades K-12. And it is wonderfully timely, arriving in the aftermath of Operation Varsity Blues — who knew the FBI could be droll? — which was the investigation into a very up-to-date crime wave, the scandalous goings-on among some wealthy parents who were determined to leave no ethical norm unbroken in their conniving to get their children into elite colleges and universities. In Holsinger’s book, school officials, speaking educationese, promise that as 100,000 children compete for 1,000 spots — the dreaded 1 percent rears its ugly head — there will be “a visionary, equitable, and inclusive admission process.” Four mothers who have been friends forever, but might not be for long, begin becoming rivals in what they regard as a nearly zero-sum game, as they plot to game a process that looks alarmingly fair. Their children are embarked on a forced march to demonstrate that they are “gifted,” a word “that slashed like a guillotine through other topics”: “Advanced math, Chinese, martial arts, flute lessons with the principal player in the Colorado Symphony: by eighth grade Tessa had become a living, breathing benchmark, a proof of concept for the overinvested parenting they all practiced with varying degrees of obliviousness and guilt.”
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