15 #2
In the row in front of them, Danbi worried about Anna’s chances of getting into Fortress.
Of course, she should have known that George and Sobin would attend, but there hadn’t been much time to discuss it during her last rendezvous with George.
They never had enough time, it seemed. At the thought of him, Danbi sat up straighter, shoulders back, chest out.
For her, it was a competition. His wife, Sobin, could not get one of their kids into an HYP, but Danbi felt certain Anna would get into at least Yale or Princeton.
In the past year, almost half the Fortress seniors had been accepted into Ivy League schools and impossible ones like MIT and Stanford, and the majority of them had been offered spots in the most selective schools in the country.
Danbi didn’t mind admitting that she had the highest ambitions for her child.
Almost eight, Anna could play the “Moonlight Sonata” and read five grades above her level.
Once Danbi had been called in and advised to have Anna assessed by a neuropsychologist because, although she was clearly academically gifted, the child had trouble interacting with her peers.
“Anna could learn more about social cues,” the first-grade teacher had said.
“She doesn’t get included with the other girls’ activities, and clearly Anna would like to have friends. ”
Danbi thought Mrs. Grace, the hippie primary school teacher at the expensive Montessori school who smiled far too much, was an idiot.
Danbi had no friends when she was young, and consequently there’d been no distractions from the horrible culture of little girls and their petty rules of social engagement.
Danbi would teach her daughter to excel, and even fight, but in her experience, the most popular children were never the most successful adults.
Pleasing everyone was an expensive habit for women.
To Danbi, her child didn’t have a problem, so she did not bring her to a neuropsychologist.
If a doctor poked around, he would always find a problem.
She had read in the Korean newspapers that in America, they gave drugs to children to make them behave.
Danbi could not imagine putting chemicals into her own body.
She didn’t smoke, drink, or take any illegal drugs.
Rarely did she swallow an aspirin for a headache.
When she told George what Mrs. Grace had said about Anna, her lover had told her what Sobin had done when their son Harrison was unable to sit still in school.
She signed him up for several sports classes until he found basketball, and he made varsity in his sophomore year and loved being on the team.
He also liked tennis, but he wasn’t ever going to make varsity, so they’d made him focus solely on basketball.
Harrison, now a junior in high school, had good grades; his guidance counselor said he’d likely be admitted into a small liberal arts college in New England, thanks in part to his strong basketball skills, but there was no guarantee.
Danbi sat up straight and raised her hand.
She wore an ivory-colored sleeveless dress with a matching cardigan and nude sandals. Around her neck, she wore pearls.
“Elder Jung.” Lion bowed. “Do you have a question?”
Danbi stood up, feeling almost nourished by the stares of the men in the room.
If it weren’t for the fact that she had to get along with more women, she would have dressed differently—more fabric-covered buttons, zippers, and mother-of-pearl snaps—things that made men think of unwrapping her like a gift.
“Elder Han.” Danbi bowed and spoke in Korean. “Thank you for your talk. What you said was valuable. We also care very much about our children’s happiness.”
“Of course,” Lion replied in English, “I didn’t in any way mean to suggest that parents don’t care, or are intentionally hurting their children.
There are many sources of pressure: our community, our heritage which prizes education, the schools, their peers, and the colleges themselves.
We have to be almost countercultural if we want our children to truly thrive.
I called this meeting in the hopes of pointing out that our community, socioeconomic class, culture, and history all seem to demand a kind of unattainable achievement, and it’s harming our children.
We expect them to do things that we could not have done ourselves. ”
“But you did,” Danbi said. “You finished Princeton in three years. I read about you.” She smiled.
Everyone laughed, and Lion bowed his head in defeat.
“But my child is no Oracle of Orange County,” she said charmingly in Korean.
“However, I’m standing here because I thought the gentleman earlier”—at this point, Danbi turned to the man in the red windbreaker, looked at him, smiled, then bowed slightly, and he returned the smile, his neck reddening with pleasure at her recognition—“I thought his important question should be answered.”
“I thought I had answered the question.”
“Well, no.” Danbi laughed like a flirt, and others laughed with her nervously, taking her side.
“You said you wanted to talk about the pressure children feel. However, I want to follow up with the earlier question. Don’t the children feel more pressure, not from the myth of Hong Gildong, but rather because they have to try harder?
Because they have to get better scores than American children? ”
“I don’t understand your meaning. Our students are American.”
“Well, you know what I mean, coming from Korea. Our children are Asian. I’ve heard the same thing from parents of college-age students, that it’s much more difficult for our children to get into the best schools than it is for any other child in America.
Apparently it’s even harder for South Asian students here, especially if they need financial aid. ”
“We’re not talking about different things.
Even if that were true—and I do not think it is—” Lion sighed and started again, realizing that he was angry.
“Even if it were true that children of Asian descent have to do better than non-Asian children, the story of Hong Gildong that our generation and previous generations have swallowed will only reinforce the notion that they have no choice but to perform like a superhero because that is what this culture demands.
However, as we know, Hong Gildong is not a real person.
Our children cannot know everything, create doubles, summon magic, fight better than everyone, and fly through the air.
“This flawed but worthy American project of immigration, reinvention, and multiple chances creates more possibilities, but it requires us to explore different paths in order to have lives of greater purpose.”
Frustrated by Lion’s idealistic nonsense, Danbi gripped the microphone with both hands and put it close to her mouth.
“But many Korean students do get into Ivy League schools. Do those children fly like Hong Gildong? If they do, it’s an honest question to ask how our children can also learn to fly so they will be noticed among other children who don’t need to fly. ”
“No. I’m not being clear. I apologize. Each child’s acceptance at a college or university is highly individual.
If you examined every student who got accepted at Princeton, each application would look different.
It isn’t like Korea or China, or even Australia, where one of our counselors spent her childhood, where the primary determinant of acceptance or at least a minimum benchmark is a numerical score.
Our students who are accepted into Ivy League schools do not fly.
We do not teach that. But I’m not here to talk about what we do, I’m here because I wanted to urge us all to think differently, for our children’s sakes. ”
The parents listened carefully, trying to grasp his meaning. It made no sense for a hagwon owner not to take credit for impressive outcomes.
“Our students’ achievements have been remarkable, I know that, and for every child that does get into a school of his first choice, there are twenty that do not,” Lion insisted.
He pushed up his sleeves and took a deep breath.
“The point of tonight is that the twenty who do not get in feel terrible about themselves when they shouldn’t.
They view the college they do get into as a kind of failure or at best a consolation prize, and that is a terrible way to start their higher educational experience, and adulthood. ”
Danbi opened her mouth to speak again, and Shin touched the side of her hip. “Enough,” he whispered. “You have said enough.”
“Thank you, Elder Han,” she said, handing back the microphone to Mido, who stood waiting near the end of the aisle. Shin smiled at Mido, and she bowed slightly.
“Good evening. My name is Peter Son, and I am the director of Fortress.”
The parents sat up straighter and clapped, as if Peter might be able to see their faces and remember who’d smiled at him. They wanted to garner favor for their children.
“Our students at Fortress get excellent results because we have an unfair advantage,” he said.
“I want to tell you that because it is numerically true that we get an outsized slice of the Ivy League pie for our region. Tonight, by our count, there are five hundred and seventeen parents here.” Peter glanced at Yun and Mido, and they nodded, having just given him the number.
“If every one of you had only one child who needed to be admitted to Fortress, we could only take one out of five applicants because we do not accept more than a hundred students per year, and there are only twenty-five students on average for each grade. When we have twenty-five seniors, let’s say, spread across several high schools in this large and academically competitive, well-prepared student population, it is very possible for us to help our students get excellent results.