"When the American educational landscape is so obviously a pay-to-win game, how can we dare to call it a meritocracy?"
"Private high schools function to perpetuate cycles of privilege. They also work. If you had the financial resources, would you deny your kids the education and opportunities that private high schools can give them?
“Don’t complain; you got into Stanford” resounds in my head any time I reflect on my high school experience. I am, after all, an example of the student these private schools strive to create: a high achiever at an elite university with a paralyzing fear of failure.
But when I look back, my high school’s culture of achievement was really more a never-ending competition created by the prestigious universities that reap the rewards from it, the administrators who facilitate it and the parents who fund it."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Article, written by a Stanford junior, might ring like a cynical bit of self-promotional confession. Vitrue signaling while nestled comfortably in the vice. But, after all, how many of us who, after succeeding at sliding our wrists and conscience into the golden handcuffs of privilege would do more that maybe try to contemplate them honestly - versus maybe use the key called choice ever in our pocket and live a different way?