Insight: Admissions cheating should disappoint us — for failing our children

The news of ultra-wealthy parents buying their children access to prestigious American universities is no surprise. Working-class people the world over are all too aware that, like most things in modern society, a diploma and an elite social network can be attained with enough money. A free market doesn’t ensure a fair market. Monied privilege tilts the playing fields of business, health care, law and politics. And while we surely have known that our colleges and universities are not immune to such corruption, we are no less disgusted by it when the news breaks.

It is far too convenient, though, to blame the perpetrators — the investment bankers and venture capitalists, actors and actresses, businessmen and politicians, and their supporting cast of parasitic test proctors, college administrators and athletics coaches. Our contempt is justified but not satisfying.

Collectively, we are disappointed in ourselves for failing our children. We created this society and its rules, institutions and norms. We perpetuated the false notion that successful life in America is about rank, prestige and wealth — regardless of how attained.

While few can fathom spending a half-million dollars to ensure our son or our daughter is accepted by a name-brand university, many have come to accept paying for college test-prep courses, tutoring for Advanced Placement classes and enrollment in for-profit sports programs — all in the hopes to give our kids an advantage over others on college admissions.

We know our money can lubricate these societal mechanisms to turn a little more smoothly for our child’s benefit, but eventually all that oil attracts dirt and grime and corrodes the entire system. Do we really want our society to be filled with adults who didn’t earn their lot in life through their own caliber and virtue?

Our children are not served by our excessive attempts to ensure their success and prevent any failure. Their success is not determined within the walls of USC or Stanford but somewhere inside their spirit. It is released through personal challenge and determination.

Nature’s laws are simple and true in this way: Adversity fertilizes beauty. The colder the February, the more spectacular March’s blooms appear. Why are we as parents so compelled to smooth the road of life our children travel? Let them experience failure, hardship and adversity; their success, and society’s, will surely spring from those experiences.

Chirag Asaravala is a freelance writer who lives in the East Bay. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters.

Originally published at https://www.sfchronicle.com on March 16, 2019.