Selective thinking

In your lives, apart from the HSC, what was the 2^nd biggest event in your schooling years? Such an important date that it could make or break a future. Years of single-minded planning, sheer hard work, countless sacrifices, frenetic ferrying from point A to B, and of course, top dollar spent chasing the dream. After all, this was a boat no migrant could afford to miss.

I am, of course, talking about the much-coveted spot in a Selective High School. Every Asian parent’s penultimate dream, the precursor to that perfect HSC score, and eventually an assured placement in medicine, engineering or law. James Ruse, Baulkham Hills, Hornsby Girls, Sydney Boys – the El Dorado that beckons many an ambitious and aspiring primary school leaver; and more importantly, their hard-working and terribly pushy mother and father.

Kenway and Bullen highlight the idea that both parents and students are consumers of the school’s use value and producers of its exchange value. They emphasized that within the consumer culture, people’s lives are saturated with commodities and images which have the potential to generate dreams and desires, fears and fantasies, representations and displacements. In this context, not only do advertisers seek to ensure that consumption becomes a primary source of identity, but that desire to consume becomes a primary motivating force. And on Asian parents, they were successful.

Coming from an Asian family, I can share some of my parents’ reasons for being education conscious for their kids. My parents were not extremists, they never forced me into tutoring and were happy as long as I’ve tried my best, but they believed that letting their children receive the best education will eventually lead them to a successful career and a happy life in the future. They understood that a well-rounded education is the best tool for a lifetime of achievement as I used to play soccer, do gymnastics, and even danced for awhile, as much as my hobbies kept altering since I play oztag now, my parents kept me satisfied. However, they reminded me that being academically accelerated was the fastest and best investment in life compared to sports, creativity areas such as drawing, and performing arts like music and dancing.

Unfortunately, for those with stricter parents, the enduring hard work and the pressure of preparing towards selective high schools for Asian families are, at times, just insane. The voyage sometimes starts as early as kindergarten, which comes at heavy price to the family exchequer. But more importantly, this is also done at the cost of their overall development, where the child is deprived of everyday exercise and eventually physical disorders such as obesity or diabetes, and mental issues such as hypertension or anxiety  results at a young age.

References:

·         Kenway, J. Bullen, (2001). Consuming children: Education-Entertainment-Advertising. Buckingham: Open University Press. Chapter 5: Designer schools, packaged students.