Life is graded on more than academic merit

By LEE KUCERA

A few weeks ago, a columnist in one of our local papers questioned the wisdom of piling nightly homework assignments on the very young children in her daughter's kindergarten class. A Japanese-American herself, she asked rhetorically, "Do we really want to become like Japan?" meaning a country where an obsession with academic study begins in preschool and is relentless and all-consuming through college entrance exams.

The writer didn't mention where she lives; but if it wasn't Cupertino, it could have been. I think the answer to her question is a resounding "NO," but I also think it's too late. We're already halfway there.

An India-born mom who does live in Cupertino wrote an articulate rebuttal to the column, arguing that the best gift we can give our children in addition to love is high academic expectations. She wrote that scholastic achievement is not necessarily incompatible with being a happy, well-rounded person.

True enough. But too often in this community, all other values appear to be sacrificed to that single-minded goal. Cutthroat obsession over kids' academic transcripts is not about nurturing their potential, it's about college admission. Anybody who thinks the two concepts are the same thing is defining education in the narrowest possible way.

When we place that extreme and exclusive emphasis on the goal of college admission, we do our children a disservice because it diminishes them as individuals by taking away their choices. In Cupertino, many kids have only one choice: gain admission to Berkeley, or gain admission to Berkeley.

Certainly, there are communities on the East Coast where parental preoccupation with college admission is nearly as irrational as it is here. A recent news story is proof that immigrants have no monopoly on pushing their children: In one town in Florida, it became necessary to require Little League parents--virtually all Caucasians--to sign a pledge of sportsmanlike conduct before their kids could play baseball.

But academic pressure is intensified in communities like ours with a high percentage of parents who were born in Asia and India, where a child's social status and economic survival depend on winning one of the few precious university slots available in those countries. It will take generations of life in America before immigrants' descendants understand that simply isn't true here.

In this country, status and security are not automatically conferred by a degree from a "prestigious" university, and never have been. The ivory-tower academician who can't change a light bulb is a caricature in American life. More than one Silicon Valley engineer has rolled his or her eyes over the Ph.D. who may be a genius at manipulating computer data, but hasn't a clue whether or not a design drawing will really work.

Our greatest heroes were practical-minded people who knew how to roll up their sleeves and do things: split rails, plow a field, tinker with mechanics or strike out for unknown territory. Abraham Lincoln was entirely self-taught. Harry S. Truman studied law in night school, but never completed a degree. Thomas Edison's teacher labeled him "backward." Charles Lindbergh, Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt all were mediocre students.

No amount of factual reality checks will alter new immigrants' sincere belief that academic study is an automatic ticket to a good life for their children, because that belief is so deeply rooted--and valid--in the countries they came from. But I would ask them to remember one thing: America did not become the strongest nation in the world by forcing its children to be obedient grade-grubbers.

America dominated the industrial revolution during the 19th century, armed for and won World War II, put a man on the moon, took the lead in 21st-century technology and much more, all the while imbued with strongly-held core values of individualism, innovation, nonconformity, exploration, independence of spirit, and the personal freedom to choose one's own path. Those values are not instilled in children who are pressured from kindergarten on to believe that their primary obligation in life is to crack 1,400 on the SAT.

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