All around me, I see girls forced to become rat racers in the College Application Industrial Complex, the subculture where students must craft themselves into the perfect specimens for college admission and often lose their authenticity, love of learning, and sense of self in the process.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the pressures on students to conform for college admissions, often sacrificing their true selves and passions.
Rachel Simmons critiques the societal pressure on students, particularly girls, to fit into a mold of perfection for college applications. This 'College Application Industrial Complex' encourages a competitive environment where authenticity, genuine love for learning, and personal identity are compromised in favor of presenting an idealized version of oneself, leading to a loss of individuality and deeper passions.
In practice
During a school assembly discussing college readiness, this quote can illustrate the importance of staying true to oneself.
You don't learn how to say 'hey, I have a problem,' but you also don't learn how to hear it. There's a total breakdown of how females talk to one another. It's very disconcerting for leadership because it means you don't talk to each other; you talk about each other.
Failing well is a skill. Letting girls do it gives them critical practice coping with a negative experience. It also gives them the opportunity to develop a kind of confidence and resilience that can only be forged in times of challenge.
When I did the original research for 'Odd Girl Out,' I asked every bullied girl I interviewed to tell me what she needed most from her family. The answer truly surprised me. It wasn't having the best solutions, calling the school, or trying to act like everything was okay. It was empathy.
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.
Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won't grow again.
Our youth should also be educated with music and physical education.
Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.
Education must be increasingly concerned about the fullest development of all children and youth, and it will be the responsibility of the schools to seek learning conditions which will enable each individual to reach the highest level of learning possible.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.