Blog Post #1: Our obsession with elite colleges is making our kids feel worthless

Julie Lythcoth-Haims sketches a real picture of a life of the teens of Palo Alto. The life of the teens as we know is different from that of the adults and the old. Rich in energy, their life is full of excitement with an indomitable will to know the unknown and explore the unexplored. The teens want to enjoy life to the lees as Ulysses, the protagonist of the poem “Ulysses” by Alfred Tennyson did. However, the teen-agers of Palo Alto cannot enjoy the charms of life. Many of “the teens feel life is not worth living”.

The author explores the reasons of why the life of our teens is not worth living. According to her, sick competition for admission to highly selective colleges/ universities stifles the playfulness of the life of our teens. The education system that encourages keen completion infects the playfulness of the life of our teens. Their life is set in such a way that they have no time to play. They live a poor life always full of care and stress. Their life is similar to the kind of life William Henry Davies has sketched in his poem ‘Leisure’ that begins with:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep of cow.

Parents, guardians, education system account for this poor life our teens are compelled to live. Keeping teens always in care, anxieties, and mental stress is a kind of oppression. Keeping them in stress affects their mental and physical health. To face the stern reality of life, our teens cannot live a carefree life; they sacrifice the charms of childhood in the hope of admission to prestigious universities or colleges even if education from these institutions cannot ensure complete success in life. Many great men of the world reach the pinnacle of success without education earned from the so-called famous colleges and universities. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) can be exemplified here.