The college admissions cheating scandal is particularly delicious because it is a chance to indulge a favorite national pastime: judging the rich and powerful (second only to our pastime of idolizing them).
Before we veer too far into thinking this behavior is confined to elite parents, ask yourself: have you never pulled a string for your kid? To get them a better teacher, a better doctor, a slot in that summer camp that was full? Show us a middle-to-upper-class parent who hasn’t, or a parent without the means to reach the string who wouldn’t pull it if they could.
This is a scandal over the crisis of the cost of college and the price to get there, be it in bribes or tuition or stressing our kids to the point of breaking them. It’s also a reflection of a crisis in parenting. Every one of us is vulnerable to the culture of competition that pulled these parents over the line from pulling a little string to breaking a moral code, and the law. And we all have a responsibility to help change that culture.
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