School Interviews

My husband and I attended the last obligatory event at a potential school, just last night. We had finished our very last interview Wednesday afternoon at one of the highly touted schools. This flurry of tours, interviews, and child interviews has given us an interesting perspective about this city, its neuroses, its drives, and its insanity. The rigors of doing this in such a truncated period has felt like we had run a marathon, competing with world class runners, except we hadn't trained properly. The exhaustion from just going and coming to so many schools has been beyond anything I'd ever experienced. Then you add the anxiety of finding out February 15th your child hadn't gotten in anywhere, well, you can see how high the stakes are for all of the families involved in this process.

Last night's event, hosted by one of the schools, was a discussion about 'diversity'--code name for, we try to have some brown faces as to not appear completely racially insensitive. The issue of diversity is complex, to say the least. And diversity goes far beyond race, color, but is really about having a representation of the world at large. In a city where the middle class is shrinking faster than most actresses post pregnancy, what you see is a polarization of two worlds: the haves and the have nots with most have nots being the ones that also represent racial diversity.

My husband and I have fully accepted the reality that our son will always be different than any of his peers, that is unless he ends up in school with Tiki Barber's kids. The chances of him having a classmate with his racial, cultural makeup are about as likely as us winning the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes. With that in mind, we can hope to have a class where his black peers' families will feel much like ours. And that there will be some Asian, possibly even Korean, peers to reflect both sides of himself, even if they aren't mixed in quite the way he has been.

We found last night's event troubling in its tone of victimization. It is the classic mistake for 'liberal' or 'pc' mindsets that diversity, or being diverse, is a negative which has to be bolstered. This belief that diversity, or rather, creating an 'inclusive' world where the benefit is only for those of color is truly a narrow way to view the notion of diversity. A diverse community and its benefits is a two way street in this ever-changing world. If this current election is any indication, our country will have to grapple with gender and racial politics in a way it hasn't done, ever, in its history. Words like marginal only add to this sense that those of color are somehow in need. There is some veracity to the inequities that have be overcome, even by such fabricated methods, but the victim mentality is one that can debilitate those who don't need anything else to hinder their progress.

What is striking about attending such events is how alone my husband and I feel in our own uniqueness as a couple, but also as individuals. It is quite remarkable to us we found one another. We understand the racial politics and the inherent inequities of institutional racism, but we don't ever view ourselves as 'victims'. We don't view our color or ethnicity as a negative, but rather as this beautiful background that poses a different set of challenges and advantages for us as individuals. And what we understand better than anyone else is how different those challenges will be for our child, the progeny of our commitment that the world will be different for him than it was for us.

As a person who has taught, and will teach again, my assessment of schools is more rigorous than others who may not have an education background. There are times when I wish I'd been a baker, blissfully ignorant about the expectations of what should occur in a classroom. My critical eye makes it impossible for me to feel completely at ease with any one choice. I think there are some good choices, but my uncertainty about any one of them being the ideal fit for our son is what keeps me up most nights. It is also the need to flash forward into the future of our son's development, having to make a decision that could determine who he becomes. It is all a swirl in our heads, each of us wondering if this one decision could affect him in ways we can't possibly imagine. Again, this is when we both wish we could be much more insouciant and confident whatever decision gets made will be for the good. This is when the old adage of, 'ignorance is bliss' has some bearing.

So, now we wait along with the thousands of other families all across the city. We will, like most of us did when we'd applied to college, await those envelopes, thin signaling defeat, fat signaling victory for our 5 year old. What has happened to our world that this is apex of childhood is determined by the size of the envelope? That is what I will be mulling over as I, along with everyone else, wait for the arrival of those envelopes.