<p>I went to a college prep school for my final two years of HS. It was always exciting when seniors announced the school they were accepted to. We all worked hard to reach our goals. Many worked insanely hard and when they got their letter of acceptance of course they were going to be excited and post it on their locker. In fact many would only tell their close friends and it was their friends that would spread the news and make the bigger deal. We always encouraged each other and wanted to hear good news. Some got rejected and were upset but we always supported everyone no matter the news.
I see no issue w students announcing their acceptances at school or on their own FB page. </p>
<p>I just caught up watching Scandal. Hey Shonda Rhimes has US Attorney, David Rosen wearing Dartmouth T-shirts. Meredith Grey wearing her Dartmouth T-shirt, Addison Montgomery wearing her Yale Sweatshirt and Dereck Shepherd wears his Bowdoin t-shirt.</p>
<p>That news must not have trickled down to the dozens of young twentysomethings friends/acquaintances I knew nor some casual coffee dates I’ve had in Boston and NYC where they wore college or even high school wear and nobody felt the need to treat it as anything more than another casual t-shirt. </p>
<p>Especially to some dates I’ve had who arrived wearing school shirts ranging from their random high/prep school to ones denoting some elite MBA programs they happen to be students/alums of. </p>
<p>On the other hand…I will understand if it is a turnoff for me to wear one of many free t-shirts I’ve accumulated up from various computer technology related conventions to coffee dates…or even casual hangouts with non-techie friends…especially shirts from Linuxworld. :D</p>
<p>Found those tend to go over with the non-techie friends and dates about as well as wearing a “Vote Newt” sign in most parts of NYC…or much more so…my undergrad alma mater’s campus. :D</p>
<p>Sorry, I just cannot imagine being on EITHER side of a conversation about college acceptances decades after the fact. So the state U kids remain “traumatized” about the Elites and their attitudes for decades afterwards? I’d say that YES, they need to refocus where they put their mental energy. By the time they are mature, productive adults, they should be beyond caring if some blowhard isn’t impressed with the state U they attended when they were 18 years old. When you have “a life,” what some elitist snob thinks about where you went to school over a decade ago is so completely unimportant to you. The situation you described in the post to which I responded sounded nothing like true bullying and the “trauma” of living through at most a few months of college snobbery comments in one’s senior year should be something which is survivable.</p>
<p>It is absolutely absurd to mandate that students not share their college acceptances before May 1st. The whole idea of maintaining self esteem has gone WAY TOO FAR! </p>
<p>I am certain that the whole thing came about because some parent was upset that someone else’s child got in a prestigious school, didn’t like hearing about it and complained to the school.</p>
<p>In defense of cobrat and others like him, there are many, many people who years later are still trying to live down thoughtless comments from a parent or peer. Words have power, and sometimes we have trouble forgetting or brushing off insensitive words, especially when they come too close to our own fears about ourselves. I still remember the teacher who hinted that I really wasn’t very smart when she told me I was an over-achiever and one day I would fall flat on my face. No doubt psychologists’ couches are populated by people who have been deeply affected by what others have said to them.</p>
<p>coureur–No doubt D and I would have felt a whole lot better about the coach’s decision if he had framed it in terms of saving her legs for her college career or tapering off before the championships. But he didn’t, and that does not seem to have been his motive. Whether this will be a blessing in disguise for my D is hard to say. The middle school season is really short, so I doubt she was in much danger of over-racing.</p>
<p>As for the theory we Americans burn out our young runners, for every article like that there’s one claiming that African runners will keep dominating the distance events because starting from a young age they run barefoot miles and miles every day just to go to school. It seems to be an individual thing. Some runners are successful because they put in a lot of miles–often more than their competitors. Some are successful because they cross-train and avoid injury. Some can do low mileage but have so much natural talent they can win anyway. Some have natural talent and do a lot of miles and become Olympians. What I have seen first hand is that 99% of the runners recruited to my older D’s top Div. 1 team came come from really strong high school program where the training did not differ much in intensity from what they are now doing and/or had private coaches who trained them on an elite level.</p>
<p>I think this story points to a truth about how high schools manage difficult issues. Instead of encouraging dialogue, they come up with a clumsy, politically correct approach. If the problem is distracted students, removing the provocation of college gear is not the solution. A better solution might be for teachers to have the will and the administrative support to discipline kids who are disengaged and disruptive. If the problem is kids who feel bad because of others’ acceptances or kids who foment those bad feelings by flaunting their elite-school acceptances, the solution might be to talk about what’s going on. High schools, IME, often go for easy solutions. Nothing wrong with that if the “solution” is effective. If it’s not, high school administrators just come across as silly bureaucrats who don’t want to get their hands dirty. I mean, really. Have a conversation. Have fights. Call people out when they say silly, unsupportable things (such as “all the work I put into high school was wasted because I didn’t get into school X,” among other gems). If schools encouraged open conversation, it would expose goofy ideas and possibly rob those ideas of some of their power to hurt.</p>
<p>If I lived in one of these high-pressure “you have to get in an Ivy League school” locations, I think I’d pack up and move to where people have a more normal perspective on life!</p>
<p>My kids attend an inner city, public school where the dress code is more concerned about not wearing gang colors than college colors. </p>
<p>But there is a significant honors program, and there is a day–as another poster mentioned-- where students wear their college to be regalia. Not only that, but faculty wears their alma mater clothing on that day, and there is a bulletin board where students are encouraged to write down their acceptances. </p>
<p>I think the ban at the elite private schools has to do with the fact that they are schools where parents pay $30k a year with the expectation that it’s an inside track to the Ivy. If you got to wear your college stuff, it would be a collective admission that it didn’t quite work out that way for many if not most of their students.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, my rough and tumble high school regularly sends its fair share to the Ivys and other top schools. </p>
<p>This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Personally I feel that there are far better schools for particular fields than even Harvard. </p>
<p>I don’t understand why anyone would be too disappointed to have not gotten not Cornell but instead a school like CMU or UC Berkeley.mThis perception of prestige is really irritating.</p>
<p>TheGFG - based on what you have written, I agree with you. I don’t think that avoiding over-racing was the coach’s motive in this case. I see it as more of an unintended, but still very real, benefit of his action. </p>
<p>What I was really disagreeing with was mommusic’s assertion that a “good coach” would let her run every race. In reality that would more likely be the mark of a bad coach.</p>
<p>Barring dress code violations and gang-related concerns, I do not have a problem with children of any age wearing college apparel. It may serve as subliminal messaging about future life prospects, who knows? In fact in one urban school I visited recently–an elementary school–each teacher’s room is done completely in the colors and emblems of his/her university from which they graduated. There is a special day on campus where each teacher provides the kids with information about their alma mater and they dress totally in university gear. It has a huge impact on the children who, although from highly economically disadvantaged families, begin to imagine a future for themselves as college students. My kid has had a Stanford tree pillow in his room since he was born, handed over to him from his older sister who had it since she was about five. Then, there were the Princeton tee shirts since age nine. When the oldest attended UC Berkeley and then Oxford, my youngest were fully outfitted with gear because they were not allowed to attend her regattas otherwise. All in all, we have probably a dozen or more universities represented amidst my children’s apparel and none of my children has ever been told they could not wear a tee shirt or hoodie.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree. A good coach doesn’t over-work his top runners. I had hoped for a few happy and care-free years of running before this child entered the big, bad high school where this nonsense is rampant. The coaches there are the kings of squashing excellence if it makes others feel bad. One of them liked to make a big show of announcing the relay team lineups and say that such and such a girl would be the anchor–not my D, even though D was by far the best. He wanted to publicly give these girls (often the whiny complaining ones) the honor of being named anchor, since that is usually the leg the fastest runner does. But then 5 minutes before the race he’d put my D on anchor. You gotta laugh.</p>
<p>On a separate note to the OP regarding the coach removing her daughter from competition, this is probably a violation of IDEA and you should pursue this with her special education teacher and the SpEd director. I am horrified at this level of discrimination and it is not acceptable or legal.</p>
<p>One woman I dated recently who is an alum of my high school is still very sensitive about her time at our high school because her experiences there “Made her feel dumb for all 4 years”. That…despite the fact she’s a successful professional in a highly respected STEM field and is a heck of a lot smarter than I am. </p>
<p>She or the Middlebury graduate buddy could have easily been me if I wasn’t the contrarian type who enjoyed going against the grain and reveled in *<strong><em>ing off the jerks within the top 25% by saying my college plans is to be a beach bum in California</em>, that I’m gunning to be last in my graduating class</strong>, and that I am not looking forward to being a future stuffed shirt in an idiot suit like them. </p>
<ul>
<li>Anyone know where my high school buddies and I can get California Beach Bum t-shirts I can wear with pride…especially those where one can include graduating year? :D</li>
</ul>
<p>** Failed miserably on this score…though I enjoyed the irritated reactions of those jerks whenever I stated that in the tone of a smart-aleck.</p>
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<p>I don’t know if its location or that times have really changed. </p>
<p>Back when I was in high school in a NYC Specialized High school(early-mid '90s), CMU was considered more prestigious among the Engineering/STEM set…and some of the kids admitted there joined with the MIT/Caltech crowd to slag on Cornell and other Ivies as “safety schools”.</p>
<p>“rubbed in anyone’s face” is LOL assumption. Why people think that every top caliber kid is dying to get into Ivy / Elite? I would say that it is kind of silly. Let them wear whtaever they want and do not think that most are soooo envious, they are not, they did not even think of applying, never crossed their mind. Everybody is applying to colleges that meet theri criteria and id does not even occur to some to check any kind of ranking as they do not care. They have researched, visited numerous times, talked to current students, sit thru info sessions, reviewed Merit packages, talked to coaches, stayed overnight, went to interviews,…and oops, forgot to check that Ranking list…or maybe they did not care. If we pay attention to other’s people T-shirts, houses, cars, color of grass…how we can ever be happy? So, first we absolutely got to remove T-shirts that bother us, then we absolutely have to request that everybody buys the same car and live in the same type of houses and make sure that if our grass is yellow, than god forbid, tothers dare to sprinkle water on theirs…no way, it will make us so miserable if their grass is a bit more green. Very funny and very sad at the same time. As for my own kid, she was the one who failed checking these so important rankings after graduting #1 in her HS class. She ended up graduating from State UG, which was plenty to get accepted to several Med. Schools. Poor thing! I bet others feel so sorry for her!</p>
