Hobbies…Or Why I Suck at Life

Written for Redefined.

Hobbies are dying. We talk about the gap between the rich and the poor and its economic and social consequences but what about educational consequences? Our schools are also starting to strain under the burden of the same gap. Before the No Child Left Behind Act, schools had no accountability for the education level for a high school graduate –some still couldn’t read or write in any acceptable fashion. However, this accountability comes at a high cost and many schools, in the inner city and other of the poorer regions, cannot afford that kind of guaranteed education. Because of this, the students in affluent areas are somehow automatically the best of the best. This economic gap extends to funding for activities and hiring teachers. The less affluent areas can’t afford any kind of real salary and no teacher really wants to live in downtown L.A.

And so, the students whose parents can afford the best, become the best. And the schools that struggle to hire and pay for even the mediocre, spit out a product that can be nothing but mediocre at best.

Because of this, the child in the median of neighborhoods is lost. Perhaps they are the healthiest mentally, without the stress of either three jobs, poverty, and gang wars, or six AP classes, varsity sports, and the race for top ten in the class. But this mental health comes at the cost of a handicap in the race for education and the first job.

Overachieving, in many upper-middle class neighborhoods, is no longer overachieving –it’s the expected, the average. These children don’t have hobbies, they have activities specifically structured to appeal to an increasingly stringent college admissions board. They can’t afford to dabble, already they are forced to understand the “career” viewpoint and act accordingly. Automatically, these children participate for the long haul and constantly push to be the best. And it’s becoming, depressingly, easier and easier for this to happen. The focus on Advanced Placement classes and tests as a measuring stick for your child’s education and potential has made it a valid way for many kids to boost their overall GPA because even a 3.0 isn’t nearly good enough.

That ad run by Microsoft years ago is only the beginning. In it, the children are shown in a line presumably on their way to a socially-developing activity and are enshrouded by what is seen as their future career. The advertisement’s message is that kid’s are obviously destined to be the best at whatever they’re interested in right now and must be helped along the way, by you (the parent) and us (the software company). Our advertising is geared towards making our children a success and exploiting today’s common parental fear of a child that can’t succeed.

Perhaps these parents are remembering a childhood in which they were not the best at anything and the envy they experienced. Perhaps they were the best and simply want their children to enjoy the same benefits. Whatever their misguided reason, they’re erasing self-sufficiency and any independently wrought work ethic. These middle class are personally attending to the economic gap that they immediately turn around and whine about to their spouses and sententiously nod about while listening to Channel Eleven News. This education gap doesn’t stop at causing ulcers in twelve year old children, it compounds the ulcers in the job market. The choice between a lack or an over-saturation of education in children has created another, equally distant “choice” in the future –the job market. All of a sudden, white and blue-collar descriptions don’t do it justice. It’s either a grease-apron or the jeans of a software guru. Parents see this choice and force their kids along a path. Or they miss it and the child has no choice but to do the same.