The $500,000 Question : Part 5

The Kindergarten Wars: The Battle to Get into America's Best Private Schools
by Alan Eisenstock

(Page 5 of 5)

Finally, there is the third C, country club, which is a euphemism meaning that parents want to get their children into certain private school kindergartens so that they can brag about this "achievement" at their country club or its social equivalent.

In other words, getting into the right kindergarten is all about them. It is a reflection of their excellence as people and their success as parents. Getting their child into the right kindergarten is similar to traveling in the right circle of friends, wearing the right labels, being seen at the right restaurant prior to making an appearance at the right charity event or opening night. After being turned down by Dana Optt, director of admissions at the prestigious Pemberley School, a distraught dad phoned her in a panic.

"What am I going to do?" he said. "My wife won't get out of bed. She says she can't show her face at the club."

Dana offered the perfect solution. "Tell her to say that you withdrew your application. Say the school wasn't for you. You want to support your public school instead. Or say I was a bitch in the interview. You can use me."

"That's good," the man said. "I'm going to do that."

"I tell people to do that all the time," Dana said. "Saves face."

"Thank you," the man said and hung up, satisfied, without ever uttering a word about his child, never even bothering to ask why he didn't get in.

All parents want their children to be happy, but as one educational consultant observed, happiness can be an emotion that they project onto their children.

"These parents say they want their kids to be happy, which means rich, a star in their field, and marrying well. They're wrong. That's what will make them happy. Because that means I, the parent, am successful, as opposed to accepting who your kid is. Does that come from getting into Harvard? Maybe. But I tend to think not."

* * *

It appears, sadly, that getting a quality education is no longer every child's right but a privilege reserved for the privileged. And the ranks of the privileged seem to be thinning out by the season.

Two directors of admissions bemoaned the fact that because of siblings and legacies they had only four kindergarten openings available. One school had exactly two openings.

"This year again we took only legacies and siblings," another admissions director said. "We did not have one single opening for anyone from the outside."

"Everything is amped up more than ever," said MK, Longbourne School's director of admissions. "For the first time that I can remember in New York, there was not a spot for every kid who applied. Many kids did not get in anywhere. Used to be, kids had choices. Now that happens less and less. There are many more kids than there are spaces."

The head of one of the nation's top private schools added, "People are applying to nine or ten schools, sometimes more, out of fear, the fear of not getting in somewhere. They want to be safe rather than sorry. That builds the anxiety until it starts to become a kind of hysteria. Think about writing ten applications, going on ten tours, having ten interviews. That takes an enormous amount of time and causes a ton of stress. It's crazy. It's like the parents are on a train. You go to the end of the train and there is college. Getting into this or that college is what drives things at secondary schools, which is driving the anxiety about elementary schools, which is driving the anxiety about nursery schools. The train starts at preschool and it never stops."

And now, bubbling below the surface of the kindergarten application process, looms a sinister factor that threatens the mental stability of prospective parents: the sum of the Three C's. While parents vie ferociously for a kindergarten spot, they know that not any spot will do. Their children's future is riding not just on if they get in, but where. An example in the extreme:

In 1999, in Tokyo, Mitsuko Yamada, a thirty-five-year-old nurse, kidnapped her neighbor's daughter from a nursery school playground, forced her into a public restroom, and strangled her with a scarf. Four days later, overcome with grief and shame, Yamada turned herself in to the police. Sobbing uncontrollably, she confessed that she had killed the child out of jealousy. The child had gotten into a better kindergarten than her daughter had. The little girl's mother had begun to brag and Yamada could no longer take it.

The subsequent trial caused a media storm in Japan, resulting in a series of local newspaper articles about Yamada, her daily life, and her relationship with the other mothers in the school. The newspaper reported that it had received more than a thousand letters, faxes, and e-mails ... in support of Yamada.

To my knowledge, no one in America has actually killed to get their child into kindergarten.

Yet.

Copyright © 2006 by Duck Island Productions, Inc.

About the Author

Alan Eisenstock is the author of Ten on Sunday: The Secret Life of Men, Sports Talk: A Journey Inside the World of Sports Talk Radio, and Inside the Meat Grinder. In a career spanning twenty-five years, he has written movies, plays, magazine articles, and television shows. He lives in California.