We also have a very competitive Asian population. There are parents who take their elementary and middle school kids to the high school awards ceremony, "to motivate them." They love to quiz my kids on now they achieved their success (awards=success.) They attend the science Olympiad tournament awards ceremony (not the competition, which is actually interesting) years before their kids are old enough to join the team.
I agree that this sort of tiger-parenting approach is toxic, and have no doubt that the school in Plainsboro are toxic (though thanks to the member who made that fact depressingly clear).
At the same time, Asian parents are presumably well aware of the fact that top-tier colleges discriminate against their children. This is in addition to the arms-race insanity that's driven in large part by admissions committees that react positively to MORE extracurriculars and MORE AP classes and etc. So, to some extent, they're responding to an unjust situation.
My original messages weren't meant as an endorsement of pressure-cooker environments. I'm concerned that some of the solutions that have been proposed in New Jersey will actually make the pressure worse --- hence the paragraph in my first message about cutting homework loads and looking for a way to force the colleges to change admissions policies.
Palo Alto isn't the only district around here with a crazy-bad level of pressure. Forgive me if I've related this story here before, but it's on-point to this discussion: my daughter ended up in the hospital for a couple days over the Thanksgiving break a few years back. Her roommate was a kindergartner from Mountain View who'd had an appendectomy. This girl was doing homework in her bed
while still hooked up to an IV line, DURING VACATION. She was expected to write a paragraph in her journal every day (in kindergarten!), do math worksheets, and etc. If that scene isn't a poster child for the kind of environment that drives teenagers to step in front of trains, I don't know what is.
