Today’s Washinton Post article on banning parents from college tours just underscores the degree to which educational institutions in the U.S. work to drive a wedge between children and parents. Apparently, kids can’t find their voice when they’re on the tour with mom and dad. They usually manage that just fine at home, though.
If teenagers are reluctant to speak out during a college tour when mommy and daddy?let’s call them “DEEP POCKETS”?are standing nearby, then maybe their baby isn’t mature enough (CLUE!!!) to go to college just yet. Time enough for students-only at student orientation, which is what orientation is for?and why it’s usually accompanied by lots of beer and other refreshments, long after the parental units have left town for the semester.
Any parents who would accede to such no-parents-allowed nonsense are of questionable parental mettle themselves. If your child is not an emancipated minor, go with them on the tour. You will see, hear, and think of things that they won’t. That’s why they are NOT called “adults,” and you are! If they are an emancipated minor, chances are you’re already redundant, anyway. Go to a museum and spend time with the dinosaurs while your kid’s on the tour alone.
So, I conclude that there is no need to send your darling to Bates College (which has banned you, you snivelling bill-payer), or others with the same policy, and deserves not your money.
This, to me, is a valuable piece of information, at least as valuable as the highly-touted annual college rankings of various types. I can now “X” one more college off the list of potentials for my soon-to-be college student, with confidence that I have made the right decision.
The marketplace for information is a truly great thing.
