Charges Dozens Of Parents, Coaches In Massive College Admissions Scandal The problem is that most of them are bad characters, too.Įducation U.S. The novel inhabits a safer tension: Its characters believe they are good people, but are not. Their liberal-centrist idea of goodness could be fertile ground for social commentary, but Holsinger rarely delves deep into political issues. Holsinger's protagonists tend to believe in the Ivy League, and in the idea that educational privilege confers both financial and moral well-being.
It's a classic pressure cooker, a place where every after-school activity is geared toward Ivy League applications. The Gifted School is set in Crystal, Colorado, a fictional town filled with wealthy, high-achieving liberals.
Holsinger's characters are privilege-hoarders, wedded to the conviction that their children deserve to go to the "gifted school" not by virtue of intelligence or achievements, but by virtue of being their children. The impulse behind the transgressions, though, is the same. The Gifted School's plot is far less extreme than the college admissions scandal, mainly because it centers around transgressions somewhat smaller than bribing the Georgetown University tennis coach to pretend your child plays tennis. Its characters' desperate efforts to get their children into a new public magnet school is infuriating, but it's nothing new. Bruce Holsinger's new social comedy The Gifted School, which revolves around a seventh-grade variation on this drama, offers only the latter two. The scandal generated waves of attention, most of which combined humor, rage, and an absolute lack of surprise. This March, an FBI sting code-named Operation Varsity Blues broke a massive and infuriating story: Rich, connected parents across the country were buying their kids into college. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Gifted School Author Bruce Holsinger
0 kommentar(er)
