Dubious Education Trend Signifiers, Continued

Earlier this week, we discussed how the words "small but growing" indicate the likely presence of a dubious education trend story, in this case about parents uprooting their entire lives to put their kids in private schools. (Alexander Russo follows up here.) Sure enough, the meme has been spreading like wildfire, at least according to this anecdote and an unconfirmed email a friend sent me last night.

The New York Times offers another example this morning, in a story about how parents in an affluent suburb have gone kinda overboard in organizing their local PTO. While there are no assertions of a "small but growing" trend, the piece uses three other words to accomplish roughly the same thing: "across the country." As in:

The transformation of Livingston’s pizza lunch reflects how parent groups across the country, especially in affluent suburbs, are undergoing a kind of corporate makeover, combining members’ business savvy, technological prowess and negotiating skills to professionalize operations.

"Small but growing" and "across the country" (variants: "across the nation," "across America," etc.) are both used for a similar transformational purpose: to turn the specific into the general, anecdote into trend, story into news. "Pay attention," they're saying, "this kind of thing is happening everywhere. It could happen to you." Which is fine, as long as by "everywhere" they mean "possibly in a few more of the small number of wealthy suburban communities located near the handful of large coastal cities / media centers where, not coincidentally, this reporter's editor happens to live."

It's certainly not a coincidence that both of these stories focus on the anxieties of privileged parents. And it's surely only a matter of time before we wake up to find this story on the front page of a major news daily:

DARIEN, C.T. -- Elizabeth Winterhouse just wants what's best for her little boy.

A slender, slightly nervous woman of 37 dressed in tasteful but expensive jewelry and the latest Talbots fashion, Mrs. Winterhouse keeps a watchful eye over her six-year old son Miles as we sit in the airy, light-filled living room of her suburban Connecticut home.

While her husband Jim works 18-hour days managing a hedge fund in nearby Greenwich, Mrs. Winterhouse has a lot of time to think about Miles' future. And what she sees has her worried. The warning signs came early--amniocentisis results put Miles' prenatal verbal skills in only the 97th percentile. Despite being three months younger, Miles' playmate, neighbor, and best friend Parker has already memorized Pi to 30 digits. Twice-weekly tutoring hasn't helped Miles overcome his difficulties in conjugating French verbs. Meanwhile, admission to Yale University in nearby New Haven is getting tougher every year.

So Mrs. Winterhouse did what she believes any responsble parent in her situation would do. She had an advanced microprocessor surgically implanted in Miles' brain.

And she's not alone. Across the country, a small but growing number of parents are taking advantage of new cyber-enhancement technologies to give their children a leg up in the ever-tougher rat race for admissions to the Ivy League. Other examples include Cynthia Fairhaven, who lives 200 yards away from the Winterhouses on the same Darien street, and Allesandra Stassinopoulis, the wife of a Greek shipping magnate living in Beverly Hills.

Leading national experts confirm this rapidly growing trend. A spokesman for Cyberdyne Systems, manufacturer of Miles' implant, said that "More and more parents are giving their children the educational tools they need, for only $22,995, six months same as cash." Jack Jennings, Director of the non-partisan Center for Education Policy confirmed that "What you said is true, no doubt because of the pressures caused by No Child Left Behind." And as University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato recently noted, "Stranger things have happened."