Broadening Minds

When my student Z committed to working with me on her personal statement last application cycle, she told me her father, a professor at a local Chinese university, was excited to meet a fellow educator and would like to invite me to dinner. Although her father’s initiative was a pleasant surprise, I politely declined because I didn’t wish my consent to be construed as my acceptance of a favor.

I’m glad I didn’t meet him then because, well, I was compelled to meet him later, and… let’s just say things didn’t go so well.

You see, my student Z is an avid musician and, naturally, she chose to write about her passion for music in her personal statement. Although she’s clearly exceptionally talented, what struck me most was her genuine frustration with restrictions on her creative freedom. In the Apple App Store in China, she saw her favorite band’s name removed because it contains the word “sex.” At school, she was prohibited from performing a typical love song at an event because her school—like many others in China—adheres to a ridiculous blanket ban on adolescent love.

So, what does Z do? She takes to the streets! She plays anything by any band—or even composed by herself—to her heart’s content. Now, public performance in China is subject to extremely arbitrary regulation, and its shutdown hinges on little more than whether a passing security officer likes your tunes or simply feels bored.

With my help, Z crafts a beautiful, impassioned personal statement in which she evades particularly petty officers in her pursuit of musical liberation on the streets of Guangzhou. What a brilliant topic that embraces the American core values of individualism and freedom! But more importantly, Z truly feels strongly about her experiences (a real rarity for students writing college essays), which imbued her final product with raw authenticity.

And so, I was shocked when Z told me that her father was angry, really angry about her personal statement. He was appalled that Z’s school, security officers, and the Chinese government were characterized by words like “repression,” “conformity,” and “censorship” in her essay. He demanded the immediate removal of anything even mildly negative about the Chinese institutions that constrained his daughter, arguing that these criticisms oppose everything he (and by extension, his family, he seemed to imply) believes in.

During the meeting he called for, Z’s father didn’t say very much. He simply sat and glared at me as if I had committed some unforgiveable sin, constantly shaking his head as I explained in vain how each of the weaknesses he perceived in the personal statement is in fact a strength. He spoke only in Chinese, which his daughter dutifully translated for me in anguish and discomfort. Near the end of our meeting, she started crying. That broke my heart.

Look, I’ve regrettably met my fair share of parents with minimal or no knowledge of U.S. college application who project familiar Chinese standards on the process and staunchly insist that their approach is the best (and perhaps the only) one. I could and I did explain to Z’s father that the critical portrayal of Chinese institutions is consistent with the impressions that the vast majority of U.S. admissions officers have. The language in Z’s personal statement isn’t remotely close to radical; it’s in line with what every major U.S. publication writes about China. More importantly, the critical depiction is a necessary narrative backdrop and ultimately plays a very small role in her essay, which is first and foremost the story of her personal liberation. Z’s father didn’t care.

I have no problem with parents embracing their own worldviews and harboring positive or negative sentiments about China, the U.S., or anything else. But it really hurt like hell to meet a father so insulated by his own beliefs that he demanded the censorship of his daughter’s essay, an essay that she’s proud of and that expresses her true feelings. A father so dismissive of his daughter’s beliefs—even when she’s literally crying in front of him—that he hijacked her essay to advance his own views.

And it feels even worse knowing that he works as a professor, the occupation that perhaps bears the greatest obligation to champion and defend the free exchange of ideas, at least in the U.S. To strengthen the minds of our children and our students, we must first broaden our own minds.