"Boys" whose parents suck the independence out of them.

Even Dr. Smith, Glenn Reynolds' "InstaWife" (his term, not mine), concurs that there's just too much political correctness on campus. Men like her husband, who fear salty words it seems, are conditioned to "politically correct" those like Hoffa who choose their own terms and whose active verbiage -- taken in full context -- can be interpreted in more ways than one.

Trouble is... she doesn't see the true problem in her example:

Does the College Essay Suck the Life Out of Boys?
So it’s pouring rain here in Knoxville and I spent the afternoon reading a terrific book called Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College. If you have a teen getting ready to apply to college, this is a great read and it’s hilarious to boot.

The author, Andrew Ferguson, goes through the process of trying to help his son get into college and starts by discussing the lengths parents are going to to try and get their kids into a selective school. Some are even hiring $40,000 college counselors years before their kid applies to college to guide them through the process.
...
One thing that caught my eye was how hard and depressing it was for the son to try and write the college essay. Many of the colleges ask for an essay about the student’s “inner life”–usually a buzz word for some kind of sappy self-absorbed nonsense where the student “took a risk” of some kind and went on to become a better person or some variation of that theme.

In the book, Ferguson’s son finally spits out a couple of paragraphs about his experience at a camp where there was a swimming test and he managed to swim the required distance while the rest were defeated. In the essay, the son wrote that he was “tired but proud; he sympathized with his classmates who hadn’t finished and in his victory, accepted modestly, he learned the timeless value of persistence and determination, expressed with grim earnestness…”

But his father knew the truth: “which was the masculine truth. He didn’t remember the race because it proved the timeless value of persistence. He remembered the victory because it was a victory: he had competed against this classmates, friends and rivals alike, and beaten them soundly and undeniably, and earned the right to a sack dance in the end zone. He knew he couldn’t say this, though, and I knew he was right.”

So the son, instead of crafting a more honest essay -- appears to take Dad's "helicopter parental" advice, and gives the college admissions people what they presumably want... Which the father approves of.

Now here's a potential solution:
Butt out parents. Leave your sons alone to apply to college, to write their essays, to decide how to live their lives. If you want him to get in, and are willing to fork over thousands to do his work and get him into the "right" school, shame on you for stealing this opportunity for independence from him. How will they learn to stand on their own two, if mama or daddy is always there to "help them" do the politically correct thing, and write the "acceptable" essay? Where is the risk taking there? Don't blame the schools for what's being conditioned and taught in the homes.

It's the parents who push this political correctness on the kids, and try to live their lives through their offspring, who are ultimately disservicing them.

Let your "boys", and girls, grow up?

Surely at 17 or 18, if they are looking to continue schooling, they are capable of filling out the application forms, writing an essay that doesn't require Daddy's pre-approval, and being themselves, not the ideal student candidate that many years of life inside the academy have conditioned their own fathers to be?

Again, I suspect plenty of these parents are crippling their own by not allowing them to do their own work. Write their way in on their own merits, or not.

But please: don't cripple them already, and then blame others for not taking seriously your "boys", who have never been taught independence in the home, instead being initiated into a world where money buys access (supposedly) and fathers and mothers "do all they can" to help junior succeed, to the point of not allowing him to do his own work himself, and compete honestly on his own merits.

Trust me: if the kid can write honestly about hunting, or fishing, about helping a buddy get his truck running, or participating in community activities of his own choosing ... instead of taking the parents' advice and making him over into another "boy" entirely, he'll get in somewhere, and perhaps it will indeed be a good fit where he can make his own mark independent of Mommy or Daddy's influence....

Boys to Men, so to speak. Heck, even the Bible encourages parents to step back a bit, because after you overly influence his college decisions, surely you'll soon be opining on his choice of a mate?

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

Step back, parents.They'll be fine without you, have no fear.

Let the "boy" write his honest essay, about competing honestly (no matter how much mom and dad want influence) and yes, ultimately winning the same way. If you don't set them free to compete on their own, how the heck can you fault the campuses for overly influencing them in a negative way, when that's pretty much the quality of the kid you are sending them in the first place, parents?

Another manufactured controversy, easily solved really.