分类： 赛事资讯

Laboring over Spotify unable to find the Rachmaninoff piano concerto played by a favorite soloist, attending a Mahler’s symphony surrounded by empty seats … such is the reality that we classical music enthusiasts face.

Since the start of this century, the popularity of all traditional classical music platforms has been plummeting. The percentage of adults attending classical music performances declined from 11.6 percent to 8.6 percent between 2002 and 2017, whereas participation in all other genres rose by as high as 15.7 percent. In the year 2012 alone, classical album sales decreased by 21 percent. The ingenuity of Beethoven is becoming increasingly impotent against the ferocious attraction of pop music.

In this age of the internet, one can easily avoid the blame of such tragedy by claiming that classical pieces moved online. However, it is precisely metadata — the algorithm based on the album, song and artist that popular music streaming platforms use — that has been impeding their digital growth. How can Spotify accurately place into its categories the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel? As a result, classical music presently constitutes less than one percent of all streaming services, lagging behind its 2.5 percent of American album sales.

Ultimately, society’s abandonment of classical music stems from modern cultural changes. Since the mid-20th century, Western society has developed a countercultural attitude that readily questions established authority, the classical canons included. Encountering a myriad new adrenaline-charged music styles, people eschew the slow-paced, less immediately accessible classical music. Plagued by modern populism, those in search of easy numbness dub classical music “elitist,” using it as a convenient excuse to turn away from the elusive genre.

In rejecting classical music, we neglect its unique and timeless emotional depth. It is an abstract representation of the composers’ meditations on the world, expressing complexities when words are inadequate. Cambridge composer John Borstlap asserts that classical music offers an “alternative to the modern world” instead of the “reflection” or escape from reality that people seek in pop lyrics about sex or drugs. From Brahms’s melancholic tunes, to Schumann’s rhythmic introversions, to Tchaikovsky’s impressive harmonies, classical pieces preserve our inner peace to balance out the external bombardment of indigestible information from society. Such is the perennial virtue of classical music.

Despite the current waning of classical music, its future remains hopeful as long as we embrace its fruits and pass on its legacy. Go to a local concert. Pick up an instrument. Advocate for classical music education in schools, starting from childhood. Download apps like Idagio and Primephonic — streaming platforms devoted to classical music, search for a serenade, and feel how your soul soars with every chord.

Works Cited

Borstlap, John. “The Relevance of Classical Music.” The Imaginative Conservative, 29 April 2017.

Sisario, Ben. “In Streaming Age, Classical Music Gets Lost in the Metadata.” The New York Times, 23 June 2019.

“U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002-2017.” National Endowment for the Arts, Sept. 2018.

A few weeks ago, my friend arrived at our lunch table in tears. She’d come from physical education class, where a group of white classmates called her “coronavirus” for her Chinese heritage. It hurt my friend, who hadn’t heard from her relatives in Wuhan. That incident wasn’t isolated — other Asian-American students were targeted for their ethnicity at our middle and high schools. Throughout February and March, similar scenes played out at schools across the country, with Asian-American students insulted and harassed by other students.

One might think that this behavior reflects the numerous anxieties Americans face due to the coronavirus pandemic, including economic insecurity. But my community is affluent and well-educated, my neighborhood dotted with lawn signs saying “Hate Has No Home Here.”

Instead, the coronavirus-fueled bias against Asian-Americans is symptomatic of a wider phenomenon: American society has always regarded Asian-Americans as “non-American.”

Many Americans, of all stripes, are unfamiliar with the breadth of cultures and backgrounds that “Asian-American-ness” comprises. Without that awareness, it’s easy to paint a generic picture of Asian-Americans with broad, stereotypical brush strokes: industrious, high-achieving, passive and foreign. A local university thinks we lack “personality.” This unfamiliarity leads to a subconscious categorization of Asian-Americans as being “other,” a one-size-fits-all group too different to be fully “American.”

Nearly every Asian kid (myself included) experiences this categorization through the question, “Where are you really from?” It doesn’t matter that I was born in Boston, or that my dad cried tears of joy when his hometown team won the World Series “after 108 years of futility.” It’s usually an innocuous question phrased poorly, and I’ll happily talk about my background, but it assumes that Asians can’t quite be considered “American.” That assumption quietly breeds suspicion, and suspicion breeds fear.

We’ve seen this fear of the unfamiliar, combined with external “proof” that Asians “threaten the American way of life,” give rise to active discrimination, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to Japanese internment during World War II, to the verbal and physical attacks of today. This is only possible because Asian-Americans were always viewed with suspicion. For sure, the Communist Party of China has been untrustworthy, but it doesn’t justify linking my Chinese-American friends to the coronavirus. President Trump’s “Chinese Virus” label holds power against Asian-Americans because they’re seen as outsiders — it taps into the fear and anxiety that Americans feel, and the need to displace that fear.

Yet, the coronavirus, and the heightened bias associated with it, gives Asian-Americans a unique opportunity to hold a national dialogue about being “forever foreigners” — to go beyond cultural stereotypes and share our individual experiences. By approaching one another as human beings, not faceless “others,” we might someday view each other as Americans first.

Works Cited

Bittle, Andrea. “I Am Asian American.” Teaching Tolerance, 2013.

Hong, Cathy Park. “The Slur I Never Expected to Hear in 2020.” The New York Times Magazine, 12 April 2020.

Oung, Katherine. “Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School.” The New York Times, 14 March 2020.

Pan, Deanna. “Fears of Coronavirus Fuel Anti-Chinese Racism.” The Boston Globe, 30 Jan. 2020.

Yang, Andrew. “Andrew Yang: We Asian Americans Are Not the Virus, but We Can Be Part of the Cure.” Washington Post, 1 April 2020.

“Tom and Jerry” is television gold. Its basic premise of “cat-chases-mouse” glued generations of kids to the screen. Yet, unlike Tom, house cats are ruthless predators that almost always catch their prey. New research shows that house cats are unsustainably clawing their way through bird populations across the United States. In fact, more birds die by cats than by collisions with buildings, cars and other anthropogenic activities combined.

Since when did Tom actually catch Jerry and Tweety? Since always. We just never noticed. Cats bring home “up to 11 dead birds, rodents or lizards a month,” according to Professor Roland Kays in the NPR article “Why House Cats Are God’s Perfect Little Killing Machines.” On its own, this cat fact isn’t too surprising. But when we consider almost four in 10 households own a cat, feline predation has an outsized impact. Due to their constrained roaming grounds (usually near their house), cats have four-to-10 times the effect of a wild predator in the local community. That bird seed you put out for observing songbirds? Let’s just say you aren’t the only one watching the feeder. The Fish and Wildlife Service tally annual feline kill counts at 2.4 billion birds across the United States. This has had a devastating effect on the bird population. According to The New York Times, bird counts across the United States have fallen a staggering 29 percent in the last 50 years. At the same time, the popularity of cats in America has exploded.

Traditional bird conservation efforts cannot counteract a cat’s primal instincts. For my Eagle Scout project, I constructed a 14-foot tower that nests about 40 chimney swifts (a threatened bird species). Considering it was built in a neighborhood that houses an estimated 50 cats, my hard work has likely not resulted in any net increase of the bird population. Yet, attempting to muzzle our pet with a stay-at-home order is not a practical, long-term solution for cats.

Susan Willson of St. Lawrence University offers an alternative. By placing vividly colored collars on cats, Willson found that birds were much more likely to spot cats before it was too late. Consequently, collared cats killed up to “19 times fewer birds than uncollared cats.”

Collar scrunchies are a noiseless, effective alternative to the traditional “cat bell,” and still allows cats to exercise their instincts on real pests. These colorful scrunchies are effective with birds but not on colorblind rodents.

It’s not a cardinal sin to let cats be cats, but a simple colored collar around the neck will help offset their feline instincts. Plus, more cat videos sporting stylish scrunchies is something none of us could ever refuse.

Works Cited

Brulliard, Karin and Scott Clement. “How Many Americans Have Pets? An Investigation of Fuzzy Statistics.” The Washington Post, 31 Jan. 2019.

Lepczyk, Christopher A., et al. “What Conservation Biologists Can Do to Counter Trap-Neuter-Return.” Conservation Biology, 2 Nov. 2010.

Sommer, Lauren. “The Killer At Home: House Cats Have More Impact On Local Wildlife Than Wild Predators.” NPR, 18 April 2020.

Willson, S.K., et al. “Birds Be Safe: Can a Novel Cat Collar Reduce Avian Mortality by Domestic Cats (Felis catus)?” Global Ecology and Conservation, Elsevier, 20 Jan. 2015.

Zimmer, Carl. “Birds Are Vanishing From North America.” The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2019.

There it is. Among the countless 100s, I see it: a 37. A hideous, black mark in the grade book. I had to nearly restrain my mother from pouncing on the phone to call my teacher. “Let me handle it,” I said. Uneasily and reluctantly, she did. She, thankfully, is not a snowplow parent.

According to an article in The New York Times, snowplow parents clear the road for their children to chug ahead on their perfect path to success. It’s why some students turn in homework handwritten by middle-aged adults, why a sophomore girl’s dad picks her up the period before every math test, why lunches flood the main office, delivered by parents of forgetful students. Perhaps students are all too happy to have parents control their lives. Or maybe parents don’t listen and need to run the show. Both need to rethink their positions.

Stellar grades and fancy admission letters seem like “proof” that parents’ meticulous managing and manipulating produces results. On paper, today’s seniors look successful: lists of APs, high test scores, varsity letters, unique community service projects, ability to play fifteen instruments while simultaneously winning chess competitions.

The reality? Dean Julie Lythcott-Haims of Stanford University observes these same students, now at prestigious universities, constantly calling home for advice, special packages, and help with basic tasks like registering for classes or contacting professors.

我们的年度学生社论大赛于今年2月下旬开始，当时美国发现了第一批冠状病毒病例，而亚洲和欧洲部分地区已经开始隔离几周后。随着全球数百万学生适应在线上学，提交的内容纷至沓来——总共 7，318 份。鉴于这场危机对青少年生活的方方面面产生了如此深远的影响，也许许多文章都涉及冠状病毒的某些方面并不奇怪，但令我们惊讶的是，学生们发现了多少种方法。

对许多人来说，这增加了对他们来说已经很重要的社会正义问题的紧迫性，他们通过冠状病毒的镜头热情地写下了种族主义和仇外心理、收入不平等、监狱改革、饥饿、无家可归、投票权、数字鸿沟、气候变化等等。

对于其他人来说，它提出了新的思考问题，从一线工人的权利到卫生纸囤积问题。一些人专注于大流行的政治，而另一些人则找到了一种方法，使个人普遍化，从个人的孤独或无聊经历中磨练出更大的论点。这些文章共同表明，有可能把影响地球上几乎每个人的东西变成你自己的。

但是，如果您点击下面的链接，您将看到，大流行并不是今年年轻人唯一想到的事情。我们读到Spotify如何“杀死贝多芬”，为什么阅读障碍学生需要更多的支持，“轻浮小说”如何成为严肃文学的入门药物，以及为什么你的家猫真的需要项圈。

我们希望，就像30位评委一样，他们会像阅读一轮又一轮提交的作品一样，欣赏这些获奖文章在短短450字内提出坚实而令人信服的论点的方式 - 以及他们如何不是对利弊的枯燥总结，而是真实的声音。

无论您是学生，老师，家长还是仅仅是读者，请通过写信给我们 LNFeedback@nytimes.com 告诉我们您的想法。再次感谢你们的参与，使这次比赛年复一年地取得成功。

（学生注意：我们已经公布了我们获得许可的学生的姓名、年龄和学校。如果您希望发表您的文章，请写信给我们 LNFeedback@nytimes.com。

初中

“Harnessing Boredom in the Age of Coronavirus” by Elan Cohen, age 14, F.A. Day Middle School, Newton, Mass.

“Switching Letters, Skipping Lines: Troubled and Dyslexic Minds” by Hayden Miskinis, age 12, Epping Middle School, Epping, N.H.

“Bringing Ethics to Your Plate” by Alexa Troob, age 13, Robert E. Bell Middle School, Chappaqua, N.Y.

亚军

你可以在这里找到所有的亚军社论。

高中

中学

“Library:Librarian :: Apple:Core” by M. Calcagno, age 13, Julia R. Masterman, Philadelphia.

“Reassessing the Value of Home Ec in 2020” by Ela Desai, age 14, Marlborough School, Los Angeles, Calif.

“Young Adult Literature: Finding Its Place in the World” by Jason Hausenloy, age 14, United World College of South East Asia East Campus, Tampines, Singapore

“Plastic: Not Always the Villain of the Piece” by Kairav Iyer, age 13, United World College of South East Asia, Dover Campus, Singapore

“Two Languages, a World of Possibilities” by Qinrong Qian, age 11, YK Pao School, Shanghai

荣誉奖

高中

中学

第三轮决赛入围者

所有获奖者的PDF和106篇进入第3轮的精彩社论。

评委

From The New York Times’s Opinion section: Mara Gay, Lauren Kelley, Alex Kingsbury, Phoebe Lett and Sue Mermelstein

From The Learning Network: Nicole Daniels, Michael Gonchar, Jeremy Engle, John Otis, Natalie Proulx and Katherine Schulten

Educators and writers from schools and organizations around the country: Erica Ayisi, Adee Braun, Amanda Christy Brown, Nico Gendron, Caroline Gilpin, Annissa Hambouz, Tom Houston, Jeremy Hyler, Susan Josephs, Shira Katz, Willow Lawson, Keith Meatto, James Menter, Sharon Murchie, Nadia Murray Goodman, Rene Panozzo, Melissa Slater, Theresa Walsh Giarrusso and Brett Vogelsinger

我们连续第八年问世界各地的青少年：是什么让你生气？您希望看到什么变化？你希望更多的人理解什么？

这是一年一度的学生社论大赛征集作品，我们邀请 11 至 19 岁的学生用 450 字或更少的字数告诉我们对他们来说重要的问题。今年，我们收到了来自新加坡和路易斯安那州学生的11，202份参赛作品，这是有史以来最多的。

那么，是什么让这些年轻人感到恼火呢？他们的不满包括：

下雪天被远程学习所取代。导致气候变化的食物浪费。反亚裔歧视。对零工工人的剥削。对女性体毛的期望。校园枪击案。省略牛津逗号。一家垄断数学课程的计算器公司。游戏玩家不被视为真正的运动员。还有很多很多。

从这数千篇社论中，我们选出了 10 位获奖者、16 位亚军和 26 位荣誉奖，我们将在下面表彰这些奖项。当然，这对我们的评委来说并非易事，但一轮又一轮脱颖而出的文章有一些共同点：它们从头到尾都吸引了我们的注意力。他们提出了令人信服的论点，并附有可靠的证据和对反驳的承认。他们向我们介绍了新的想法或新的观点。他们写得很有个性和风格。

但不要相信我们的话。您可以通过下面的链接或本专栏中阅读我们前 10 名获奖者和亚军的完整文章。您可以在此PDF中找到我们所有的决赛入围者，以及另外141篇进入第4轮的优秀社论。

Ruiyang Chen, age 16, Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy, Shanghai: “Fast and Furious 2021: Sushi’s Dilemma”

Ju Hwan Kim, age 17, United World College of South East Asia — East Campus, Singapore: “Why Singapore’s ‘Ugly’ Buildings Should Be Conserved”

Lauren Koong, age 17, Mirabeau B. Lamar Senior High School, Houston: “It Took a Global Pandemic to Stop School Shootings”

America Leon, age 16, Making Waves Academy, Richmond, Calif.: “Cheap for You. Costly for the Environment.”

Angela Mao, age 17, and Ariane Lee, age 17, Syosset High School, Syosset, N.Y.: “The American Teacher’s Plight: Underappreciated, Underpaid and Overworked”

Evan Odegard Pereira, age 16, Nova Classical Academy, Saint Paul, Minn.: “For Most Latinos, Latinx Does Not Mark the Spot”

Norah Rami, age 17, Clements High School, Sugar Land, Texas: “Teach Us What We Need”

Shivali Vora, age 17, St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Edison, N.J.: “It’s Just Hair”

Madison Xu, age 16, Horace Mann School, Bronx, N.Y.: “We Cannot Fight Anti-Asian Hate Without Dismantling Asian Stereotypes”

Sheerea Yu, age 15, University School of Nashville, Nashville, Tenn.: “Save the Snow Day: Save Teenage Education”

亚军

你可以在这里找到所有的亚军社论。

Tala Areiqat, age 17, Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, Old Tappan, N.J.:“How American High Schools Failed to Educate Us on Eating Disorders”

Emily Cao, age 17, Glenforest Secondary School, Mississauga, Ontario: “Look on the Dark Side: The Benefits of Pessimism”

Abigail Soriano Cherith, age 17, North Hollywood High School, Los Angeles.: “We Need More Maestras on the Podium”

Raquel Coren, age 18, Agnes Irwin School, Bryn Mawr, Pa.: “The Whitewashing and Appropriation Behind Trendy Spirituality”

Asia Foland, age 14, Wellesley Middle School, Wellesley, Mass.: “Private Prisons: It’s Time to Take Back the Key”

Jun An Guo, age 17, St. George’s School, Vancouver: “Eat Ugly! It Might Just Save the World.”

Charissa Howard, age 16, Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, Pa.: “Why I Want to Be a Foreign Exchange Student 30 Minutes Away”

Sean Kim, age 16, Fort Lee High School, Fort Lee, N.J.: “Classroom Monopoly: How the Same Calculator Has Been $120 for 17 Years”

Sonya Kulkarni, age 16, Bellaire High School, Bellaire, Texas: “Face Masks: A Roadblock in Communication for the Hearing-Impaired”

Patricia McDonald, age 16, Woodrow Wilson High School, Dallas, Texas: “The Poetry Unit: How Our Curriculum Smothers Art”

Lily Miro, age 16, The Archer School for Girls, Los Angeles: “Where Are the MEN in Menstruation?”

Mary Schnautz, age 15, ASPIRE Academy for the Highly Gifted at Grapevine High School, Grapevine, Texas: “The Adverse Pitfalls of A.P. Classes”

Nachikethan Srinivasan, age 18, The Haverford School, Haverford, Pa.: “According to Some, Critical Race Theory Is ‘Anti-American.’ Here’s the Truth.”

Grace Wong, age 16, The King’s Academy, Sunnyvale, Calif.: “Appreciating the Power of Quiet”

Samantha Wu, age 15, Richard Montgomery High School, Rockville, Md.: “Comprehension, Clarity, and Consistency: The Case for the Oxford Comma”

Bill Zhang, age 17, The Shanghai SMIC Private School, Shanghai: “Cyber-Athletes: The Future Is Here”

荣誉奖

Ishani Bakshi, age 12, Woodrow Wilson Middle School, Edison, N.J.: “A History Full of Georges, Alexanders and Benjamins Isn’t Benefiting Women”

Rachel Bong, age 16, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.: “Our Toxic Love … for Phones”

Julia Buchanan, age 16, Glen Ridge High School, Glen Ridge, N.J.: “Historical Denialism Needs to Be Absent From the Classroom”

Alissa Chen, age 16, Guilford High School, Guilford, Conn.: “Uncovering the Unspoken Yellow Peril”

Aruna Das, age 16, Hunter College High School, New York, N.Y.: “Here’s to the Handkerchief”

Quinn Dooley, age 16, Germantown Academy, Ft. Washington, Pa.: “Everyone Deserves Equal Peace of Mind: Gender Imbalance in Concussion Research”

Olivia Fan, age 16, Plano West Senior High School, Plano, Texas: “Go Cry About It. Really.”

Maya Honda-Granirer, age 16, Sir Winston Churchill Secondary, Vancouver: “American Politics Needs Less Talking and More Listening”

Logan Hu, age 13, Lusher Charter School, New Orleans: “Why It’s Our Job to Take Down Hateful School Names”

Ify Ijeli, age 18, Gwinnett School of Math, Science, and Technology, Lawrenceville, Ga.: “The Terrifying Reality of Giving Birth While Black”

Cheng-yu Kang, age 15, The SMIC Private School Shanghai International, Shanghai: “Elegies: Dealing With Death and Loss”

Evelyn Li, age 14, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Va.: “Think Outside the Box of Stereotypes”

Matthew Lin, age 15, The Head-Royce School, Oakland, Calif.: “Longing for the Lemonade Stands of Investing”

Stella Lin, age 16, Dougherty Valley High School, San Ramon, Calif: “Combating Climate Cynicism”

Cassie Liu, age 16, The Hockaday School, Dallas, Texas: “Please Defund the Police: Handcuff a Racist Institution”

Shaun Loh, age 17, Raffles Institution, Singapore: “American Dream(s)”

Patrick Lou, age 13, The Dorris-Eaton School, San Ramon, Calif.: “Veganism Killed the Cat — Vegan Diets and Their Effects on Your Pets”

Feier Ma, age 16, Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy, Shanghai: “Dear Diary: Writing Just Isn’t Enough”

Madeline Mau, age 14, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, Plainsboro, N.J.: “Remote Learning Is Failing Blind Students — Stop Leaving Us Behind”

Regan Mading, age 16, Orange County School of the Arts, Santa Ana, Calif.: “The Lack of Education Regarding Epinephrine Is Nuts”

Arfa Momin, age 17, Stephen F. Austin High School, Sugar Land, Texas: “The Woman’s Pandemic Is Bold and Bald”

Mia Penner, age 17, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, Bronx, N.Y.: “Born Again: How Gen Z Is Reinventing Faith and Spirituality”

Kaitlyn Tchang, age 15, Castro Valley High School, Castro Valley, Calif.: “The Quiet Strength in Simply Not Knowing”

Aaron Tighe, age 16, Patrician High School, Carrickmacross, Ireland: “Don’t Let Beijing ’22 Become Berlin ’36.”

Paige Williams, age 18, Downingtown STEM Academy, Downingtown, Pa.: “It’s Time to Respect Menstruation. Period.”

Zachary Wu, age 15, Naperville North High School, Naperville, Ill.: “Unearthing the Forgotten Story of Asian America”

第四轮入围名单

所有获奖者的PDF和141篇精彩的社论进入了第4轮

Thank you to all our contest judges.

From The New York Times Opinion section: Binyamin Applebaum, Jenee Desmond-Harris, Cassandra Harvin, Liriel Higa, Lauren Kelley, Phoebe Lett, Sue Mermelstein, Serge Schmemann and Courtney Stein

From The New York Times: Kassie Bracken, Julia Carmel, Nancy Coleman, Vivian Giang, Jenny Gross, Aimee Harris, Kari Haskell, Sophia June, Kathleen Massara, Ken Paul, Raegen Pietrucha, Steven Rocker, Kristina Samulewski, Jesica Severson, Ana Sosa, Matt Twomey and Mark Walsh

From The Learning Network: Nicole Daniels, Shannon Doyne, Michael Gonchar, Callie Holtermann, John Otis, Natalie Proulx and Katherine Schulten

Educators and writers from schools and organizations around the country: Erica Ayisi, Amanda Christy Brown, Sharon Cohen, Caroline Crosson Gilpin, Tracy Evans, Christina Farinacci-Roberts, Elisa Gutierrez, Annissa Hambouz, Dina Heisler, Kimberly Hintz, Tom Houston, Jeremy Hyler, Susan Josephs, Shira Katz, Megan Leder, Tiffany Liu, Keith Meatto, Kim Pallozzi, Anna Pendleton, Melissa Slater, Meghan Stoddard, Tanya Wadhwani, Emma Weber, Kim Wiedmeyer and Stephanie Yemm

Save the Snow Day: Save Teenage Education

The fledgling hope of a snow day offers a reprieve from the unforgiving Winter Break to Spring Break stretch. Nothing lights up the spirit quite like seeing a blanket of snow cover the ground, pristine and sparkling; checking the school’s Twitter confirms that eight hours of the day lie ahead, cleared.

This year, as schools became more comfortable with online learning, many school districts canceled snow days for the season. In that number was New York City, the nation’s largest school system. Several superintendents have already extrapolated the decision into the future, planning to utilize the technology and systems set up during the pandemic to cancel snow days forever.

Taking away the most potent symbol of playtime and joy and being a kid, the bona fide snow day, is unacceptable.

I had online classes on what would certainly have been a snow day in past years, but with the school workload as normal, I calculated that playing in the snow would make it difficult to stay on top of everything. Why struggle to fit playtime, of all things, into my schedule when there were so many other things I should be doing?

Anne Helen Peterson for Buzzfeed News explains that the millennial generation, growing into a work force that had already become efficient and stellar at turning a profit, needed to be “optimized” to survive. My generation, Generation Z, has felt the pressure as much as, if not more than, the one that came before it. Kids playing games in the neighborhood have turned into “supervised play dates.” Kicking around a soccer ball or hanging out at the basketball court has turned into “highly regulated organized league play.”

On one hand, we seem to be progressing faster than our parents and grandparents. We all know of high schoolers that have done cancer research or founded businesses. But how guided, how “optimized,” were they? How sustainable is this sort of education that funnels us into “achievement” rather than having us discover it for ourselves?

In other words, I’m scared. A chunk of our education, play, has been missing. In history class I chose to write the safe essay instead of brainstorming a political cartoon. I meticulously check the boxes on assignments, analyzing how I can score all the points. I’m an expert at following the directions.

This would not be simply a wave goodbye to a happy childhood tradition; it would be another nail in the coffin the education of kids has been squeezed into. Snow days teach lessons that cannot be taught as a curriculum, lessons about how to let the mind be creative, explore or simply exist that have been sorely missing.

Next year, take some time to build a snowman. It’s educational!

Works Cited

Cramer, Maria. “Sorry, Kids. Snow Days Are Probably Over.” The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2020.

Petersen, Anne Helen. “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.” Buzzfeed News, 5 Jan. 2019.

We Cannot Fight Anti-Asian Hate Without Dismantling Asian Stereotypes

A few weeks ago, my aunt decided to close the nail salon she had been running for years. Early on in the pandemic, her business was hit hard, regulars refusing to return and associating her salon with the spread of Covid. Now, she fears for the safety of her salon employees — most of them Asian and Asian-American women.

The New York Times has documented a surge of anti-Asian hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic, including the deaths of six Asian women during the recent mass shooting in Atlanta. These incidents have rightly sparked protests and outrage, yet there can be no effective response unless we look beyond easy explanations. Talk of the former president’s xenophobic rhetoric, or the shooter’s “sex addiction,” only serves to distract from the underlying issue: America’s history of stereotyping, fetishizing and oppressing Asians and Asian-Americans — especially women.

By the 20th century, mainstream media and popular culture had already categorized Asian women into tropes still resonant today, from the hypersexual “Dragon Lady” to the docile “Lotus Flower.” Predating the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Page Act of 1875 made it unlawful for East Asian women to enter the United States without proof that they were “virtuous.” That Asian women were painted as a “moral contagion” becomes even more chilling when juxtaposed with the Atlanta shooter’s claim that the massage parlors were, “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” Objects of desire easily become objects of hatred. The key: both are things for the dominant class to fetishize, feel entitled to — or dispose of.

By now, many Americans understand how negative stereotypes of Black and Latinx people in the United States have enabled police brutality, anti-immigrant hysteria and violence. However, we tend to react differently to Asian stereotypes. While there are plenty of derogatory tropes (think bad drivers who eat dogs), Asians in this country are often viewed as smart and industrious — a “model minority.” But the truth is, all stereotypes are ultimately dehumanizing, stripping people of their individuality and objectifying them in ways that can lead to shameful violations like the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Perhaps most dangerously, stereotypes like the submissive “Oriental” serving girl create artificial roles that women are forced to play, or to be punished for “not knowing their place.” When the dominant class feels threatened, even model minorities suddenly become invading Others, the alien “them” displacing “us” and threatening what is rightfully “ours.”

Until we stop regarding Asian stereotypes and the fetishization of Asian women as innocuous, Asians and Asian-Americans will continue to face the threat of racist violence. Recognizing that anti-Asian prejudice is deeply rooted in American history is the first step toward dismantling those dangerous stereotypes.

Works Cited

Jeong, May. “The Deep American Roots of the Atlanta Shootings.” The New York Times, 19 March 2021.

Lang, Cady and Paulina Cachero. “How a Long History of Intertwined Racism and Misogyny Leaves Asian Women in America Vulnerable to Violence.” Time, 7 April 2021.

It’s Just Hair

I’ve always been a hairy girl, and I’ve never seen a problem with it. Hair, the mark of mammals, has clear biological purposes, from thermoregulation to protection of sensitive body parts. Yet quite bizarrely, female body and facial hair is shrouded in stigma: The average woman spends anywhere from $10,000 to $23,000 on hair removal over a lifetime. It can be a particularly arduous ordeal for women whose genes, ethnicities or conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome predispose them to increased hair growth. Methods abound, but no panacea exists; from ingrown hairs to the agony of a full body wax, hair removal can be painful. And why shouldn’t it be? Pain is the body’s protest against a fundamentally unnatural act. Nonetheless, the multibillion-dollar hair removal industry continues to boom.

At-home shaving did not become popular in the United States until the 1910s, when Gillette debuted the first women’s razor. As soon as the industry’s potential became evident, advertisements characterizing body hair as unseemly proliferated. Author Rebecca Herzig writes that such emerging ideas were a form of “gendered social control,” accomplished by convincing women that they had to be hairless to stand a chance. Over the following decades, hair removal went from a status marker to a standard blindly followed by the masses, until the default was established: If you don’t want to raise eyebrows, shave. Despite all our long strides, in this respect, society is moving backward; while millennials are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of “going natural,” today’s girls feel compelled to remove their body hair at alarmingly young ages.

Traditionalists might argue that hair removal is hygiene, or that men shave their faces too. But why is the same bodily feature hygienic on men, yet unhygienic on women? Hair is not dirt. In fact, hair removal opens doors for infection. And for men, shaving is a personal choice, as it should be, not a cemented norm demanding unquestioning compliance. As long as more is societally required of a woman because of her gender, we are holding women back. There is so much about female bodies that is expected to be kept under wraps or changed to fit an arbitrary ideal, to the point where a woman who doesn’t alter herself is automatically perceived as a social justice warrior. When did it become bold to simply be? Why have we resigned ourselves to the ridiculous notion that the natural female state isn’t enough, or that beauty can only be attained through blood, sweat and tears?

Women are people, not works of art. It’s high time we started celebrating our inherent — not earned — beauty and appreciating our bodies as the miracles they are, hair and all.

Works Cited

Avison, Phoebe. “I Asked 17 Women Why They Actually Shave.” Bustle, 23 April 2015.

Basyah, Jihan. “How Hair Removal Became A Beauty Standard.” CR Fashion Book, 7 May 2020.

Cerini, Marianna. “Why Women Feel Pressured to Shave.” CNN, 3 March 2020.

“Hair Removal Products Market Size, Global Industry Report, 2019-2025.” Grand View Research, July 2019.

Harrison, Lauren R. “Shaving and Fashion: A Storied History.” Chicago Tribune, 14 Sept. 2010.

Savini, Loren. “A Retrospective Look at Women’s Body Hair in Pop Culture.” Allure, 23 April 2018.

Vora, Shivani. “Professional Hair Removal Catches On With the Preteen Set.” The New York Times, 19 March 2019.

“Women Spend up to $23,000 to Remove Hair.” United Press International, 24 June 2008.

Teach Us What We Need

My one year of sex education involved learning to spell abstinence (100 percent effective) and watching videos of teenagers regretting premarital S-E-X (I just felt so dirty!). For a class called sex education, sex was hardly mentioned without the word “never.” Rather than give me the tools to make safe decisions about my body, I, like many teenagers, was left in the dark by our inadequate sex education curriculum.

In my home state of Texas, sex education is optional, and, if offered, the course must be “abstinence-centered.” However, in the fall of 2020, Texas announced it would update its sex education curriculum for the first time in 23 years. My friends and I wrote to our representatives asking them to include consent, contraception, L.G.B.T.Q. identities and sexual harassment in the curriculum, but our calls fell on deaf ears. Teaching consent was out of the question as it would give “yes to sex as an option on the table for teenagers”; the mere phrase L.G.B.T.Q. was ignored; and sexual harassment was reduced to sexual bullying with the definition of “you’ll know it when you see it.”

The blunt truth is teenagers will have sex. Rather than ignore the given, our education system has the responsibility to give them the tools to be safe. When it comes to conversations about our bodies, teenagers don’t need shame or fear — we need guidance. In today’s world, where teenagers are exposed to sex through television and the internet with skewed perceptions of consent and contraception, it’s more important than ever to address these topics often thought of as “taboo.”

By working toward comprehensive sex education, we invest in the future, combating poverty and mitigating inequality. Our current sex education system has been costly. Abstinence-focused education has been shown to increase rates of teen pregnancy, a key factor in a heightened likelihood of poverty and maternal mortality. Texas, with its abstinence-centric education, has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the United States. Our deficient sex education curriculum is condemning our children. This is compounded in cases concerning L.G.B.T.Q. education, where students often lack further guidance from parents and peers; inclusion can protect the health of L.G.B.T.Q. students by increasing awareness of protection and sexually transmitted diseases, and even promote tolerance through simple acknowledgment. Furthermore, by including consent in our curriculum, students learn to value individual boundaries and create a safer world of respect and autonomy.

While most teenagers won’t be using calculus anytime soon, sex education is pertinent both for their today and their tomorrow. It’s time to improve our outdated and inadequate system into one that doesn’t fail our students but rather empowers them to make educated decisions about their bodies.

Works Cited

Stanger-Hall, Kathrin F, and David W Hall. “Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S.” National Center for Biotechnology Information, 14 Oct. 2011.

Swaby, Aliyya. “Texas Education Board Approves New Sex Ed Policy That Does Not Cover LGBTQ Students or Consent.” Texas Tribune, 18 Nov. 2020.

Waller, Allyson. “Texas Board Revises Sex Education Standards to Include More Birth Control.” The New York Times, 20 Nov. 2020.