Ending Extracurricular Privilege
One day in the summer of 2015, I sat in a small conference room in Tribeca, watching the reality show Dance Moms with Richard Weissbourd, a renowned Harvard psychologist. Weissbourd and I picked the show on the recommendation of a friend of his who works in children’s television and said it was popular with the youth.
It was an episode called “Cheerleader Blues,” in which a group of preteen dancers from Pittsburgh prepares for a competition under the watchful gaze of their mothers and the acerbic tutelage of their instructor, Abby Lee Miller. At the start of the episode, Miller ranks the girls based on their talent— pleasing no one, of course, except for the mother of the pyramidion. The others exclaim, wide-eyed, things like, “I am shocked where Brooke was placed!" and "You mean to tell me Chloe is above her?!”
When one mom, herself a former student of Miller’s, confronts the dance teacher about the rankings, Miller accuses the mom of giving up on her own dance career too easily: “Kelly, you settled! Think of what you could have been!”
After a few minutes, Weissbourd had enough. “How depressing,” he said in his deep, kindly voice. “Even the people who view this smugly are often doing the same thing—they’re just not aware of it. When you ask kids what parents care about, they say achievement, not caring.”
To Weissbourd, shows like are a symptom of a broader societal malaise. It’s an example of how ego-driven society, and by extension, teenagers,.
