You Heard It Here First

Someone I know is moving to the Washington, DC area shortly and is in the process of applying for jobs in the belly of the beast. He was giving me a rundown of the places to which he had sent applications, and he also mentioned that if nothing else, he could work for a test preparation service like Kaplan. After all, he had spent much of his adolescent years performing well on standardized tests (e.g., SAT and GRE), and he could train a new generation of test-takers on how to ace (beat?) them.

At this point, I came across an idea: since such services cater to adolescents from middle- and upper middle-class families in which the pressure to succeed is high, why don't those services also offer a counseling component? One-stop shopping: a kid could take a test-prep class for a couple of hours and then see a couselor for talk therapy and/or a psychiatrist for medication. (This, of course, recognizes that depression, anxiety, etc. stem from both social and biological factors).

Unfortunately, this idea probably has a low probability of short-term success because it is too honest: Americans are not quite willing to admit that we put undue pressure on (middle-class) kids to "succeed," to jump through a certain number of hoops early on so as to avoid "failure" later in life. In addition, my co-worker said that parents are probably unwilling to admit that their kids' depression and/or anxiety might stem partly from bad parenting. That is true, and alas, I suppose that it would be unethical for a test-prep center/psychiatric clinic—eager not to offend their customers—to tell parents that their kids' condition stems solely from biology.

Nevertheless, since parents most likely are not willing to lower the bar for their kids, then we might have a moral obligation to provide said kids with a means by which to cope. I do believe that my idea has long-term merit, and I want to make sure to post it officially. Kaplan, be forewarned: When you start adding counseling and psychiatric services, I want my cut!