(Photo by Mark Peterson/Redux, for the NYT)
This weekend’s New York Times Magazine contains a fascinating feature article entitled, “The Parachute Generation,” which explores the experience of Chinese students who came to the U.S. to enroll a public high school in Oxford, Michigan in an effort to prepare themselves for enrollment in college in the U.S., which was supported by the principal of the U.S. school.
The piece ties together a number of related themes: the competitive educational system in China that many Chinese parents believe stifles individualism and creativity, the challenges of assimilation, the responses of a largely white community to a small community of Chinese students, the anxiety caused by the threat of China, and the American school’s efforts to interpret the F-1 visa requirements to permit the students to study for two years (rather than one).
DHS eventually determined that the students’ use of the F-1 visa for two years (which the U.S. school approached by having the students simultaneously enroll in a college-level program) was not permissible, and the exchange program ended. The broader themes, of course, persist.
-JKoh