Confessions of Korean-American parent

By Jason Lim

So, my little boy just turned four and will be entering kindergarten next fall. Needless to say, I want my son to go to a good school. Luckily, Fairfax County in Northern Virginia is well-known for its good public schools. In fact, Fairfax is one of the preeminent destinations of the so-called “goose families.”

Unfortunately, the district where I live has the worst schools in the whole county. Its elementary school rating is 2 out of 10. This obviously won’t do, leading us to the penultimate question that every parent faces: Should we move to a better school district or send him to a private school?

This sounds simple, but it’s more difficult than trying to solve a differential equation on keg night. Let’s enumerate all the variables that go into this decision.

One; private school means at least $24,000 a year. And that’s for a moderately priced one. More prominent ones cost upwards of $40,000 a year. Of course, we want to be able to send our son to one of the more expensive (and famous) ones. If Malia and Natasha can go to Sidwell, why not my son?

The problem is that I am not the President of the United States, and we can’t afford it. Even if we could, it’s literally like having a second mortgage on our house. Hmm, so you start thinking, how about we move to a more expensive neighborhood so that we can recoup the “investment” later on when he graduates by selling the house? After all, no one is going to tell us that we don’t have to pay property taxes just because we are sending our kid to a private school.

Two; but homes in the more expensive neighborhoods with good schools from elementary through high are expensive. And I mean crazy expensive. Just a few weeks ago, our realtor called us with ecstatic news: A home came on the market in the district that we were considering, and it was under a $1 million! Ok, it was $990,000, but this was an incredible opportunity for us. To be fair to the realtor, he was absolutely correct in the context of what we were trying to do: Buy a home in a district where the public schools ratings were all 9 out of 10 or higher near Washington D.C.

Three; we want my wife to be a stay-at-home mom. My wife was a marketing professional for a Korean conglomerate before she had the baby, but we made a consciousness decision as a couple for her to stay home. We knew from everything we heard how important it is for a child to have the type of loving, focused attention that she could provide only as a stay-at-home mom. It was an incredible sacrifice that my wife made, but this also means that we are a single-income household.

Four; we want our son to be Korean-English bilingual at a minimum. Not just bilingual, but functionally bicultural so as to be able to laugh at stupid, arcane, and ethnically-parochial jokes both in America and in Korea while crying to both Adele and Kim Kwang-seok. And be able to work at Google or Samsung with equal confidence and success. This can only be achieved by having him spend meaningful time in Korea during summers. This is not cheap.

Also, preferably, he would pick up Spanish and Mandarin along the way to bump up his competitive advantage. This means that we would either have to live in a Spanish-speaking or Mandarin-speaking country for two to three years before his critical language acquisitions window closes at around 14-years old. But we would want to come back to the Washington D.C. area for him to finish high school. Which means that I would have to switch to a career field that would allow me such an opportunity – at last check, I wasn’t a foreign service officer.

Five; don’t forget extracurricular activities. In addition to the baseline ― one or two musical instruments and participation in two varsity sports, plus a black belt in tae kwon do – he would have to do something special to really stand out for one of those Ivy League schools. Okay, Harvard, Yale, or Princeton to be more exact. I mean, Dartmouth, Brown, et al, are pretty, but still. We are thinking that he would need to earn a medal in at least Junior Olympics level competition in either diving or fencing. Don’t forget that he would have to get a full scholarship since there is no way that we would be able to afford Ivy League tuition.

Of course, you noticed that I am taking for granted that he grows up to be a healthy, warm, ethical, and happy person, which might be a challenge for an 18-year old who has to carry a 4.0 GPA, score 1500+ on his SATs, play two varsity sports while medaling in the Olympics, speak four languages, break wooden boards with his bare hands, and get a full ride to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. And he’s only got 14-years left to do all that.

On second thought, it’s not only the housing prices that are crazy. Someone needs to shine a flashlight into my eyes to see whether I am all there. And I thought that Amy Chua was nuts.

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. Reach him at jasonlim@msn.com or facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.