A dangerous mix: 'Tiger mums', selective schools and pissed-off Anglo parents.

It’s a topic middle-class parents never tire of debating, but when we’re talking about selective schools, we should all watch our language.

A ferocious online debate is erupting over Tiger parenting, entry exam coaching, and the so called ‘Asianisation’ of Australian public selective schools.

The furore was triggered by a piece published in The Good Weekend, where journalist Anna Broinowski made the claim that Anglo parents are now “ambivalent” about sending their children to selective public schools (despite the low cost and high quality of education represented by these schools), due to the fact that enrolments are “overwhelmingly dominated by children of Asian backgrounds”, many of whom may have had special coaching to help them pass the entry exam.

In her piece, Broinowsky claims that most of the Anglo mums she speaks to view exam tutoring as a “crime that sends you straight to bad mum jail” and that Anglo parents are now so fed up with Asian parents “cheating” the system through tutoring, that they are no longer interested in even trying to get their kids into selective schools.

In support of this ‘white flight’ theory, Broinowsky quotes a series of ‘I’m not racist, but…’ type mothers from her kid’s school pick up, who drop clangers like this one:

“My daughter won’t go to a selective even if she gets in. They’re 98 per cent Asian, full of kids who rote-learn. I’d hate her to be [part of] such a tiny minority.”

Read more: Amy Chua, Tiger Mother is back. And this time? No one is safe.

Purely from a journalistic perspective the piece makes for uncomfortable reading. Indeed, the first thing I noticed was that every time Broinowsky quotes a white person (and only the white people), she makes the necessary grammatical adjustments to their quotes, so that their speech still makes sense. (For example, in the above quote, you can see that Broinowsky has used parenthesis to add the words ‘part’ and ‘of’ into the sentence, so that the statement still flows logically.)

Since no one speaks in perfect sound bites, journalists routinely make these edits, so that readers aren’t distracted by errors, and so that the people they quote don’t sound confused. But for some reason Broinowsky only extends this editing courtesy to the white people she quotes, while still preserving all the grammatical errors and speaking flaws in the quotes given by the Asian people she interviews. The effect is that the white people sound logical and intelligent (even if they are saying some pretty stupid crap) while the Asian people sound less intelligent (for example “She’ll have no boyfriend until Year Twelve finish.”/ “We give your kid coaching to get into selective school” etc).

It’s a subtle but powerful manipulation of the reader and in an article that already runs into some very racially dangerous territory, this inconsistency is both problematic and unethical (especially since journalists are often taught that the main reason to preserve a person’s grammatical errors in a quote is to either (1) mock them, (2) undermine their credibility, or (3) produce a division between the speaker and the reader by making their comments less accessible).

And while no one is saying that we shouldn’t have healthy debate about education and different styles of parenting, journalists who choose to open these cans of worms need to think carefully about how they introduce certain voices, and which voices they give prominence to – particularly in cases where there is a high probability that the conversation could derail into a racially barbed attacks.

Read more: The one thing Aussies parents are doing wrong – according to Mark Latham 

So it’s not surprising then, that various response pieces from anti-racism groups have criticised The Good Weekend, labelling the article as an “outburst of racist paranoia”.

Others have chosen to go the satirical route. In one highly shared smack-down article titled “Asians ruining Australian school system with preparation, effort” the author satirically jabs at The Good Weekend, writing:

New data this week has revealed that Asian students are undermining Australia’s education system by preparing for exams and applying effort to their school work.

According to the ground-breaking research, tests to qualify for selective schools are being dominated by students who study before the tests and, as a result, answer more of the questions in them correctly. White-Australian commentators have been quick to condemn this strange cultural trend as a dangerous threat to the Australian way.

“It’s very disturbing,” complained one white parent, “these tests are important, there are only a limited number of selective schools. That’s why it can be so harmful when Asians practice the types of questions that are generally in the test. It gives them a massive advantage, and it threatens my son’s chances of getting in without trying.”

Zing! No matter where you stand on the various issues surrounding selective school entry tests and exam coaching, the fact remains that journalists and editors need to take responsibility for how they frame the issues they to choose to write about. And as for those ‘I’m not racist, but…’ style comments?

Well, they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on.

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