We Are Not Created Equal In Every Way Summary

Seth Ryan

9/22/15

English 102

Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:30

A Critique of “We Are Not Created Equal in Every Way”

In an opinion piece that was printed by the San Francisco Chronicle (12, December 2000) Joan Ryan asks: Does [a ballet school] have the right to give preference to leaner body types?” She replies with a firm “yes”. Ryan argues that these institutions have the right to establish whatever standards they want to ensure that those they receive have the qualities required for professional success. But she also says that some parents push their children to extreme to meet these standards. Ryan offers a questionable approach to sheltering children from the possible abuses of such parents. Overall, she brings up timely problems in discussing

the star system that produces our world-class athletes and performers. The consistently clashing concerns she indicates reflect contradictions and tensions in our larger culture.
The issue Ryan explains is an especially sensitive one because the child’s mother charged the ballet school with discrimination (which is a serious charge). As a society we have made great leaps in the last few decades in confronting some of the more outright forms of discrimination—racial, ethnic, sexual, and even religious. But is it possible, is it desirable, to eliminate all efforts to distinguish one person from another? When is a standard that allows some (but not all) people entry to an institution discriminatory and when it a part of doing business? Ryan Believes that schools discriminate all the time especially when applicants fail to meet the expectations for academic and professional success. The fact that UC Berkeley doesn’t accept every applicant is discriminating, not discriminatory. Ryan recognizes the difference.
She retains, correctly, that the San Francisco Ballet School, like any other professional institution, has the right to set expectations by which it will either accept or decline it applicants.

Rejection however is an inevitable part of life, she writes, which is how she came to express the view that gives her essay its title, “We Are Not Created Equal in Every Way.” And because we are not created equal, not everyone will be admitted to their first choice of higher education or get a turn on the stage. That’s the undeniable consequence of setting standards: Some will rise to the challenge and be accepted and others will not. Ryan quotes the spokesperson who explained that the San Francisco Ballet School is “not a recreational department”(which parents should realize). In other words a professional ballet school, like a university, is within its rights to deny applicants with body types unsuited to its view of success in professional ballet. To put the matter bluntly, those with unsuitable body types, however talented or attractive, are less likely to be successful in professional ballet than those with “classical” proportions. Female dancers, for example, must be repeatedly lifted and carried by their male counterparts, a feat that is already difficult enough with even “leaner body types”. Ryan points out that those who don’t have the right body type for ballet are not banned from professional dance: “They just have to find a different type of dance…just as athletes have to find sports that fit certain body

types”.
The San Francisco ballet school is not claiming that people of a certain skin color or religious beliefs are not welcome. That would be discriminatory and wrong. But the standard concerning the body type applies across all people in the world rich or poor, black or white, Protestant or Jew, male or female. Such a broad standard could be termed an equal opportunity standard: if it can be used to distinguish among all people equally, it is discriminating, not discriminatory.
Ryan’s other concern in the essay is the damage done to children by parents who push them to hard at a young age to meet the high standards set by professional training regimes. Children that embark onto such star tracks attend special schools in order to allow for the rigorous training schedules that can sometimes lead to physical and psychological injuries. In healthy families we might expect parents to protect their children from such apparent dangers. But parents who manage what they call their child’s “career” are usually too single-minded to realize their actions may put Johnny and Susie at risk.
Ryan disapproves of the star track system that puts children into professional training at a young age. In striving for a career in dance, for instance, a young “child has put all their eggs into this one little basket at an age when most kids can barely decide what to wear to school in the morning”. The law makes no provision for protecting such elite performers in their training, writes Ryan:”Their in no safety net for them, no arm of the government that makes sure that the adults in their lives watch out for their best interests”.
Like the rest of us, Ryan assumes there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to raise children. While she does not explicitly share her preferred approach, she is clear about what does not work: pushing children like Fredrika Keefer into professional ballet school as a key example. When Ryan points out that “no arm of government” looks out for children like Keefer, she implies the need for a department of youth services to supervise parent managers. That is not a good idea.
There is no sure way to tell when a parents managing of a dance or athletic schedule is abusive or constructive to their children. Intense dedication is necessary for the would-be elite athletes and performers to succeed, and such dedication often begins in childhood. Since young children are not equipped to organize their lives in pursuit of a single goal, parents step in to help.
Joan Ryan is right to focus on the parents of would-be stars, and she is right to remind us that young children pressured to perform at the highest levels can suffer physically and psychologically. Perhaps it was better Fredrika Keefer that she was not admitted to the San Francisco School of Ballet. For Keefer’s sake and that of other child performers, we should pay attention to the dangers of the star system and support these children when we can. But without clear evidence of legally actionable neglect or abuse, we cannot interfere with the parent managers, however much we may disagree with their decisions. We may be legitimately concerned, as is Ryan that such a parent is driving their child to become not the next top athlete but the next admission to the psychiatric ward. In a free society, for better or worse, parents have the right to guide (or misguide) their children. All the rest of us can do is watch and hope for the best that the right decision will be made in the end.

Works cited page
Ryan, Joan. “We Are Not Created Equal in Every Way.” San Francisco Chronicle
12 Dec. 2000. A29.
"We Are Not Created Equal in Every Way." SFGate. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. .