Help a mom understand HADES!!!!

jmilton
Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:33:12 +0000

Someone with a wickedly funny of sense of humor invented the term HADES as a gentle, but satirical, observation that certain prestigious schools have less than a heavenly environment. This original spoof has now been replaced by an unintentionally ironic debate regarding prestige.

For some adult posters, there is a Manichean division between good and evil on this subject. They oppose the term HADES because they believe it fosters a pernicious desire for prestige. Other parents defend the term HADES because it recognizes this prestige.This Manichean division usually depends on whether or not a parent’s child attends a HADES school.

There was even one entire thread on CC entirely devoted to the PC proposition that the acronym HADES should be banned and replaced with the less value charged term Acronym school. This movement may have lost momentum when people realized that the term Acronym School had no meaning except as an allusion to the HADES acronym they found objectionable.

Many of the same people who object to the term HADES often preach the gospel of FIT. They tell students to forget prestige and focus only on fit. In doing so, however, they seem to forget that HADES schools are outstanding fits for the vast majority of the students who attend them.

The result is that a term originally meant to poke fun at certain schools has morphed into a debate that unintentionally satirizes itself.