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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm MHP. Good to have you with us. Take a listen to this.

?Speaker: The kids who come here know they are competing in a world that is very high achievement.

Student 1: I would love UC Berkeley.

Student 2: Harvard, Stanford.

Student 3: Columbia.

Student 4: Stanford.

Student 5: Stanford.

Student 6: Stanford is my favorite school.

Debbie Lum: My name is Debbie Lum. I'm the director of the documentary, Try Harder.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Debbie Lum initially intended to make a documentary about Asian American mothers obsessed with driving their children to excel in school at any cost. Lum observed and interviewed students at Lowell High School in San Francisco, which is majority Asian American, and is known for its academic excellence and high-achieving students. As she conducted interviews with some of the seniors there, Lum found that the perspectives and experiences of the young people were even more compelling than those of the parents.

Debbie Lum: Well, when I started, I felt like a mom, very curious about what it takes to get your daughter or your child into college. We relived high school in the making of this film, and it really takes you back. We just really felt so empathetic to the students by the end of it. One of the kids says, "It's like a war on two fronts, going to school, and trying to get into college. You've got the peer pressure, and then you've got the parental pressure." I think by the end, we definitely identified with the students, and being up against their parents to some degree.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I think I was also struck by just the realities of college being different. I came out of high school in 1990. I did have some B's coming through high school, and nonetheless, had no problem getting into the schools I wanted to go to, but that is just not the case for young people now.

Debbie Lum: Yes. That's what the kids at Lowell High School called "Asian F", you got a B. [chuckles] The pressure to perform to get into college is so extreme today, and kids having 4.5 greater than a perfect GPA. Just all of the higher expectations, it's basically a reflection I think of our American society, where we're living out on the extreme margins. That's the only thing that's acceptable and seen as success. I think a lot of that, too, is just this perception around the colleges have done a very good job of marketing their brands as unattainable, and more kids applying, lower percentage rates, more desirable.

I think the thing that really struck me was this all-or-nothing mentality, and that there's really only one choice. You can only succeed if you get into the number one, and there's no general acceptance of maybe I should go to a college that is the right fit for me, and that maybe I'm not bankable. There's so much more pressure, unreasonable expectations around the students, and it's coming from the students as well as the parents. It is pretty hard.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You make the point about the "Asian F", and I am wondering if that question about the B, and the seams in certain ways so ridiculous like the B, but the B or maybe even in my case, or three B's on my high school transcript, that part of that is about again having applied to get into school in the '90s or '80s, as opposed to now. I also wonder about the intersection between the presumption of the 4.0 plus and Asian American identity, that for those students, the expectation is perfection or perfection above, and not just from their parents and from the students themselves, but from the college admissions counselors.

Debbie Lum: That's the overwhelming concept around the students too. They really feel like, if they're less than perfect, they're not going to get in. You can see it in the kids that we followed, both in their perception as well as in what they saw reflected back on them that unless you were the guy that had a ruling dynasty. He was a president for every single four years. He was the concert violinist. He was on the US physics genius, and a speed cuber. He was everything. Unless you were that, then you're not going to stand a chance at any of the schools.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to talk about Rachel a little bit, who is such an interesting aspect of the film. Rachel is biracial. She has a Black mom, and through her, we see both the tiger momming occurring in a different person. We see these anxieties around Blackness and acceptance into the Ivy League schools. Can you talk about Rachel a bit?

Debbie Lum: She was so open and able to articulate the complexity of race and the college admissions process, and also just in high school. We were just talking about this the other day that the expectations for African American students like herself to achieve academically, that she's going against the counterstereotype to the model minority. Here you've got like she is on the Honor Society at Lowell High School, which means you have to have a certain grade point average. She's got incredible scores. She's in the Lowell Science Research Program doing graduate-level science research, and she's an amazing writer. She's the editor of a school newspaper.

People immediately assume that her college results have everything to do with race. What I think a lot of people of color talk about when they go off to college is this sense of the imposter syndrome. Kids have it anyway, but that everything in the end, it boils down to your race. It's just so far from the truth for Rachel and for so many kids like her.

One of the things I loved about Rachel is that her mom is not only African American, she's a single mom. She single-handedly raised Rachel. She just shows you that you don't have to be Asian to be a tiger mom. She's the most tiger, [chuckles] probably of all the moms in our film. I learned so much about parenting from her. She's so skillful at it. She basically told us it was her job to have these higher expectations for Rachel. If she wasn't going to be the one to push her, who would do that?

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We'll be right back with Debbie Lum, director of the documentary, Try Harder.

Student 7: Sometimes it's hard to have a strong sense of self-esteem because you're always comparing yourself to other people like, "Oh, this person has a higher grade point average than me. They got a better ACT score than me, so how am I going to measure up."

Student 8: Going to Lowell, I have been introduced to so many actual geniuses.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Back with you on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Those were some Lowell High School seniors talking about making the grade in Debbie Lum's documentary, Try Harder. These kids have college on the brain from the moment they get to Lowell High School. Of course, getting into college seems like one of the biggest and most important things to happen in a young person's life. It's understandable that they'd be so focused on their grades and rank and the admissions process, but watching this documentary had me worried that maybe it isn't all healthy. Director Debbie Lum continues.

Debbie Lum: The Lowell students will take all of this with them. They're so prepared for college that by the time they get there, they find it easier than high school, and then they do. They say like, "What were we stressing out about so much?" At the same time, I think high-achieving students take that with them. These are the kids that become the adults that become the leaders of our society. They take with them that extreme anxiety, and sometimes it doesn't show up until later on in life.

One of the things that because our film really looks at the universal story in their story, which is getting into college, sometimes I think people don't see the specifics of Lowell High School, which is that they do actually have a lot of community, and this idea that they're all soldiers in a boot camp, and that they have all run the gauntlet together. I've met alum from Lowell that it's like their high school is far more imprinted on their minds even than college, so it is kind of interesting. I guess that what drew me to this story was that regardless of the outcome of where-- It is a very dramatic story like what you're putting all your eggs in one basket to try to get into your dream college, what college will you get into, but at the end of the journey, there's still that human story, and there's still that relationship that a young person has with their parents who are helping them get there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, because it is a human story of such very young people, there's a lot of life that they continue to live beyond the boundaries of the film. I'm sure if so many of us want to know, have you kept in contact with any of the students, and I'm wondering where are they now?

Debbie Lum: Most of them have graduated from college now. They often come with us to talk to press or to talk to audiences, and they're doing really amazingly well. I know all the moms out there just adore Alvin. When he saw the film, he was like, "I wish I could just give that high school kid a big hug and tell him it's going to be all right." They've all gone off in different directions.

Ian is a high school teacher now. He ended up staying in Atlanta, Georgia. He teaches at a Title I high school. It's predominantly African American, and I think he's the only Asian person student or faculty. He's come a long way from his Kansas, which is San Francisco. [chuckles] They're pretty fun to be around. I have to say they give you hope.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Can I ask about the teacher who had the liver transplant?

Debbie Lum: Mr. Richard Shapiro. He is doing really well. He's like a walking miracle. He taught at Lowell High School for over 30 years, and he just recently retired. He is the dream teacher, the one that you wish you'd always had. It's a whole new life for him. I think he misses it a little bit.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What happens when a tiger mom becomes an empty nester?

Debbie Lum: When I started making the film, it was actually going to be a film about tiger moms or the stereotype of tiger moms. I was looking at it through the perspective of moms. It's still one of the things I'm really curious about exploring, which is what happens after your job is done, and you've got nothing to do. It's really funny. We joked with Rachel and Donna that we should do a reality series about them. [chuckles]

Donna was so tough with Rachel, and always saying I'm going to push you out of this nest. You're going to go as far as you can go, and you're going to make me so proud. Then when she did, Donna was just in tears, devastated, but her daughter was gone, and we call them up while Rachel was in college, and Rachel would be like, "Oh yes, my mom's visiting." There were a lot of visits. They're still so close. It's very sweet.

Same thing for Alvin, too. When he went off to college, we're all worrying, and then he had that quintessential college experience. His freshman year, stealing street signs and things like that. [chuckles]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is that still the quintessential college thing?

[laughter]

Debbie Lum: I guess, professor, you would know better than that. He was having a good time but then the pandemic hit. Then moving back home, to going to school virtually, it's been tough I think for students today. I think also for moms. It's like we have so many more expectations around being a mom, being career moms, and then treating being a parent as a career as well. It's just a lot of pressure all around for everybody.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Perhaps what we all need is to try a little harder to get some naps and some ice cream in our lives.

Debbie Lum: I like that. That's a great answer.

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Debbie Lum is director of the new documentary, Try Harder. Thanks so much for joining us, and say hello to the young people from The Takeaway the next time that you are with them.

Debbie Lum: I will, too. Thanks so much.

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