COMPETITION:
An article appearing in the June 2011 Family Circle on self-esteem is worth the read: http://www.familycircle.com/teen/parenting/self-esteem/not-every-kids-deserves-a-prize/
The author, Karin Fuller, in the article "All Is Not Fair," points out the foolishness of the self-esteem doctrine as it is currently practiced in public schools and children's sporting activities everywhere.
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Competition: Where Did It Go?
Belaboring the point,
competition drives just about everything we do.
Why then, have public
schools done everything they can to get rid of competition?
If, as they claim, they are
readying our children for life in the real world, why would they substitute
activities, curriculum, and methodologies that undermine the one attribute that
drives all of us?
Perhaps as parents you have
not looked closely at the changes in public schools over the last thirty years.
You probably have some sense that these public schools aren’t like the ones you attended
as a child, but you can’t quite put your finger on the differences.
Such clever camouflage of the activities
in public schools is by design.
No
one wants parents to even realize that things at school are decidedly different.
You may or may not have
heard the phrase “outcome based education.”
It was such an anathema, that the use of the phrase was deliberately
outlawed by the education establishment.
It’s been called by other names, but a rose by any other name smells the
same, and in this case it’s a stinky rose.
Outcome Based Education was
the precursor to many of the educational paths we now see in our schools.
Its purpose was primarily to change cognitive learning to affective
learning.
Or translating, we moved
from a knowledge based curriculum to a “process” based curriculum.
And translating again, students stopped learning facts and instead just
learn “how to learn.”
Learning “how to learn” is
pure baloney, but educators can drone on for hours explaining how that works.
It’s always good for a laugh, unless, of course, one cares about the true
academic education of children.
The word devious is
the one that comes to mind with regard to what has been done deliberately in our
schools.
There was never any serious
discussion about whether to make such changes in our schools.
Most local school board members were kept in the dark for years after the
decisions to change were made at the national and state levels.
We have school board members in Katy ISD who still don’t know that
anything changed.
I realize that such an event
seems preposterous, but I can assure you that it happened. There are many
aspects of this change which I will discuss another day, but the primary one is
the removal of competition.
The Katy ISD has managed to
remove all vestiges of competition.
We have done away with real Science Fairs on all our elementary campuses.
Kids get a ribbon for participating; they don’t get one for winning for
being the best.
We have eliminated
the History Fair.
Can’t have someone being the
best in such a contest, so they just ended it completely.
We give “citizenship awards” instead of academic excellence awards.
We wouldn’t want any child to think someone could do math problems better
and faster than he can.
Watch for
the Spelling Bee to disappear soon if it hasn’t already.
The fact that home schooled students usually win at the national level spelling bee,
means that public school students will just stop competing rather than lose to
those students. We honor the top ten in each high school class instead of the
valedictorian and the salutatorian.
In some schools, the valedictorian has not even been allowed to give the
valedictory address at graduation. We (Hugh Hayes, the superintendent) got rid of ability
grouping because we don't want anyone feeling inferior or superior--we're "all
the same." We honor those who have performed “community service” with the same
level of appreciation as the valedictorian. We tell thousands of kids that they
are graduating “with honors” and they’ve only made a 4. grade point average, and
their grades are based on inflated grades. They cannot even get in to our
state’s finest universities with such an average.
We give a multiplicity of scholarships to students who “deserve” them
instead of giving them to students who have “earned” them by virtue of excellent
grades (the word is “SCHOLARSHIP!”)
We name ten kids “captain” of the football team so no one gets his feelings
hurt.
We give out “participation”
ribbons on Field Day in elementary school so everyone is happy.
The list of such changes is
endless, but the results are critical.
We either believe in excellence and competition or we do not.
We either see the long term value for students in preparing them for what
they will find in an actual job or we do not.
The current stance of our public schools
constitutes a great disservice to our students, especially the ones who
are academic achievers.
Public
school is supposed to be about acquiring an academic education, nothing else.
Along the way of such an endeavor, children will learn to get along,
respect authority and each other, and appreciate their cultural heritage.
Those secondary lessons should not have become primary.
Someone needs to shake
parents and remind them that when we reward every child regardless of his
academic success, we are espousing communism.
There’s no other way to describe what is being done. EVERY CHILD IS NOT
THE SAME.
My concern with this sea
change is that it was underhanded and hidden, and it goes against what most
thinking Americans want for their children.
It will take a major effort
to fix what “they” have done.
In t