The culture war continues

One of my favorite cable shows is Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel which airs on HBO every month or so. It's a penetrating, introspective look at how sports impact on people's lives; sometimes individually, sometimes collectively. A recent episode examined the culture war that continues in our nation's K through 12 educational system in regards to competition and the "no touching" policy that many schools are currently implementing.

The new educational mantra seems to be that competition is harmful to the youth of America. In other words, when children compete and lose, it makes them feel bad and that's emotionally unhealthy. So, even though these schools still hold "games," there are no winners and losers. Everyone who participates receives a medal, with no distinction between first place and last place. There used to be one graduation at the end of one's K-12 educational career, now there are many. Children graduate from kindergarten, from elementary school, from junior high school and then, finally, high school. This is supposedly done to instill a sense of "accomplishment" in our children at a young age.

Many schools no longer recognize students graduating with honors because it makes the ones not graduating with honors feel bad.

I wonder where we lost our way and I wonder when we lost our minds. We live in a competitive society and, because we do, we're taught competition literally from the crib. The first thing dropped in a baby boy's crib continues to be a sports item; a glove, a bat, a ball, etc. and more and more often, these articles are also being dropped into baby girl's cribs as well. Everything about a country based on capitalism is rooted in competition. We compete against each other for girlfriends and boyfriends, for grades, for honors, for seats in graduate and professional schools, for jobs, for promotions, and for wages. How are we preparing our young people for the "real world" they will all one day face where competition is king by denying them the opportunity to win or lose while they're in school? How do we expect them to ever embrace excellence and attempt to be the very best they can be if we teach them through our policies that winning isn't important and that mediocrity is OK? And who decided that losing is detrimental to our mental health because it makes us feel bad?

I remember an old episode of the Andy Griffith show where his son Opie was entered in a foot race and he came in last. He had been dreaming about winning a medal every night for weeks and, when he lost, he threw a fit and went into a pout. Andy, being the loving, caring dad he was, told Opie how disappointed in him he was for being such a poor loser. He told his son that losing often builds more character in a person than winning does because it's easy to win. All you have to do when you win is walk around and grin a lot. But when you lose, you have to figure out why you lost and do everything you can do to make yourself better the next time around.

When did we lose sight of that notion?

One of the constant and enduring criticisms of our educational system has been that it has lost touch with reality and I think nowhere is this more evident than our de-emphasis on competition and our desire to make children "feel good about themselves" simply because they participated. This country became great because of the "doers" in the world, not the also-rans. It became mighty because of the movers and shakers, those who were dedicated and committed to being the best they could be, every minute of every day and refused to accept defeat for very long. If we expect America to be in the future what it's been in the past, we must continue to reward the "winners" and encourage all of our children to strive for excellence in everything they do.

Another trend in education that is just as troubling is the "no-touch" rule that many schools are embracing. Touching another person has become a no-no because of the possibility of "inappropriate" touching. Children, teachers, and administrators were interviewed and they all described a policy that sounds like something out of a futuristic science-fiction tale. They talked of "air-hugs" where they hold out their arms in front of another person like they're going to give them a hug and the other person does the same thing but they hug the air instead of hugging each other. They also give "air-fives" where they hold their hands in the air and move them towards the other persons hand but stop just short of making contact because actual touching might send the wrong message. Teachers have been suspended and in some cases, dismissed from their jobs for hugging a child who was sick, injured, or just sad.

Are you kidding me? The human touch, given in a loving and caring way, has more medicinal value than a lot of the medicine we're prescribed to take every day. Humans are social beings; we NEED each other. We need to feel comfort, compassion, empathy, understanding, intimacy, and love from other human beings and when we don't get that, we literally die. Feral children, those raised without the benefit of human contact, have much shorter life-spans than children who grow up with human contact. All of us know what inappropriate touching is and yet we're allowing school systems to ban all touching because, from time to time, someone touches someone the wrong way. If there has ever been a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, this has to be right at the top of the list.

I hope we regain our senses before it's too late.