Your Kids are Dumb, The U.S. Will Fail, and Its All Your Fault

Despite President Obama's pep rally this week, the U.S. is doomed to become a second-tier world power within the next 25-30 years.

I'm not sure exactly when it started. This country was built on the backs of men who fought hard to build the free market system. The basic premise: if you were willing to work harder and longer than the next guy - if you were able to do it better - you will capture the market, make lots of money, and live happily ever after. The legendary companies whose history shaped our own, like Standard Oil and U.S. Steel, were formed from the ground up by men with tenacity and an unwillingness to accept mediocrity. Success was out there to be had in this county if you were willing to man up and work your butt off to get it.

Fast forward one hundred years, and you get this:

Parents to Teachers: No More Red Pens

Corrections in red called "stressful"

Are you effing kidding me??? A school district in Trumbull, Connecticut has banned teachers from using red pens to correct papers because it hurts kids' feelings. And they aren't the only district to adopt this policy. Bic, Pilot Pen, and Sanford (makers of Papermate and Sharpie) report they have increased production of purple pens because demand is up, largely driven by schools and teachers who have switched from the traditional red.

This is just the latest in an ever-growing trend in this country where we coddle our kids and "protect" them from anything that could be considered even remotely negative. However, instead of making them more "balanced" and "calm", what we're doing is raising an entire generation of spoiled brats who are taught that you can do whatever you want without repercussion and success is just a lawsuit away.

I've long been an opponent of grade inflation. I think schools, in an effort to placate parents and educational watchdogs, have lowered their standards to such a point that while everyone "succeeds", nobody actually learns anything worthwhile. A few years ago, the school system here in Massachusetts began a series of standardized tests similar to several other states. The goal is to show that all students have met a minimum standard in order to advance in their education. Tests are taken once in elementary school and once in high school as a requirement for graduation. As much as they are a test for the student, they are also a barometer for schools, with funding distributed based on how each school and district compares to the next. Now, instead of pushing students to their limits and trying to get them to really think, all students are taught only to this absurdly low bar and no higher. Additionally, with extra funding sent to school districts whose students perform at least at a certain minimum standard but with room for improvement, schools have absolutely no incentive to teach "too much" lest they actually have their funding slashed.

Apparently that still isn't cutting it in some areas. Apparently some students (or parents) still feel like teachers are pushing them too hard. Bad grades still make them feel sad inside. Therefore, many districts are starting to implement new student-friendly grading policies. In one Grand Rapids, Michigan, high school, this has meant that students literally can no longer fail. Instead of an F, students will see an 'H' on their report card. They will still advance and will have the opportunity to make up the work by the end of the following trimester. This is on the heels of failed policies in the same district of offering a "grace period" for students to turned in missing or incomplete work at the end of the trimester and still receive full credit, and another prohibiting teachers from docking grades for excessive absences or poor behavior. Last trimester, 2,400 failing grades were converted to 'H's out of 4,186 students!

Quoth Superintendent Bernard Taylor, "Our children are our precious gifts and, if sometimes they need a little longer for their light to shine, let's let them do it."

Taylor's real incentive is to cut down on the number of students tagged as "dropouts" in order to increase the rating of his school system, improve home prices in an area decimated by problems in the auto industry, and very likely secure a nice bonus for himself. You know what, Superintendent? Your kids aren't precious gifts. They're lazy and unmotivated, and you're sure as hell not helping.

But it gets worse. In Clark County, Nevada, last year, a "grading minimum" policy was implemented where the absolute lowest grade any student can get is a 50 (on a 100-point scale). What this means is your child could literally not show up for the entire semester, not go to class, not do a single homework assignment and still get a 50. Sure, its still a failing grade, but it doesn't hurt as much. Taken to less of an extreme, lets say you have a bright, but totally unmotivated child. Little Johnny decides he doesn't feel like doing his book report today. Or tomorrow. Let's face it - Little Johnny has no plans to even read the book. Let's say he doesn't feel like studying for next week's test. He hasn't done a damn thing all semester and we're at the halfway mark. Now Johnny's bored with being bored so he starts to put in a little effort. He half-asses a book report, and gets a B (because if he gets anything less, you Mr. and Mrs. Over-protective Parent will be in the principal's office the very next day threatening to have Mr. English Teacher fired or worse for failing to properly teach your angel-faced little cherub). Maybe he gets Bs for the rest of the semester. Johnny gets through the class with a C average by putting in about a month and a half of mediocre-at-best work.

What this is doing is teaching our kids that they don't have to try. Whatever you want to do, Mommy, Daddy and this clueless government oversight committee will make sure they "succeed". We're failing our kids by failing to teach them any sort of personal responsibility. In a few years when this horde of stupid, lazy, looking-for-a-handout kids reach the workforce, our companies will start to fail en masse because there will be nobody to actually DO anything. Why bother to innovate? Somebody else will do it and then I can take the credit. Why bother working late? I negotiated a guaranteed bonus, regardless of what the company does.

We're starting to see this already. General Motors. Fannie Mae. AIG. Foreclosures and "mortgage relief". Sound familiar? Don't worry about that mortgage you signed without doing your homework and couldn't ever possibly afford. Mommy and Daddy (i.e. the Government) will make everything better.

This actually started a while ago in more subtle ways. When I played in Little League, the league mandated that all players were required to play at least 2 innings. I was TERRIBLE at Little League. I had no business putting on cleats, but every game I'd trot out to right field for my two required innings. The coach got really good at timing it so I'd have at most one at-bat. I played on a very good team, but we never won the championship. Didn't matter though. I still got a trophy. Everyone did. Everybody played and everybody got a trophy at the end of the year. I'm actually ok with that... in Little League. But now Little League rules have crept into Real Life. Now everyone gets to play no matter how terrible you are, and everyone gets a trophy. Forget about actually EARNING anything.

And so we'll fail. Eventually the money will run out and U.S. companies will be allowed to collapse under the weight of their own incompetence bred years earlier in classrooms without red pens. Those that survive will do so by hiring labor in foreign countries where they still believe in the value of hard work. The money that is actually earned here will funnel to these hard-working countries, causing massing inflation which, coupled with the growing unemployment rate will cripple Americans in a way that's unthinkable even in today's Depression.

We will fail. And its all your fault.

**Footnote: I stumbled on this article from teacher Jerry Jessness, written a decade ago, on what he calls the "floating standard" in education. He articulates this problem in our schools far better than I ever could, and from a very personal perspective. A must-read if you're interested in this topic.