Has a society that heavily rewards youth athletes with unearned rewards and trophies led to the formation of the Occupy America movement? Will a kid that is given a T-ball participation trophy being sent down the road to socialism and world communism?
I admit to listening to the radio a lot, mostly in my car.
I further will admit that I don’t listen to music all that much, choosing instead to listen to talk radio or sporting events. One morning while I was out on my lunch break in my car, I heard a guest of Neal Boortz. I heard him talk about his belief that the America’s recent propensity of rewarding students and kids for no more than putting on a uniform as an impetus that has led to the current Occupy Everywhere movement. The young adults who call themselves the 99 percent, are they the productof parenting and instruction that has left them completely unprepared to face the real world?
The man, whose name I never heard clearly, made a lot of sense. Kids grow up expecting to be rewarded mightily for just showing up some of the time. I know of a local soccer coach who told me that she has had youngsters demand when they are getting their trophy before they have even had their first practice. It seems a lot of kids today think they deserve rewards before they even know what it is they are working at.
Think about it.
For example, kids play sports in some places where no scores are kept. In this way, no one loses and everybody wins! Yay! Well, yay ... not. Sports are generally competitions where one participant(s) measures their own ability, talent, call it what you will, against other participants. Teams or individuals who end up on the losing end of a game or contest, should thank about why they lost and how they should work to get better. If you never lose, you never get better, thinking that you are already there, the cream of the crop, the top dog, even if you are not.
I took six 9- and 10-yearolds to the National Junior Olympic Games in Clearwater, Fla., several years ago. We stayed next door in a hotel to some obnoxious folks who boasted that their 10-year-old son was the fastest 200 meter kid in Montana, Idaho and I think one other state. He was big enough to be all right, but when his proud folks bragged about how he had run 31.0 flat, I didn’t know what tosay. My athlete usually ran it in the 27 range, and won our regional meet in an extraordinary heat with all eight finalists running in the 27s.
Needless to say, this kid got smoked in the first heat.
The kid didn’t run badly, as a matter of fact, and although he was pretty smooth, he was in poor condition. I guess there wasn’t a lot of competition in Montana. The bottom line was that he wasn’t as good as he, or his parents, thought he was. His getting embarrassed (he came in a distant last) hopefully spurred him to work harder and realize that the world is a lot bigger than Montana.
As an art teacher, I deal with kids who have wide ranging abilities. Some kindergartners may not learn how to write their name for months, while others might be writing sentences several grade levels up. The thing that I look for in everyone is effort. However much talent a student has in class, the goal is to increase that talent, hone it and improve it. You would be surprised at the number of kids I have seen who didn’t seem to have an artistic bone in their body, but went on to be proficient in the visual arts.
Students have to see a need before a need can be addressed. Once upon a time, I had a student from a city school transfer to Pea Ridge.
While I was cruising the work stations, I often would say good job or good effort to nearly all the students, but only if the work the student was doing merited it.
When I came across the new student’s work, it was sloppy, haphazard, and completely off course. When I passed his station, he looked up and said in a demanding voice “Hey, you didn’t tell me good job!” I replied, “No, I didn’t.”
In reference to sporting events again, I have heard parental complaints along the lines of “if all the players practice the same amount of time, they should all play the same amount of time in the games.” When confronted by such a parent once years ago, I replied that not only was that a bad idea for thegood of the team, it was also a bad idea for the good of the individual.
If a player isn’t getting to play on a team as much as he or she would like, it would be incumbent on that youngster, along with their parents, to find out where he/she needed to improve. If a player is too slow, that player needs to work on their speed, etc., etc.
Everyone has probably heard the story of Michael Jordan, a man I consider the greatest basketball player of all time.
As a sophomore, Jordan was cut from the program as not having enough talent. Jordan then worked his tail off before the next year’s try outs and he became an “instant” star.
Famous leader Winston Churchill once stated that for a person to be truly great, they had to make their weaknesses their strengths. The whole point of athletics is for the improvement of the individual. Schools don’t spend all the money for athletics that they do just to give the kids something to do Friday night. It’s spent to help the students who participate to become better people. There is no other justification to expend money that is taken from people in the form of taxes.
Back to the Occupy people and their problems. A lot of them have huge student loans for college degrees that were totally unmarketable. The amount of money it takes to get a BA in basket weavingor social work is far more than the student can make realistically when out in the real world. Where were the adults who failed to tell these students this?
A recent poll was taken of college freshman. They were asked how they expected they would be living 10 years hence. An alarming number felt like they would have a big new house, nice car and a good job. Alarming in that they had no plan for obtaining those blessings. They just thought it would happen for them, because, you know, they were special and they deserved it.
Any award or reward given or presented to children really ought to be earned. Students need to know what it is like to fail, and how they can learn from their failure.
I have seen shirts imprinted with slogans like “Football is Life” or “Basketball is Life.” They have it totally backward. Life is basketball, life is football. Sometimes you win.
Sometimes you lose, and like a close friend often told me, “sometimes you get rainedout.”
Learning to react in positive ways to negative things is what makes productive adults out of children. Competition is good for you, everyone needs it, and it has the potential to make you a better person.
Hearing all those sad students recount all their sad tales and their completely distorted views of life made me realize one thing - the pursuit of knowledge may be rough at times but it is way better than the curse of ignorance. Ignorance lead to things like socialism and communism.
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Editor’s note: John McGee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Sports, Pages 8 on 12/14/2011