From the trophy generation

[Golden Applesauce]

quick responses to Smug Blackboard Guy first:

Rule 1 - I (think) I was beginning to figure this one out around kindergarten.  Definitely got it by the time 6th grade rolled around.

Rule 3 - Part A:  Maybe when you were a kid this was remotely possible, but (in America) we average 25k+ of debt after college.  None of us ever thought we could jump on the career train with only a highschool diploma.  Part B: They're called "cell phones," and we got them without earning them because your generation bought them for us.  I'm sure you had your reasons.

Rule 4 - Debatable.  Insane teachers seem to last longer than insane middle managers.  Probably has something to do with tenure and the difficulty of evaluating teacher performance.

Rule 5 - Point taken on "dignity," but it is beneath that college degree we all need now.  By that I mean that if after taking off 4-6 years and taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt, if all we can land is burger flipping, at best we'll be able to tread water until that first major illness/pregnancy, cuz, y'know, no health insurance.  We economically cannot afford to take minimum wage jobs.  Instead, we work unpaid internships.  Go figure.

Rule 6 - I didn't learn this in school, but then I never learned that my problems were a result of my parents either.

Rule 7 - We don't have time to complain about the rainforest, because the politicians you keep electing can barely deal with the crises they manufacture themselves.  If something doesn't improve before the water shortage hits someone with a real military, a lot of us are going to die.

Rule 9 - Actually true.

Rule 10 - They do teach this in upper level marketing/poli-sci classes, but relatively few of us take those, so I'll concede the point: Unlike in television, the world is not locked in a manichean struggle between liberals and conservatives, east and west, citizens and illegal immigrants, and Christians and everyone else.  Al-Qaeda doesn't have the manpower in our borders to pull off a school shooting (much less the Anthrax scare) , universal health care is not the first step towards Auschwitz, and none of the countries we've invaded have ever posed existential threats to us or our freedoms.  What, you thought the sitcoms were where the fiction is?

Rule 11 - Or if you do bully them, make sure you're sufficiently thorough, in which case they off themselves.  Works on gays too.

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY:

Rule 2 - The world does not care about your self-esteem.  The world expects you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 8 - Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not.  In some schools they have abolished failing grades, and give you as many times as you want to get the correct answer.  This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

You and the rest of your "winning is the only thing" buddies can get the fuck off of my planet.  I will feel good about myself whenever I damn well please.  Your attempts have to make performance a prerequisite for happiness have been recognized as the emotional blackmail it is.  You fear the so-called "trophy-movement" because self-confident individuals are harder to manipulate, not because it in any way weakens the participants.

First off, schools can't do away with the notion of winners and losers, for the simple reason that children are the most judgmental and cruel demographic on the planet.  Kids figure out pretty quickly that the sleep-over and birthday party invites are vastly more important than participation trophies.  Everyone knows who the popular ones are, just as they know who the stupid and/or fat ones are in their classroom... and no number of passing grades or special olympics trophies will change their mind.

Schools are trying, though, because the (ideal) function of a school isn't to sort people into failures and successes, but to turn people who otherwise would have become a "failure" into a success story.  You seem to be under the impression that schools should harshly punish failures because the real world is that unforgiving.  Which is false; the only fatal mistakes you can make are the ones that literally kill someone.  Otherwise, sports teams would disband after any season they didn't win a championship.  Telling people that they only have one shot to get something right or their life is ruined just makes them more anxious, more likely to cheat and more likely to take a second shot to the brain pan when they inevitably fail.  If there is only one lesson that schools can teach, it should be that the path to success lies through failure, and that there really are second chances.

Philosophy aside, making students do things until they do it right works.  The best professor I ever had took this approach - he had frequent quizzes and tests.  If, after reviewing the tests, he didn't think that students understood the material, he'd give them the test again on the next day.  And he'd keep doing it until people started passing. For some quizzes, he'd even let the students work in small groups on retakes (so the students could learn from each other - P2P knowledge transfer.)  He wouldn't move on to the next chapter in the textbook until he was satisfied that the students understood what was happening in the previous one.  He understood that a teacher should be teaching the material rather than flunking the students who don't already know it, and that "failure" in this context meant not a bad test grade moving on to the next course in the sequence without the proper grounding.  The end result was a body of students who understood basic physics, rather than a body of students who had given up on physics as "too hard."

Last thoughts before I fall asleep (sorry if this has become progressively disjointed) - people avoid failure.  They avoid and drop classes that will hurt their GPA, even if they'd be educational; when they can't avoid a test in the first place, they start rationalizing the failure away with self handicapping.  Attach serious failure to education, and people decide that television is safer.

Wait - no - the most important thing is that this guy thinks children should be divided into winners and losers.  And that's evil.

[East Coast Hustle]

Sounds like somebody is cranky and needs their nap.

Seriosuly though, this pretty much just comes off as a bunch of self-entitled whining.

[Lord Cataplanga]

Sounds like somebody is cranky and needs their nap.

Seriously though, this pretty much just comes off as a bunch of self-entitled whining.

I don't think it's self-entitled whining, just regular whining.

I mean, he's not the one saying "Sure, I'm wasting a lot of natural resources but it doesn't matter because I keep my closet clean and ordered and stuff and also my generation had a more difficult childhood than yours".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think GA made some really good points.

I mean, I'm trying to raise kids who have a chance at succeeding in a world that my and previous generations have royally fucked up, and the inane "tough love" platitudes offered by Bill Gates or whoever that is there are really just smug back-patting and a way of evading responsibility for how hosed shit is now while shifting blame to the kids.

Might as well just say "the reason the economy is so fucked is because mothers started breastfeeding again and they abolished corporal punishment from public schools, so these mollycoddled little namby-pambies just don't have what it takes to compete!"

Same thing. Diversion of blame. Plus it allows these aging shitfucks to feel superior and like they did better than the next generation because they EARNED it, and the younger generation is just lazy and spoiled, meanwhile ignoring that more of us are getting higher degrees and working longer hours for less compensation than they ever did.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

(And our kids will get more education and work longer hours for less compensation than WE are, while shouldering even more debt for their housing and education.)

[East Coast Hustle]

I think that's a conflation of two separate issues, though that's admittedly my instinctive opinion and one I'd be willing to refine and revise once I've had more time to think in depth about it.

What you're talking about is certainly a result of the horrible economic and social policies implemented/voted for/tacitly approved by our generation and those before us, but it does not mean that the OP is not a bunch of WAAAAAAH! or that there is not seemingly a trend towards viewing the concept of "equality" in this context as meaning "equality of outcome regardless of performance" instead of "equality of opportunity".

In short, I have no use for the whole "everybody makes the team even if they suck/nobody gets graded, just passed/competition is damaging to self-esteem" mentality.

Though again, since I found the OP to be fairly vague in its ultimate point I'm willing to accept that I may be interpreting it incorrectly. But since it was posted by GA I'm fairly certain that it has to be whining about SOMETHING.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The thing is, most of the Boomer generation whining about the "everybody wins!" is bullshit. Kids have always been entitled idiots, especially rich kids... and most of the vocal asshole boomers whining about how easy kids have it these days were rich kids.

On top of that, from what I actually see in the schools my kids actually go to, the "everybody wins!" mindset doesn't even fucking exist. There does, fortunately, exist a system which tries (and still often fails) not to completely crush kids who don't do well, while helping them to do better.

The dripping-with-stupid blackboard image from the OP seems to simply want to punish the losers and implies that this is the best way to make sure the right people succeed.

[East Coast Hustle]

See, I grew up culturally rich but financially poor and had to scrape and claw for everything I've ever had, and did so in spite of having to go through a school system that did everything possible to discourage and marginalize me so I really do identify with the "Stop whining you pussies, you have no idea how easy you have it" mentality, but I'm willing to accept both that I might be an extreme outlier and that the manner in which my formative experiences imprinted on me is not necessarily right.

I'll have to think on this some more.

Still think GA is whining though.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

See, I grew up culturally rich but financially poor and had to scrape and claw for everything I've ever had, and did so in spite of having to go through a school system that did everything possible to discourage and marginalize me so I really do identify with the "Stop whining you pussies, you have no idea how easy you have it" mentality, but I'm willing to accept both that I might be an extreme outlier and that the manner in which my formative experiences imprinted on me is not necessarily right.

I'll have to think on this some more.

Still think GA is whining though.

He might indeed be whining.

Hell, you and I could probably compare experiences and horrify the shit out of the rest of the board, and I dropped out of third grade, but I still managed to turn out OK.

NONETHELESS, that doesn't mean it was a good system or that I recommend anyone raise a little girl with starvation, filth, neglect, beatings and the occasional rape. It made me tough as shit, sure, but I really don't think I'm happier or more successful than I would have been if I'd been raised in a healthy middle-class environment and gone to a school with supportive teachers.

And like I said in the other thread, school should be there to educate, not to mold students into good little worker-drones.

[Juana]

I think that's what GA was getting at with the "as many tries as you need" with his physics teacher. The point is to make sure the students understand the material.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think that's what GA was getting at with the "as many tries as you need" with his physics teacher. The point is to make sure the students understand the material.

Yes, and I completely agree with that. At once point that was the purpose of holding back students. Now instead of being held back the next year they are usually sent to summer school. Here, at least.

[Golden Applesauce]

See, I grew up culturally rich but financially poor and had to scrape and claw for everything I've ever had, and did so in spite of having to go through a school system that did everything possible to discourage and marginalize me so I really do identify with the "Stop whining you pussies, you have no idea how easy you have it" mentality, but I'm willing to accept both that I might be an extreme outlier and that the manner in which my formative experiences imprinted on me is not necessarily right.

I'll have to think on this some more.

Still think GA is whining though.

I think we grew up at completely opposite ends of the cultural/economic spectrum.   Without going into to much depth, my cultural heritage more or less consists of a parental bias toward Catholic education and a higher than average number of potato recipes.  Economically... when I was 12, my family was in a position to decide that the local schools were doing more harm than good to me and my sister, and move two states up so I could go to the same elite highschool my dad did.  More on the basis of my parents having in-demand skillsets than deep financial reserves, but I'm aware that most people don't have those kinds of options.

I get that my generation doesn't have a lot of the problems that our parents and grandparents had, and that the reason is that our parents and grandparents solved those problems.  What bugs me are those smug generational pundits who think that therefore all of our problems are imaginary, and that we should therefore spend all of our time sitting around being grateful - because first off, there hasn't been a collectively grateful young cohort ever, and a lot of those solutions earlier have created entirely new problems that we're going to have to solve ourselves - and old people calling us coddled pussies isn't helping.

What makes it worse are people like Blackboard Guy who clearly have zero understanding of the actual problems our generation does face but still feel compelled to lecture us.  Ignoring the 'car phone' line, we aren't angry because we can't sit in coffee shops all day like in the sitcoms he thinks we watch.  We're angry because we've seen reruns of Full House and The Cosby Show and we know we're not going to be able to provide anything close to that level of material security for our children.  Putting the Hollywood-sized houses aside, our generation isn't going to have the financial option of stay at home parenting, if we can even afford kids.  We're putting off marriage and childbearing longer that any generation in human history, and it's not because abstinence-only education works.  And in twenty years, when we finally feel economically secure enough to start introducing defenseless children into the world, our women are going to do more than flip tables when they realize that the shitty world economy they were born into cost them there most fertile years.  The next generation is going to consist of children whose parents can't really afford them and the children of parents rich enough for IVF.

And that's just the generational stuff in that image that bothers me.  I'll get the education side after my hands unfreeze.

[Golden Applesauce]

On 'winners' and 'losers' in education -I see three groups of students.

Group I - people who are going to figure stuff out and make something of themselves, no matter how much adversity gets thrown their way,
Group III - people who are either so willfully ignorant or heavily disabled that no amount of amazing schooling is going to make a difference, and
Group II - which is everyone in between those two extremes.

If all you care about is picking winners, then a system where you set really high standards and then flunk anyone who doesn't meet them is fine.  You don't even have to teach much of anything; Group I will find a way to teach themselves.  Everyone else will fail horribly, but that's a good thing because all we wanted was to figure out who the winners and losers were - the more obvious it is who failed, the easier it is to select those who didn't.  In such a system, grades and evaluations are not a teaching tool but a sorting tool.  No one is more educated than if the system hadn't existed in the first place, but we can more efficiently select only Group I types to hire now that we know who they are.

All that is fine if our society only needs a relatively small fraction of people to be educated (say, if we had only had enough complicated problems to occupy 1-2% of the population) and doesn't have any moral qualms about throwing the overwhelming majority of us (Group II) under the bus.  But we can do better than that.  We need a system that actively educates the people who require some amount of "hand-holding" or "coddling" in order be successful, for the simple reason that that's where the potential is.

It turns out that getting to caught up in winners vs. losers doesn't help with that, because the way to succeed in any given endeavor is to keep trying until you eventually do succeed, getting up one more time than you fall down, etc.  Telling people that they're a loser after only three unsuccessful attempts doesn't make people try harder on attempt #4.  Group I was going to try harder next time anyway, but Group II is more likely to go find an arena in which they aren't being called a loser.

Most people - especially Group II types - are more concerned with avoiding loss than they are at winning rewards.  Cranking up the penalty of failure doesn't make (most) people figure out ways to win - it gets people thinking of ways to not lose, and the easiest and most obvious way to not lose is to not play in the first place.  In the context of school, this means not investing too much of yourself in your schoolwork, and rationalizing away failures so they aren't personally damaging.

Say a kid studies for a test, but still ends up with a D.  The healthy response is:

"I didn't do as well as I could have.  I should study more, study differently, or ask someone for help."

That's a fairly mature response.  Anyone who comes up with that response before highschool is pretty far ahead of the curve (and more likely to be in Group I anyway.)  Even at higher grade levels, people tend to prefer these kinds of responses:

"I was just unlucky."
"Eh, I don't need to know that stuff anyway."
"Ms. Smith is so unfair.  She hates me."
"These tests are impossible - there's no way anyone could pass."
"This proves I'm normal, unlike Braniac over there."
"I guess girls really are bad at math."
"I'm left-brained, this is the best I can do on this subject."
"School is a waste of time."
"I'm just not good at this kind of thing, even if I try."

And the harsher you make the consequences of failure, the more likely people are to pick a response from column B, because those shield them from feeling bad about themselves.  And once you've chosen one of those options, you pretty quickly stop putting effort into that subject, because you've already decided that failure is predetermined.  That's where people move from Group II to Group III - they're so afraid to risk being wrong that they never engage.  It amounts to a self-inflicted learning disability.

It is necessary to let students know when they're Doing It Wrong, but it's counterproductive to do so in a way that is taken as a personal attack, because we're very good at not believing bad things about ourselves.

The goal behind the "as many chances as it takes" methodology is to make learning as stress-free as possible, because when you aren't afraid of messing up you're more willing to experiment and take chances - which is how humans learn best.  The flip side of this is that all of those opportunities to retake quizzes and whatnot are mandatory.  Students aren't permitted to disengage and fail their way to summer vacation.  It's not softer on students - there's no option to just take the D and be done with it.  If you want to fail that badly, you have to sit there and take every. single. test.  You have to try to get a failing grade.  You still have to try in order to get a passing grade, the premise being that as long as students are trying anyway, they'll figure that they might as well try to win.

[Golden Applesauce]

In short, I have no use for the whole "everybody makes the team even if they suck/nobody gets graded, just passed/competition is damaging to self-esteem" mentality.

At the youth level, kids don't play sports to win games, they play sports to run around and have fun.  And as long as they're running around having fun, they're getting exercise, learning motor skills and (basic) strategy, and practicing teamwork, sportsmanship, and general social skills.  Simply being on the team is a "win" as far as personal development goes.  In a year, nobody will remember how many games they won or lost, but the lessons they learn on the field will stick.  I don't see any reason to prevent a kid from having that experience just because he's clumsy or can't run very fast.  (especially if the reason for that is because he doesn't get much practice at sports.)  Who would it hurt?  I guess it might inconvenience some other kids who are really hung up on winning, but on average their team shouldn't have significantly more clumsy kids than their opponents, and if not, well, Life Isn't Fair.

[Golden Applesauce]

The thing is, most of the Boomer generation whining about the "everybody wins!" is bullshit. Kids have always been entitled idiots, especially rich kids... and most of the vocal asshole boomers whining about how easy kids have it these days were rich kids.

On top of that, from what I actually see in the schools my kids actually go to, the "everybody wins!" mindset doesn't even fucking exist. There does, fortunately, exist a system which tries (and still often fails) not to completely crush kids who don't do well, while helping them to do better.

The dripping-with-stupid blackboard image from the OP seems to simply want to punish the losers and implies that this is the best way to make sure the right people succeed.

I figured it out.  See, he understands that life isn't fair.  If it were, life would be putting all of those losers in their place, and winners like him would would have gotten 60k jobs out of highschool and ended up sitting around in cafes all day.  But life should be fair.  Making sure the winners get everything for free is tricky, but making all the people who somehow dodged their fate of being losers feel insecure?  That he can do.