Taking it easy on kids hurts future competitiveness

Every person who has attended school in the past hundred years has taken a test or turned in… Every person who has attended school in the past hundred years has taken a test or turned in a homework assignment, only to get it back from his teacher full of red corrections. Big, red X’s and sloppily written notes and suggestions have graced the pages of students’ work since the inception of red pens. For many years, the red correcting pen has been the standard for teachers’ corrections. These days are now gone. The red pen – abandoned.

Educators now feel that emphatic red corrections on a homework assignment or test can be stressful, demeaning and frightening for a young person. In an interview with USA Today, the principle of Thaddeus Stevens Elementary in Pittsburgh suggested teachers should be using only “pleasant-feeling tones,” such as purple, when correcting students’ work.

Do red pens really instill that much trauma? The abandonment of red pens is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a nationwide movement by parents, teachers and the education elite to shield children from the remote possibility of frustration, disappointment and failure.

The first casualty of this new way of thinking was dodgeball. I’ll admit, a game in which the strong and athletic prey on the small and weak by hurling balls at them does seem a bit barbaric. In a Sports Illustrated column, Neil Williams, a physical education professor at Eastern Connecticut State, stated that dodgeball has to go because it “encourages the best to pick on the weak.”

But under closer inspection, I have found that dodgeball parallels the real world. Every day, strong companies swallow up or shut down weak companies. Strong athletes outperform and out-earn weak athletes. Entry into college is based on being a strong candidate or a weak candidate. Strong students out-perform weak students and in many instances make more money because of it. The world is not fair, and it is better for children to learn this as soon as possible so they can better prepare themselves mentally and physically.

People are quick to connect a “violent” game like dodgeball to school violence in general. But dodgeball is one of the only times when students can take out their aggressions. Perhaps there would be less school violence if kids could work out their aggressions instead of being forced to juggle silk scarves in gym class.

Another game to come under attack for similar reasons is tag. In May 2002, the principal of Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, Calif., sent a letter to parents informing them that children could no longer play tag during recess. She explained, “In this game, there is a ‘victim’ or ‘it,’ which creates a self-esteem issue.”

Are today’s children too sensitive and fragile that calling someone “it” creates a self-esteem issue? If that is true, then the country is in more trouble than it realizes. In an interview with USA Today, Anthony Pellegrini, an expert on playground dynamics, responded to this letter, saying, “It [banning of tag at recess] is ridiculous. Even squirrels play chase.”

Parents, teachers and the educational elite are banning these games and phasing out the red pen to maximize the self-esteem of today’s youth. Children are now being worshipped for the smallest achievement and barely criticized for substandard work out of a fear of scarring their self-esteem. This is done despite the fact that there has been no link made between high self-esteem and achievement, kindness or good personal relationships.

There is, however, a connection between unmerited self-esteem and antisocial behavior. Knowing this, it seems hard to figure out why so many people are obsessed with creating high self-esteem.

The real victims of this new line of thought are not the overweight, nearsighted third graders getting slammed in a game of dodgeball. The real victims are the children who will be unprepared for the real world. These children must compete against children from other countries as we come closer to a global economy.

The teachers overseas are still using the red pen and allowing kids to play competitive games. How can America expect to compete in a global economy when the future of America doesn’t know what competition is? America has seen Generation-X, Generation-Y, the Internet-Generation and the MTV-Generation, but get ready America, because Generation-Soft is coming next.

Joe is looking for someone to play tug-of-peace with him. E-mail him at jjm43@pitt.edu.