A Personal Essay by Matthew Saenz
Everybody is a winner. This type of thinking has led to awards for “achievements” as minor as participation, a celebration of mediocrity. Everybody is a winner. Modern day students now live in an environment rife with coddling. Everybody is a winner. Statements like these create a population of delusional people. Current society has become unrealistic, has bucked the trend that was responsible for human advancement through the 20th century–teach children to think independently, to be able to choose their own path in life. It is now the expectation that all students will go to college, regardless of their ability, and parents of these students will push them to take classes they may not be able to understand. This slows down classes and promotes a spoon-feeding of information to students. Students now don’t become educated, but learn how to memorize for a test. This is a tragedy. A tragedy with consequences we will all face.
The revolutionary thinker Friedrich Nietzsche once declared, “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” I think this is the central problem that needs to be addressed. People today feel that their children are capable of anything they set their mind to, and are capable of leading jobs that are deemed socially prestigious (i.e. physician, lawyer). Back when my parents were in high school (in California and Ohio), students who could not succeed in college were allowed to attend technical programs that were offered by the school, which included beautician and mechanical courses. This provided them with an outlet to be a productive member of society. A little more than 30 years later, all academic courses are “college-preparatory,” and an inordinate amount of time is spent on trying to bring up kids who 30 years before would have decided to attend a technical school. In my own family, my cousin serves as a prime example of this flaw in our educational system. By birthdate, he is only two months younger than me, but he is a year behind academically. He was held back in the first grade, and has struggled with basic comprehension of learning material. Now a freshman, he cannot understand Algebra-1. Wanting to pass high school, he resorts to cheating (and gets caught). He has absolutely no interest in school, but his parent refuses to acknowledge this, often saying something to the effect of “you can do anything you set your mind to.” She refuses to accept the facts–her son cannot and will not attend college. This attitude is also detrimental to my cousin, as there is a certain stigma that comes with this feeling of ineptitude. His self-esteem has never been high. In order to remedy this all-too-common situation, I think that we, as a population, have to redefine success. Not everyone is meant to be intelligent and attend college, in the same way that not everyone is meant to be a spectacular athlete. It sounds harsh and cruel, but success should be defined by doing what a person can do to be happy, not whether they attend college. Forcing something upon them because we think it is beneficial is a disservice to children everywhere. Life doesn’t revolve around satisfying others, but is about finding oneself, marching to the beat of one’s own drum. One isn’t a winner because he goes to college, one is a success if they are happy. In every aspect of my life, I am against blanket policies that must be applicable to everyone, and eliminating them must be a priority.
Are you doing well in a class? Keep quiet, and apologize if you said anything about it. That is the attitude of America today. Intelligence and hard work isn’t celebrated (perhaps in part due to the delusion that everyone believes their child is brilliant). For example, at last year’s Principal’s Cabinet LCAP meeting, nothing was discussed about how to best aid the brightest students, the students that have the potential to make a positive mark on society. All the attention was focused on struggling students. I think it would be wrong to neglect these students, but more attention should be focused on the sharpest of students.
Not only is hard work not celebrated, but in fact, we are told that celebrating these achievements are arrogant, and we shouldn’t try to “upset those who didn’t do as well.” We shouldn’t tell other people we got an “A” on a paper because our fellow peers don’t view us as a positive example–in fact, we are branded as braggarts, boasters and “big heads.” As a result, schools will try to include as many people as possible when handing out awards, as if their cheap pieces of paper with no value (oh wait, now it is). For example, I attended the Riverside STEM Academy for my middle school years. Throughout middle school, I had the highest grade in all of the academic subjects, and I worked many hours to make it possible. But when it came down to handing out awards at the end of the year, I didn’t receive a single “Excellence in [subject]” award. I was grouped together with nine other students as a “Top Ten” student. It felt like a slap in the face, and made me question why I worked so hard to be the best, if my work was deemed the same as nine others who didn’t do as well. This situation wasn’t limited to the middle school level, however. At my sister’s high school this past semester, nearly 75 percent of her freshman class received the highest honors. 75 percent! These numbers sound even more heinous when one considers that every honors class is weighted. My sister received straight A’s, but was rewarded like someone who wasn’t. After her award ceremony, I asked my mother why she thought so many were awarded.
“Matthew, I think it’s a trick to try to get people to feel good about the work their students are doing, and by association, the work they are doing,” she said.
“Do you think that these awards mean anything then?” I asked.
“For your sister, I know she deserved these honors. But the award itself means nothing. How is it an award if most people receive it?”
I think this harmful behavior should be stopped immediately. Hard work should always be celebrated, knowing information is something to be treasured. This world is a meritocracy, not a charity.
I have heard from many of my teachers that today’s generation is incapable of thinking for themselves, of analyzing a situation independently. It sounds offensive, but when looking at the quality of students in advanced classes, the teachers’ statements do have merit. At my own high school, after taking several AP/Honors classes, I noticed many troubling trends when it comes to actually learning the material. All too often, students resort to cheating (which requires no independent thought), or perform a maneuver I like to call the “memory dump”–essentially, students study the night before the test, trying to cram all the information into their short-term memory, at which point they “dump” it onto their paper. Additionally, in conversations I’ve had with my peers about subject material, many of them struggle to grasp the nuances of the class, the argument, or the novel. They are not unintelligent, but perhaps they simply cannot understand the material. But the vast majority of people aren’t willing to accept this. They will look to their teachers to provide such things as “retakes” and “extra credit” to help them artificially boost their grade. They expect to be coddled through a difficult class, like babies spoon-fed their meals. Children will pile on AP/Honors courses, not because they are passionate about the subject, but because it is weighted higher (on a scale of five instead of four), and they know they can do poorer in the class but still maintain the same G.P.A.. It is why there are five Honors Chemistry classes, and five Honors Literature classes and five A.P. Language Arts classes at my school. These weighted classes promote laziness amongst students, when they are meant to be for students who truly care about the subject and are willing to put in the work necessary to succeed. With the advent of this weighted G.P.A., graduating with honors has devolved into something that isn’t as respected as it was in the past. My mother was the valedictorian at her high school, which was only given for students who had received straight A’s. When I asked her what she thought of graduating with honors now, she thought it was a joke, laughable.
“How does anyone take them seriously? These students know how take a test. You know that these students probably don’t remember most of what they learned in these honors classes.”
Do away with the weighted G.P.A.. If high-achieving students were to take classes that interested them, not what they think colleges will like, our youth would have a much better overall education that taught them things they wanted to know, not what society deemed theyneeded to know.
Today’s system of values is breeding an entire generation of mediocre scholars, mediocre thinkers, mediocre people in general. We live in a world where there is an aversion to work, where students expect the teachers to spell out the information they need to know for a test. That isn’t learning. How will the next generation solve problems if there isn’t a template or someone to guide them? They won’t. The only solution is to instill the values of hard work and realistic expectations. Only then will we, as people, be able to truly thrive.