The Cost Of Participation Trophies
In a land where everything is made to be fair and equal, we have destroyed the most important thing we had, our kids.
In late 1964 I got to my small Southern college, Hampden-Sydney, which had average pre-dumbing-down SATs a little above 1100, the students being mostly boys from small towns all over Virginia. I remember that in freshman chem, the expectation was that everyone knew all of the above. Knew it cold. We did. Bad grammar would in no course have been tolerated. Students were assumed ready for freshman calculus. The college offered remedial nothing. If you couldn’t do the work you belonged somewhere else, and shortly were.
2014 – Pass is pass and fail is pass. Unprepared individuals wasting the time of educators.
It was not an elite college. We were not elite students. As freshmen, we were only a summer further along than seniors at Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers.
Really nothing to see here, it was called a normal education in 1964.
What am I, and people my age, supposed to feel other than raw contempt for pig-ignorant, self-righteous, utterly useless illiterates whom society will have to feed and house like barnyard animals for the next fifty years?
The damage is done.
2 thoughts on “The Cost Of Participation Trophies”
I concur jeffi,
I entered Rutgers U. in Sept. 1960 as a Chemistry major. My high school guidance councilor had some concerns but didn’t actually say: “Don’t do it, you’re not prepared academically or mature enough to handle the stress of college life after 18 years of your momma cooking, washing and making your bed.
Dang, the dude was 100% correct, but I didn’t see it coming until all those “F” grades smacked me in the face at the end of the first semester.
I went back to night school took calculus, Trig and other math courses after working a few years and did pretty well. That’s called: Growing up 101
Toejam – I went thru the same thing. I wanted to be an architect but was woefully unprepared for the classes. Trig completely escaped me as did basic algebra. Took a surveying class that was part of the curriculum and loved it. Decided that working outside was the gig for me, dropped out and went into construction.
Wish I would have paid more attention in high school.
School of Hard Knocks 101,102,103…etc: