Before I start my speech, I just want to tell everyone competing in this round today that you are all winners, just for participating. Okay, let’s get real. We’re not all winners. Merely being involved does not necessarily equate to winning. Too often people expect trophies just for participating, and this leads to decoration obligation, which means an “inordinate commitment to honor with awards,” as Bruce Hood noted in his 2013 book The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity.
After a childhood of optimism, relative material wealth, and entitlement, many people today have an esteemed sense of their own specialness, despite having accomplished nothing to deserve it. Consequently, when difficulties arise and people must face …show more content…
Eliot in his 1925 poem, as if predicting how we might come to act with more modernism. As Aitao Lu noted in his February 2015 Journal of Adolescence article, it wasn’t until the late 1990s into the 2000s that parents and teachers started to teach and preach to the notion that you can never praise a child too much. In fact as Lu noted, the concept became a cornerstone of education; unfortunately, when a capstone is constructed of trophies based on showing up, not accomplishment, we leave ourselves hollow. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our own education. As Ashley Merryman wrote in her September 24, 2013 New York Times article, American students rank 24th in math in the world, well below students from Japan, South Korea, and parts of the Middle East. The aforementioned article indicates that while Americans aren’t very good at math, we’re among the world leaders when it comes to thinking that we are really good at math. As Jean Twenge of San Deigo State Univeristy suggested in her 2014 updated version of Generation Me young people are bathed in messages telling them how special they are. Often these messages are untethered to evidence of actual merit. She notes that in 2003 41.9% of Yale students received an A, while in 2012 that number was up to 62%, while students researched indicated that they studied on average three hours less per week. This demonstrates how professors continue to reward students for less effort with continually higher grades, even though those grades may not be
After a childhood of optimism, relative material wealth, and entitlement, many people today have an esteemed sense of their own specialness, despite having accomplished nothing to deserve it. Consequently, when difficulties arise and people must face …show more content…
Eliot in his 1925 poem, as if predicting how we might come to act with more modernism. As Aitao Lu noted in his February 2015 Journal of Adolescence article, it wasn’t until the late 1990s into the 2000s that parents and teachers started to teach and preach to the notion that you can never praise a child too much. In fact as Lu noted, the concept became a cornerstone of education; unfortunately, when a capstone is constructed of trophies based on showing up, not accomplishment, we leave ourselves hollow. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our own education. As Ashley Merryman wrote in her September 24, 2013 New York Times article, American students rank 24th in math in the world, well below students from Japan, South Korea, and parts of the Middle East. The aforementioned article indicates that while Americans aren’t very good at math, we’re among the world leaders when it comes to thinking that we are really good at math. As Jean Twenge of San Deigo State Univeristy suggested in her 2014 updated version of Generation Me young people are bathed in messages telling them how special they are. Often these messages are untethered to evidence of actual merit. She notes that in 2003 41.9% of Yale students received an A, while in 2012 that number was up to 62%, while students researched indicated that they studied on average three hours less per week. This demonstrates how professors continue to reward students for less effort with continually higher grades, even though those grades may not be