“. . . Remember that most of the students that you work with have been reared in an environment where self-esteem has been preserved at the sacrifice of the recognition of truly exceptional performance. To some extent K – 8 education has been watered down to the least common denominator so that all can be successful and the positive peer pressure that high performing students exert on each other, is non-existent.
The educators and parents don’t really want to recognize the talented kids because it may hurt the self-esteem of the regular kids. The result is a large population of parents and young people that really don’t know what high performance looks like, has never been asked to produce it, and yet believe they have achieved it.
All I can tell you is that you may have a huge number of students that have been spoon fed their education and wouldn’t know what real effort and achievement looks like. Our generation of parents has supported that approach as they have coddled their children and “wished” for high levels of achievement.
These are the main reasons that we do JO VB with the girls as usually truly high performance is recognized. You wouldn’t believe the numbers of trophies that the kids have for just participating at various sports tournaments. The youth of today wouldn’t know if they really won or just showed up. I understand how things got this way, but I think things went too far. Self-esteem is one thing, but know how to dig deep to achieve at the next level is just as important.”
Cindy Sellin-Viren
Learning happens when there is a need to know.
Winning happens when there is a need to win.
