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Is Everybody a Badass?

My son is on the verge of being a senior in high school.  He and his friends are full of the energy and optimism of youth and inexperience.  They’re fit, strong, and bright young men and women that have a bit of swagger to them, but are they any different from anyone else at that age.

My older daughter is on the verge of being a a sophomore and isn’t so impressed with this group of  upperclassmen.  Her and her friends seem to want to throw their hat into the ring as the best and the brightest and the prettiest and the most sensitive and the most caring.  They’re  just a bunch Mother Theresa’s those female freshman.

My youngest daughter is still in elementary school and I can assure you that she and her friends think they know everything.  I can’t seem to tell them anything that they don’t already know.  From this, you must deduce that they think they’re the best of the best.

I remember a mom a couple of years ago that informed me that my son and his friends were an immature and childish group( yeah, they were in the ninth grade).  Her son and his friends(upperclassmen) were mature and smart and really with it.  It seems the parents get into this line of thinking also.  It gets even better when I hear parents constantly bragging about their children and trying to tell you they are better than the next coming of the savior.  Their gpa is this, they took these classes and they are on these sports teams.  Big deal.  My kids do all the same stuff. 

I say let’s be proud of our kids within reason.  What we are really trying to do is raise good solid citizens who are going to carry this country forward as we start to fade into the twilight of our lives in the next 25 years.  Being realistic, there are only going to be a handful of kids from each class that go onto the upper echelons of what we define as success in this country.  Those individuals are unique people that see the world in a different lense than the rest of us are the true leaders, movers and shakers of our society.  I’ve seen people from very meager upbringing accomplish great things and I’ve seen people with all the advantages in the world turn out to be total creeps.  The kids are going to find people that are smarter, brighter, faster, stronger or whatever than themselves.  Prepare them for the competition, but don’t hand them the trophy before their adult life begins.

Am I saying don’t do your best?  Am I saying don’t strive?  Am I saying don’t push and challenge yourself?  I’m not saying any of those things.  If you were one of those who were telling everyone that your kid knew the alphabet at two years old, then I can’t help you.  If you’re caught up a bit in which college your kid got into, then you might want to curb your pride a little.  American hubris seems to be more of a worldwide disease than a sought after trait.  When I’m on my soap box, hobby horse or in any other elevated state, I seem to fall pretty hard.  The fall keeps us humble.

If anyone is interested, the class of 1985 was the baddest of them all.

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Hey Teacher! Leave Them Kids Alone!

Things used to be so simple back in the day.  You either took a regular class or you took an honors class.  The highest your gpa could be was 4.0.  The SAT was a maximum of 1600 points.  Sports had a season and they weren’t played year round.  You got Thanksgiving and the day after off.  You got two weeks at Christmas and one week at Easter.  Pardon me, I’m not being politically correct.  I should have said winter and spring break.  Back in the day, summer was very long.  You got out of school around the middle of June and always went back the day after labor day.

Things have gotten so complicated.  There are regular classes, honors classes, AP classes and international baccalaureate classes.  They even have honors classes in Spanish in case you can’t speak English.  What’s the point?  Why so many classifications?  It turns out the colleges don’t give a rip whether you were in regular or honors.  The colleges only care about your gpa.

I personally am not sure the regular classes are rigorous enough, so I have suggested, encouraged, pushed and demanded my son be in the honors classes.  I don’t expect the international baccalaureat because that’s just too much work if you’re in sports and not inclined to that much academics.  My son is with the program.  He hasn’t balked at the challenges and did well last year. 

Getting to the point of all this, I really want to know who the moron is that starting assigning homework over the summer.  This is what happens to honors students these days.  They get homework assigned over the summer.  This is really irksome to me.  Do these teachers have any idea how hard it is to get a fifteen year old motivated to do homework over the summer?  Talk about government intrusion into my life, I just can’t take it anymore.

You’re probably not much that different than my wife and I.  We divvy up our parental responsibilities.  It just so happens that it has been my responsibility to make sure my son does his summer homework.  This has been like pulling teeth.  At the beginning of summer, we decided he could have until August 1st without having to worry about any school work.  So on August 1st we sat down and made a schedule of how much he should do per day, so it could all be done with a week to spare.  In this way, the last week of summer could be totally carefree.  I don’t think it’s going to turn out that way.  The educators have turned this into my angst and I’m not happy about it.

I can honestly tell you that growing up I never had as much homework as my kids do.  I never did homework over any summer.  I don’t even remember doing much homework during the week during the school year when I was growing up.  I feel sorry for this generation.  Why is everything a race and a pressure cooker?

I’ll never forget what my dad told me on my graduating from UC-San Diego with my bachelor’s degree.  He shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, nobody cares.”

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