Posted on 02/08/2014 6:41:09 AM PST by Bon of Babble
A pizza and dance party for straight-A students at a Maryland middle school has sparked controversy among parents and students alike.
While some parents and students felt it wasn’t fair to only hold portions of the party for kids who had high marks, others said that the event actually serves as an incentive to encourage harder work among pupils.
Karen Hanlon, a parent with a child who has special needs and who was not invited to the party, said that the parameters simply weren’t fair.
“The students that don’t get to go end up feeling bad,” she told The Washington Post, claiming that the party divides students into groups.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
/s, just in case
I thought about sports as well. There were celebrations for teams that won the district, regional, or state championships. Only the players on the teams who participated were feted. Students not on the teams because they didn’t possess athletic gifts or dedication got diddley squat.
So what. Not everyone has gifts and abilities in all areas. The key is to find something that you love and seek to be the best you can be at it. There will always be someone better than you out there, but you will find a place in the world if you apply yourself.
IMHO this article reflects one of the biggest failures in our education system. What it takes to recover from a failure of some kind.
It is even worse that the academic failures we have all have heard so much about.
We are so concerned about not hurting feelings that our children never suffer a short fall - academically, in sports, or even socially.
The critical survival skill of learning from your mistakes is never taught! If early man had a similar approach to life the human race would have died off before they even left the cave!
Heaven freakin’ forbid we actually incentivize our children to study and work harder to attain higher results!
This whiny “my feelings are hurt” garbage makes me want to vomit. Suck it up Buttercup. If you don’t want to wind up tossing trash into the back of a truck during an “Arctic Vortex” then study harder and put down the weed.
America is about fair opportunities and NOT “fair results”.
Are those subjects taught in middle school at Montgomery County Schools?
Which subjects, the former or the latter?
Why not just have your own shindig instead of crash the straight-A party?
Kids will form groups, anyway, they always have unless there were not enough kids.
If there are three, most of the time one will be 'left out'.
I will gladly acknowledge the efforts of students in college who studied far harder for lesser grades. I applaud their persistence and dedication, and repeatedly invited them to pre exam study sessions in courses where I held the highest grade average. After all, it is about mastering the material and my respect for their dedication was no secret.
But when you drill an oil well, build something, get a tumor removed, whatever, you will be looking not for effort expended but the quality of the results.
Celebrating those results and those who obtain them sets a standard for the rest of the group. Whether that makes them 'victims' or gives them a goal is in how you and they look at it.
BTW, kids of similar ability (as expressed on standardized tests) were once grouped together, forming sections of a given grade level. That way children of similar abilities could work at a similar pace. If you performed worse than the other kids in your section, usually the fault was your own.
Mixing everyone together just emphasizes the differences, and someone is either going to get disappointed or totally bored.
One size fits all doesn't work.
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