'Feeling good' gone amuck

When I completed a recent column about our "feel good" society, I couldn't have imagined that limp-wrested liberals would almost immediately thereafter propose a feel-good policy that makes most of the others pale by comparison.

They now want public schools to put a cushioning "floor" under failing grades. For example, if a student intentionally and inexcusably skips class when a test is scheduled, instead of being awarded the traditional and deserved zero, the truant would be given the lowest allowable grade of say 40.

Educators - especially at college level - are notoriously and dangerously liberal; liberalism is dominant also in public schools, all the way through high school. Those poor misguided, hand-wringing do-gooders seem to believe that awarding a zero is so damaging to the fragile personalities under their tender care that the rest of that child's potentially outstanding life will be forever and irreversibly trashed.

They not only propose that something such as 40 be entered in the record for a student purposely avoiding a test, but they further want the same minimum score written down for a student who did take the exam but scored below 40.

What does such a procedure actually teach those children and their parents? Seems to me that the unavoidable lesson is: If you do nothing in life that you do not want to do, you get at least a rating of 40 percent; is that so bad? I suggest, to those so-called "educators," that, however well-meaning they may believe their new proposal to be, it will inevitably further and substantially undermine the strength of the nation.

Think, for example, how relevant experiences in public school might be carried over into real life. If one receives 40 percent for doing nothing in school, why not 40 percent of one's paycheck for never coming to work? We wouldn't, would we, want to cause persons to avoid working because at one point or another their pay was reduced to zero because of unexcused absences, so let's pay a minimum of 40 percent, even if they never show up on the job.

Yeah, right!

Life is not - in spite of butterflies, flowers in gun barrels, free sex, Karl Marx, liberal politicians and mind-altering recreational drugs - one big kumbaya. A school's responsibilities include, especially, working in concert with concerned parents to help children prepare for life on their own. Nowhere in a school's curriculum is there room, nor justification, for protecting children from sometimes painful or unpleasant lessons, which will likely help the child to avoid far greater unhappiness in later life.

Life is filled with challenges, rewards, pitfalls, sadness and joy; schools should attempt to teach their charges how to minimize, or avoid, the undesirable facets. Often, the best way to learn to stay off a dangerous path is to be significantly "hurt" by a related experience in early life. Most children who burn their hands by touching fire will be careful to avoid treating fire casually or carelessly in the future. Those who demonstrate an inability to learn from such experiences are most likely wasting teachers' time and scarce classroom space, so it's possible that their dropping out is generally the best course of action.

Some schools have long had a policy of no F's, so as to avoid bruising fragile egos or embarrassing any of their little charges. And most schools now routinely inflate grades so as to make everyone happy. Are the results of such actions bearing noticeable fruit? Well, yes! - high school graduates with high grade point averages (GPA's) are admitted to colleges, which discover that those "honor students" need remedial courses in English, reading and mathematics.

That's real progress.

Of course, most of the people who need to understand my message are not reading this paper; it is, therefore, up to you to work to defeat any such dangerous new policies in your public schools. There is no reasonable possible benefit to be realized in awarding a child 40 percent for doing 0 percent of the required job; on the other hand, there is significant risk to those few children and to society in general.