Gold Stars for Nothing

Stop giving credit where credit isn’t due.

The people who think we don’t give ourselves enough credit are wrong: we give ourselves too much. In an era of self-congratulation, many of us still manage to shoot for the moon, mistaking cockiness for talent and self-love for hard work.

One of my most treasured memories is watching my university professor stepfather come in at the end of the day, pour himself a stiff drink, and start grading papers. By the third paper in, he was angry. By the last, he was red in the face and shouting.

“What did these people learn in high school?!”

“This is a third-year student born in an English-speaking nation and he can’t spell the word ‘what!’”

The man was one of the last of his kind: someone who wasn’t afraid to walk into the classroom, tear all of the papers in half, and tell his students every last one of them had earned a zero. Someone who was aware of the value of hard work and the pointlessness of passing without it.

In North America, the education bar has been raised. Some minimum wage jobs are requiring their workers to have a BA, and it’s nearly impossible to find a career without a Masters degree. Students who previously wouldn’t have (and perhaps shouldn’t have) made it through high school are being passed through. Graduation rates are on the rise, and so are illiteracy rates.

To further complicate things, high schools have introduced a track system that allows students to choose whether they will take academic or basic level courses. Universities looking at grades and GPA might take a less accomplished student over one with more ability to succeed because the student wasn’t in a particularly difficult program.

Psychologists are just beginning to study the effects of self-esteem based on no accomplishment, and the report card for my generation is possibly the first F we’ve ever seen: we’re living with our parents longer, getting paid less, and understanding politics less than any generation before us.

It isn’t getting better for the next generation: bullying, violence, and shootings are rampant in underfunded and -staffed, overcrowded schools that are afraid to admit that students who aren’t in school to learn, probably shouldn’t be there.

It’s time we admitted that education is a privilege and some families don’t deserve access. There is a reason why Asian countries produce so many brilliant students: they are meritocracies based on blind testing at every level. Only students who work hard enough to pass are allowed to attend.

Students are also allowed to be who they are. We are limiting children who would have been amazing athletes, mechanics, gymnasts, hairdressers, or whose only goal was to be the best barista at Teavana by telling them they are “better than that.”

We have students (and adults) acting out, doing everything in their power to prove to schools and governments that they are NOT “better.” We have strippers and prostitutes who, based on their income, believe they are “better” than the doctors and nurses charged with repeatedly saving their lives.

We need to stop giving out gold stars for nothing. We deserve what we work for, and nothing more. The world owes us nothing, and the truth is, we know it. It’s time to start being honest about it.