Try Harder

Not Everyone Deserves A Ribbon
(This one's for the Next Generation Especially)

1) 5th place is the 4th loser, not the yellow ribbon. Try harder
2) Honorable mention is just a way to point out that someone took pity on your not placing in a competition. Try harder.
3) Hate to break it to you, but it is about who wins and loses, not how you play the game. If you lost, Try harder.
4) The saying that 'Everyone is a Winner' is false. That's like saying everyone is popular or Everyone eats the Cole Slaw that's given on the side. If someone says that to you, you did not win. Try harder.

Everyone says that this generation has it too hard and that its getting too much homework, stressing kids out too early in life, and forcing pressures on kids at an age that is way too young. And I don't dispute this. But it is not the kids that are failing us, its us that have already failed them. There are two ways to fix this. One is to set the bar higher for every success and make them strive for their sake and theirs alone. The other is to realize that when we give kids more homework, we teach them more about the worst parts of life, and bury them in a history fraught with our failures and our restrictions. We may say that those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it, but truly what we mean when we say that is to do as we say, not as we did. And any with half a brain cell knows how well that argument has worked in getting our children not to repeat or experimentations with drugs, sex, and alcohol. The answer to how to get the next generation to surpass our own is not going to be found in books, regardless of how much better another country's students may test on calculus. The answer will be found in your own home, on your time, when you take a child and spend time with them. I've seen it in action and I tell you it works.

Who am I to say this? I'll say that I am a child who came home everyday after school and did my homework immediately, so as to have my own time at night. I read what was asked and I memorized the equations I needed. I got the grades I needed to proceed to the next level and made the connections I needed to get the next job. By 'our' societies measure I should be considered a success.

I am not. I am not because I have only conquered the ability to get the job done. And getting the job done and changing the world are two completely different things. So if you want the next generation to simply get the job done, keep doing what we've done. But if you want the next generation to transcend, to disprove, and to re-imagine then don't teach them to simply get the job done. Teach them to do that. Show them what life is and what it could be. And then try harder.