"No Cut" Policy Is Left Coast Lunacy

Anyone of you folks out there that have read this blog for any length of time know, I am one of those people that look upon Political Correctness and any of the associated foolishness that goes along with it - like efforts to build self-esteem in children by cheapening their achievements by making them meaningless - with derision and scorn.

I had hoped that none of that Left Coast crap, particularly the self-esteem building, would infect the populace here in New Hampshire. Unfortunately that hope was in vain.

As Doug at GraniteGrok informs us, a member of the local school board wants to institute a “no cut” policy for all varsity sports in our school system. What problem does the school board member think that this policy will solve?

The more I thought about this, the more pissed off I became. All through the weekend I pondered the import of this development, worried that our society may be doomed.

For some reason the focus of education has become building self-esteem rather than teaching children. For the life of me I cannot figure out why self-esteem has become so important. From my experience, self-esteem is vastly overrated. There are plenty of people out there with low self-esteem that are well educated and, in some cases, quite successful. There are also a lot of people out there with great self-esteem but are total layabouts, jerks, or worse, politicians. To give you an idea of how self-esteem has little to do with a child's success, there are plenty of inmates on death row that have it in spades. So in and of itself, self-esteem means very little.

Our misguided school board member somehow thinks that it would benefit everybody if our school system implemented the aforementioned “no-cut” policy in sports. What has been overlooked is that it will have a deleterious effect on those athletes who can actually play the game. And with some sports having a limit on the number of players on a team, the no-cut policy would be unworkable unless the school wants to be banned from playing within their conference.

What would motivate such a move by this board member? Perhaps it is as Doug says.

One of the classic characteristics of liberalism is the inability to make decisions and the avoidance of conflict at all costs. What exactly are we teaching our children about life when we engage in this sort of nonsense?

If there is no competition, there are no winners and losers, or so the reasoning goes. But it's false reasoning. With no competition, everybody loses. Everybody's achievements are cheapened because the bar has been set so low that it is impossible to 'fail'. And if it is impossible to fail, then there's no reason to work for one's success. A person may have great self-esteem under such a system, but they won't be able to do squat.

Picture yourself in the seat of an airliner. You have the choice of a pilot with loads of self-esteem or one that really knows what he or she is doing even if they have little self-esteem. Which one do you want to fly the plane you're on?