Have we all gone mad?

I’m sure many of you have already heard this story but if you have, it’s almost a requirement that you hear it again and if you haven’t, you need to hear it and not forget it.

Last week, in a youth football league where the maximum age to play is seven, there is a rule that no team can score more than 30 points. Now I don’t care who you are or how old you are, putting a limit on scoring is ridiculous in itself but that’s what this league has done. As the game was winding down, the score was exactly 30-0 so the coach that was ahead replaced his starters with kids who didn’t get to play too much if at all. In my opinion, everybody in a league that restricts its age for participation at seven years old ought to be playing but that’s another story. The coach told the subs he was sending in that they couldn’t score or he would get in trouble but sure enough, a five year old got his hands on the ball and off to the end zone he went with the coach running step by step with him down the sidelines yelling at the top of his lungs at him to fall down but the five year old was going to have no part of that plan.

As you might imagine, the five year old scored, the final score was 36-0 and the coach knew he was in trouble. Upon communicating with league officials it was determined that he could be suspended for two games and fined 500 dollars because running up the score on an opponent might “embarrass” them and make them “feel bad.” As of this writing, it still hasn’t been determined what the penalty, if any, for the coach will be.

This whole idea of participants “feeling bad” because they lose started with participation trophies several years ago. Sports used to be divided into winners and losers. That’s why you competed against others. Everybody wanted to win and nobody wanted to lose and that’s the way it should be.

But there have always been winners and losers and there always will be. To pretend there isn’t is to slap reality in the face. Sometimes as many good life lessons are learned in losing than in winning. I remember the Andy Griffith show when Opie, Andy’s son, was entered in a race that he not only lost but finished last in. He sulked around the house until Andy decided to have a fatherly chat with him. He explained to Opie that it doesn’t take much character to be a good winner because winning is fun. You get to walk around with your chest stuck out and brag about how much better you were than your competitors. Personal development and integrity come when you learn how to be a good loser; not liking it that you lost but doing whatever you can to maybe not lose the next time.

We’re not teaching our kids this anymore. The scandal that has been in the news lately has been about rich and/or famous people paying other people to take their children’s college entrance exams to make sure that they get a seat in a prestigious college or university. It doesn’t matter to the parents whether the child earned it or not, they just want the child to have it and believe that the child will love them so much more if they had a hand in making that happen.

On top of parents cheating to get their kids into the prestigious colleges, the schools themselves are guilty of similar things when their students don’t perform at the levels the administrators and teachers thought they should. So when they don’t, they excuse that performance and sometimes even give “do-overs” in order for the students to try and do better.

What a sorry excuse for education we’ve evolved into when trained educators fall for this tactic, thinking it will make their students better instead of worse. Giving someone something without that person having to work for it ALWAYS makes a person worse and educators should have learned that their first week in Fundamentals of Education.

We’re headed down a long and winding road the wrong way and if we don’t fix it before a tipping point is reached, we’ll look back on occasions like I’ve mentioned in this column and understand why.

But by then it will be too late.