The next generation of wusses

More from the public school front. My daughter today told me that, during P.E., she got a special commendation for the fact that she didn’t care if she won at kickball or not. Apparently the modern notion of good sportsmanship is no sportsmanship at all. I went ballistic. I told her that winning is incredibly important. It’s just that we play fair to win, and we’re gracious whether we win or lose.

I keep coming back in my mind to the statement that the “Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” It’s pretty clear that Wellington didn’t say this, but someone did and the point is good — early 19th Century British boys, playing their rough and tumble competitive games, learned to be warriors. Apparently my daughter’s public school is aiming to create a generation of wimps. Thank goodness for weekend soccer, where the powers that be have been utterly incapable of squelching the competitive dynamic, either amongst the children or their parents. We’re all good sports, but we play to win.

On a marginally related point, because it has to do with school, I went the other night to a cocktail party for the parents of children in my son’s class. Near the end of the evening, the teacher (whom I hadn’t seen and didn’t realize was there) came over to me and said, “I guess a should say ‘hello’,” which I thought was a singularly graceless statement. Hellos were followed by silence. Seven years at private schools had me expecting something along the line of “I love Little Bookworm. He’s so [insert compliment].” Unless the child is Satan incarnate (which Little Bookworm is not), there should be something nice a teacher should be able to say about a child. Nothing nice was forthcoming. Eventually, I elicited from her the statement that it was a really nice class because all the kids are really nice.   Well, gee, thanks….