COMMENTARY Oct. 13, 2011 ~ It seems that many of the younger Occupy Wall Street crowd are protesting because they are part of the “Participation Rewards” generation. They believe life should reward them because they participate in it. This strange outlook stems from our public schools and, ultimately, from the cultural values liberal educators impress upon our children.
Americans over the age of 35 or 40 went to school during an era when teachers graded our work based on its quality, accuracy and whether we actually completed the assignment. Some teachers “graded on the curve” in tough classes like physics, chemistry and calculus. However that was the only break we got.
Today, grade inflation has become a fact of life in many schools, driven by the need to comply with Federal law and show “Acceptable Yearly Progress”–and sometimes driven by the kindness of teachers who know their students need to graduate with a 3.0 average to qualify for college scholarships.
This new grading philosophy is symptomatic of a broader and dangerous set of cultural values that emphasize participation over winning, and trying over excellence. According to the proponents of participation theory, we need to reward our children for participating, for trying hard, for doing their best–rather than for earning a top grade, placing in a top percentile or for actually winning the ball game. “You lost the ball game, but that’s OK. Here’s a trophy for trying really hard,” they might say.
This coddling attitude presumably avoids damaging the delicate psyches of growing children. It rewards “doing your best,” “trying hard” and “participating” in events. As a result, children do not fully learn that competition is a fact of life, nor do they learn the value of winning, of being in the top percentile. College teachers face this issue routinely when a student whose paper earned a grade of “D” or “F” explains, “But professor, I tried really hard, did my best and stayed up all night to finish it.” In the tougher world of college–and the tougher world of real life– just “doing your best” isn’t always enough.
And So I Thought…
So I thought that perhaps many of the Occupy Wall Street folks might fall into the Participation Rewards school, complaining and protesting because they tried really hard…but somehow just didn’t make things happen in their lives. Even after some deep thought, I do suspect that some of them are from that school.
I talked to my wife about it and she offered a different explanation. She worked at a major state university and often got pressed by students pitching their woes about why they didn’t finish their essay on time, or why they didn’t have a stapler to fix the pages of their paper together–as required by the professor–before they turned it in. “I heard more BS stories and excuses than you could imagine. Some of those kids are all about BS. Pitching BS to is how they tried to navigate their way through college,” she said.
So I also thought that some of the Occupy Wall Street people might be those BS artists. You know: the kids who just don’t get it together. Who try to skate through their classes without studying. And some of them probably are.
So then I Googled around the web for a while and found wearethe99percent.tumblr.com . It’s a compendium of 500+ people, each with their own personal story to tell, explaining why they are part of the “99 percent” of people who are getting screwed in today’s failing American lifestyle.
My heart went out to a whole bunch of them because they are doing the same things I would have done a few decades ago to ensure a successful life. But today those things don’t work so well.
Go to college Study something that leads to a j-o-b. Get a job. Enjoy life.
That simple and time-honored pathway toward the American dream no longer works. Too many are carrying gigantic college loans. Too many are going back to college for an advanced degree–hoping their job prospects will improve enough to cover the even more massive college loan debt they accrue. Too many are single moms whose marriage fell apart, or married moms whose husbands are serving overseas in the military. Too many have no health insurance for themselves or their children because it’s too expensive.
So now, after all kinds of mental thrashing, trying to figure out what the Occupy Wall Street and 99 Percent people are all about, I have come to this tentative conclusion.
They claim to be the 99 percent of people who live in the USA. People who, sometimes, have done the right things–the very same things I would have done in their shoes. But who find the system failing them. They’re the folks who want to blame “Wall Street.” The big banks. The big corporations. GM and Chrysler. The big mortgage companies. The “big guys” who get the bailouts because they’re “too big to fail.” They’re also the folks who suffer from Participation Reward syndrome. They’re the folks who tell a good story, but lots of it is BS and all about blaming someone else. They are–to the last person–complaining about not having enough money to live on, not enough money to repay debts, not enough money to support life and good health.
In my analysis, they’re like all of us who recognize that the system is falling down around us. They want answers and fixes to the flaws, the breakdowns, the heart-breaking shortcomings of today’s flawed American economic system.
I have empathy for the #OWS 99 percent folks. But I also recall some of the teachings from A Course in Miracles (which is a topic for many other articles). The Course points out that we all tend to project upon (that is, blame) others for our problems. We self-justify blaming others because we live in our ego-minds that are always looking for someone to judge, to criticize or to blame. Perhaps a more effective working-together attitude will develop as confrontation diminishes and this movement continues.
This protest is certainly not the first in modern times. Looking back a few years we find that we had a landmark economic event, the stock market crash, in 1929. The civil rights movement and the “Age of Aquarius” followed during the 1960’s, about 40 years later. Now, a scant 50 years after that we’re facing another economic event. Crisis piled upon crisis. They seem to be arriving with measured regularity.
I just hope that this time around the solution to the crisis is not a “big government solution.” I also hope the #OWS and 99 Percent people eventually acknowledge that it’s not all about Wall Street and the big corporations. It’s also about our government, which consists of people whose driving motivation, whose overall objective is to get re-elected–whether doing so meshes with what’s best for one’s constituents, or not.
Until these political and economic issues are resolved; until our citizens can once again go to school, find a job and enjoy life; until moms can afford to take care of their kids and obtain adequate health care; until life returns to “normal”– let’s simply try to avoid blaming one another, worrying and living in fear. A working-together attitude will go much farther and bring a solution much more quickly. Let’s make this current event, this crisis, this major news story, into a platform for solutions and fixing the temporarily-broken pieces of our great nation. If we all stop projecting flaws, blame and anger upon one another, solutions will come swimming up from the depths of confusion into the brightness of daylight. Are you game to try?