Speaking of high school [as I did in the next to last post] - there were a lot of things they never taught me. One of them was that it is INFINITELY more important to be a kind person than it is to know algebra [or maybe they did and I just wasn't listening]. The prevailing philosophy was that just about the most important thing is good grades.
FALSE.
Good grades meant next to nothing and still mean next to nothing. But that will not stop our educational system from ramming into innocent kids heads that grades is life. That - among other reasons - is why there is such a high percentage of depression among young people.
Yirmiyahu Hanavi said it best:
In other words - G-d couldn't care LESS what a person gets on his stupid S.A.T.'S.
And also Micha Ha-navi:
We gave the world Tanach and then virtually ignore many of its messages.
One act of kindness is worth more than a thousand perfect scores on school tests. Do we teach our kids this?
Read this article:
"When your kid gets straight As, it’s cause for a celebratory dinner out. When they win a baseball game, there are loud cheers from the bleachers. But when that same kid helps an elderly neighbor with yard work, is there any kind of fanfare?
Probably not. And that may be behind a new survey that finds 80 percent of youth say their parents care more about their achievements and happiness than about whether they are being kind.
“We are hyper-focused on our own kid’s happiness,” says Rick Weissbourd, who conducted the study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “I wasn’t surprised that happiness was ranked the highest, but I was surprised that achievement was ranked so high.”
To understand children's perception of what parents value, Weissbourd and his colleagues surveyed 10,000 children from 33 school districts. They asked the students to rank the importance of “caring for others,” “achieving at a high level,” or “being a happy person (feeling good most of the time).” They also rated how they believed their friends and parents perceive these values.
Students said that achievement was the most important value and thought their peers would agree. More importantly, students reported that their parents appreciated achievement much more than happiness or kindness. They were three times as likely to agree with the statement “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I’m a caring community member.”
This means kids think much less about being nice than they do about getting an A on a test, winning a swim meet, or being best camper. Yet, all this focus on accomplishment doesn’t lead to content kids.
“The achievement pressure can have a bunch of negative results,” says Weissbourd, who is co-director of the Making Caring Common project. “I’m concerned that it makes kids less happy.”
Weissbourd says living up to this standard causes stress and depression and can lead to bad behaviors, such as cheating. Studies have found that 50 percent of students admit to cheating and 75 percent say they have copied someone else’s homework, possibly in an attempt to live up to expectations.
But, teaching children about caring can enrich their lives.
“I think that the irony is that when kids are caring and really able to tune in and take responsibility for other people, they are going to have better relationships,” he says. “And those relationships are probably the most important aspect of happiness.
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And we imbibed these attitudes from the general culture. Let us return to our true values. [This doesn't mean that children shouldn't be encouraged to excel in their studies. There are intellectual and emotional and even at times spiritual benefits to such an enterprise. But it must be kept within proportion].
