Some Should Be Left Behind

Some Should Be Left Behind
Posted by Emmanuel
When I think back on school days past, I remember I had to earn my way to the next grade. Today children are given opportunities to go on to the next grade, even if they haven’t demonstrated a level of proficiency. I know that we all believe our children are great, smart, and capable of being anything in this world, but that is the lie that needs to stop being told.

Every child is not equal to the next where intelligence is involved. Some children are more suited for math and sciences, while others are more suited for English and the arts. This is the idea that got me through school. While I was always ahead of other classmates in reading, writing, and any of the history disciplines, I was not always the strongest math and science student. The difference for me, and any child in the school systems pre George W. Bush, was that we had to earn our way to every grade. Whether we were great at all of our subjects or not, that is what made me really appreciate the next grade: I earned my place in that grade.

That is what today’s schools lack: the ability to instill in children a sense of pride through accomplishment. I was never handed a grade I didn’t earn, nor was I ever promoted because the system was set up to allow me to do that. I lost classmates because they didn’t earn the grades to be promoted, but we all survived despite that. Now we keep promoting children because political polices say we have to, and not because they earned their way.

The problem is that if we keep practicing this policy, we’ll wind up with more George W’s. And by that statement I mean we’ll wind up with people in positions of power that have no business being there. It has often been said that George W. Bush gives hope to all “C” students that anything is possible. I say, stop saying that! This man makes all credibility for “C” students null and void. He proves the point for me, that if you don’t earn your way to the next level, it’s pointless to continue until you earn the right to be promoted.

That is why I’m finding myself in classes with people who seem to be oblivious to the notions of speaking with a vocabulary that occasionally uses the word “like” when talking and writing. These people have surely been privileged to the “No Child Left Behind” program. The problem is, they should have been left behind. I’m never thrilled about the idea of my leaders making decisions that affect the world if they aren’t qualified to do so. If we continue to give to children opportunities they don’t deserve, then we will assuredly turn out more generations of “Paris and Nicole,” instead of generations of “Hilary Clintons and Nancy Pelosis”.