Rant of the Week: Everyone Gets A Medal
Photo by Kaytlyn Gordon
Once upon a time, long long ago, there were no participation medals. No honorable mentions. No made up ties. No winning because you just had fun. There were winners and losers. There was always a first place. And no sense of entitlement.
Hard to believe, isn’t it?
It might sound crazy, but this was also a time when students blamed themselves for bad grades, not their professors. The professor’s word was final and a bad grade simply meant to try harder.
Now, a bad grade seems to be an invitation to barge into professor’s office and demand a retake, because you “deserve” it. This is becoming an epidemic on college campuses, even at Moravian’s, where students no longer take ownership of their work but instead expect professors to lower their expectations.
Just doing the work and studying hard is the obvious solution to becoming better, of course. But increasingly we’re not interested in anything other than projecting the blame for our failures onto someone else. As a consequence, we’re becoming a society of takers. Regardless of how much we give, or how much we are given, we fully expect to take the mile — and more.
We are losing a sense of pride, integrity, and responsibility, and instead gaining a sense of entitlement and privilege, all because of those stupid participation medals.
Andrew Horton • Feb 14, 2018 at 8:38 am
Participation medals—a new thing? Back in the 70’s I was in the Boy Scouts. I got a patch by attending a jamboree. You would get patches for being at a given event. The US military since the Indian Wars has given medals for involvement in campaigns and serving in a zone. You could be a half drunk slouch in the Persian Corridor during WW2 and get an Asia-Pacific Medal. For displaying normal good conduct, you get a Good Conduct Medal. My father served on an oil tanker in Korea–a very safe job far out at sea. He was in the war zone 72 hours before the armistice and got a war medal. So participation medals are an old and honorable thing. Unless you got a problem with the military.
Brian W. Smith • May 25, 2017 at 11:08 pm
A win or an A in a class is something you ear. We all win or lose in life depending on the situation. I don’t believe in participation medals. Yes maybe this started before Obama but it accelerated greatly this dangerous PC coulture under his watch.
Patrick • Apr 28, 2017 at 4:24 pm
Grade inflation and issues of student entitlement have been in the public eye for decades now, despite Brian’s Obama-fueled fugue state.
“this was also a time when students blamed themselves for bad grades” — students have been complaining about professors’ grading stretching back to the middle ages. And traditionally it’s been (and still largely is) the province of the children of the wealthy, who are used to getting whatever they wanted.
One of the reasons why contested grades are more common now is because tuition has gotten more expensive, and more students have to get financial aid and take out loans to afford it. And since GPA is closely tied to financial aid, the difference between an A and a B, or a C and a D, can be literally the difference between staying in school and being forced out, and possibly finding oneself homeless. The stakes are ever higher for ever more students.
Brian W. Smith • Apr 19, 2017 at 9:41 pm
I couldn’t say it better myself. This is the result of eight years of PC and Obama liberalism. People want to return to the past when Americas exceptionalism prevailed. When you were either won or lost depending on how hard you worked or how good you were. Now that Obamas gone and we have a republican president maybe we can return to life as it used to be.