Trophy Kids

Recently, I listened to an interview with Ashley Merryman, co-author of Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children.  She argues that we’ve raised a generation of trophy kids.  They are rewarded not for excellence so much as mere existence.  One example:  more money is spent on trophies by youth soccer organizations nationwide than on coach training or equipment.  Indeed, parents faced with little league budget cuts more often choose to save money by playing fewer games than by giving fewer trophies.

Some other highlights from Merryman’s interview:

• Kids know the difference between receiving a trophy and earning one… but they’re not sure adults do.  Because adults praise them no matter their level of success, their authenticity is suspect over time.
• Students who are praised for their intelligence are often paralyzed by the threat of failure.  If they fail, are they no longer intelligent?  It’s in the best interest of such children to repeat successes (often beneath their ability level) and avoid challenges (often slightly outside their comfort zone). 
• By contrast, students who are praised for hard work (a character trait over which they seem to have more control than intelligence or beauty) are often emboldened to attempt more.  Hard work (and not success) becomes their defining characteristic – even though the first frequently leads to the second.
• Consider a parent confronting a child:  “Did you break the vase, Mary?”  Mary wants to please her mother.  But answering “yes” admits failure.  Answering “no” is lying.  The question presents Mary no opportunity to make her parents happy.  As an alternative, suggests Merryman, try:  “It would please me to hear the truth about the broken vase.”
• Parents of young children offer incessant praise, expecting the cold reality of criticism to kick in at a later time.  They defer criticism to some future authority in the lives of their children.  But grade inflation – and even workplace perks – suggest that an honest appraisal is simply not forthcoming. 

I haven’t read the book, so I’m not necessarily coming out as an advocate.  The author did present her case with well-reasoned research.  And I’ve taught (and parented) long enough to have encountered anecdotal support of my own.

False Chastity

During a talk last week, I asked Christian college students which was more morally troublesome: a movie, a car, a light bulb, or an apple. True to their upbringing they said with one voice "a movie." They said the things you'd perhaps expect them to say about language, nudity, violence, the erosion of social values, the absence of religion, the treatment of women. They told stories about the ways their parents had protected them from film's negative influence. "For a moment, let's set aside the film," I said. "Let's instead, consider the apple.

"We go to the grocery store and -- believing our bodies to be temples -- we stand in the produce section choosing which fresh fruits to buy. We see apples in broad variety; we buy half a dozen Honey Crisps. Because Honey Crisp apples are not in season in our part of the world in March, carbon monoxide has been pumped into the air on our behalf to ship them from elsewhere on the planet. We have thus weighed the benefits of personal health against creation care and chosen the former.

"We may also have made a decision between stewardship and shalom. We don't just want things that taste good; we also want them for a good price. And cheap apples are cheap because migrant workers seldom get health insurance. Indeed, the cinder block buildings in which they live sometimes don't have heat... or even floors for that matter. Given the Bible's preoccupation with the fate of widows, orphans, and aliens, our apple-purchasing habits are pretty disturbing.

"We're not ignorant. In the back of our minds, we are probably aware of the path our apples take from orchard to table. But we repress this knowledge.

"Now back to the hyper-violent film. Neo, Ahh-nold, or John Wayne (take your pick) spectacularly mows down an army of bad guys. And the director yells 'cut.' And all the extras dust themselves off and stand up. And they collect their paychecks and go home to spouses and children and sweethearts.

"We do understand, don't we, that the film's violence is fantasy? Not even animals were harmed in the making of this film. But our actions in the produce aisle result in real violence, done on our behalf to the planet and to our fellow humans. And yet, we say film is the more morally troublesome consumption."

"And consumption is precisely the problem. Jesus said it's not what goes into a person that makes her nasty; it is rather, what comes out of her. It is what she says, more than what she hears. It is the canvases she paints, more than the galleries she visits. It is what she cooks, more than what she eats. It is the movies she makes, more than the movies she pays to see.

"But because we have accepted that our relationship with the world is largely that of consumer, the church -- especially the Protestant church -- has virtually ignored its mandate to create. Instead, we practice suspicious ingestion (sometimes called "discernment") masquerading as the virtue of Chastity."

We are not chaste. We are fearful.