In his post “Excellence vs. Mediocrity“, James Frederick Dwight demonstrates part of the problem with today’s schools society:

I should say here, clearly, that I do not blame any of the above changes on my friends who ran/run the program and who, to a person, are people I admire deeply. Rather, like any good institution, they have been offering what their customers demand. In this case their customers (the parents) want to be told their children are special or at the very least don’t want to hear the opposite. I should also add the guts of the program remain exceptional and unchanged; it’s only the publicly visible portions of the program that have been hammered.

The election was supposedly one about values. Well here’s a couple of values for you – I value excellence and I value honesty. As a program our hands were tied because the parents didn’t feel the same way. And little will change in our schools until that changes.

The whole post is worth a read.

I completely understand the desire to hear that someone you care about is exceptional, but demanding that schools (which nurture and grade only one or two of the plethora of possible ways one can be exceptional) recognize every student as exceptional is absurd. After all, as was pointed out twice during the movie The Incredibles, when everyone is exceptional, no one is.

I don’t see what the harm is in letting people have a solid understanding of what their potential is in certain areas. Everyone has their own strengths. Some people are exceptional in the area that school systems are designed to recognize, and those students should be recognized in school. Should the school system, ostensibly designed to educate students, be responsible for recognizing those students whose strength is an exceptional empathy for their fellow man? What about those who are simply very, very good at managing the strengths they have and putting them to their best possible use? A good sense of humor?

Parents need to learn (and teach their children) that just because children aren’t exceptional in those areas that a school is fit to recognize doesn’t mean they aren’t important, nor does it mean that they’re not exceptional in some other way that a school isn’t fit to recognize. We need to understand that not being exceptional isn’t an insult.