Maintaining a High Standard

People will fall short of the standard to which they are held. As a general rule, human nature tends to go for "good enough". You and I have both seen that if you expect and/or demand a 7, folks will give you a 5 or 6 oftentimes, and call it good, and you will usually acept it. They know, and you know, that a 2 or 3 will not be good enough. People will fall short of the standard, but they will at least try to come close. Usually.

This goes for your children, also,

The problem with our country's government school system is due in large part to the failure to recognize this trend, and "when" the children fail, the soft-headed "educators" want the Poor Little Things not to have hurt feelings (because the child also knows that a B is not as good as an A) So the standard is lowered, and this is the beginning of a vicious cycle of non-achievement in the schools.

Children will strive to attain most of what they understand is expected of them, just like you will.

So give them a high standard to strive For. They will do better by falling short of a high standard than by falling short of a low standard. By the way, when they fall short of a very low standard, they will feel much worse about themselves because they know they could be doing much, much, better; so your wrong-headed attempt to make a population feel better about themselves by lowering the bar is DOOMED to failure from its misguided outset. If you show someone a standard of or near perfection, they will fall short and feel bad. But they will try, and the result will be better. What's more, they will feel better about themselves falling short of a very hard goal than a very easy goal that they lazied out from under.

Don't be afraid of a high standard. Realize that you will be disappointed if you expect perfect compliance, and temper your responses to failure in proportion with the magnitude of the failure and the effort expended in the attempt to reach the goal.

But don't you tell me that kids a hundred years ago could handle their own checking accounts after 8th grade, and now they are graduating "high" school functionally illiterate, for any other reason, than that YOU have allowed the standard to be lowered.

My family has voted with our feet, and we are costing the local school district thousands of dollars annually, per child. We are also spending an uncomfortable amount of dollars out of our own pockets due to the whacked-out taxation scheme we live under. So that OUR children will be educated...

to a high standard.