Do Americans still admire excellence?....

[clarice]

Last edited Mon Jan 18, 2016, 02:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Started thinking about this the other day. I heard that some schools were doing away with Magna/Summa cum laude awards.
Why? So those who don't try as hard can be validated? The list can go on...please feel free to add some.

Not keeping score in kids sports

Our obsession with the criminal rather than the law or first responders

Tv shows that promote the drug dealer rather than the DEA men trying to catch them

Disparaging comments about Eagle Scouts ( I know, I know) but half of the negativity seems
to come from those who know in their hearts that they could never cut the mustard to attain
such an award.

NOTE... I am looking for rational, clear thinking responses...not a lot of SNARK.

[Orrex]

1. Please define "excellence"

I heard that some schools were doing away with Magna/Summa cum laude awards.

Which schools, exactly? Citation please!

Not keeping score in intramural sports

Where, exactly? Citation please!

Our obsession with the criminal rather than the law or first responders

That's a judgment call. Further, we have plenty of law enforcement officers willing to demonstrate that their concept of "excellence" boils down to "shoot the black guy and put a gun in his dead hand, then lose the video."

Tv shows that promote the drug dealer rather than the DEA men trying to catch them

How many pro-drug-dealer shows are there? I don't have cable, so I have no idea. However, I seem to recall dozens of pro-police shows, so perhaps my impression is out of date?

Disparaging comments about Eagle Scouts ( I know, I know) but half of the negativity seems
to come from those who know in their hearts that they could never cut the mustard to attain
such an award.

Who is making these comments, and where? Citation please!


It sounds like you're taking a very selective and non-representative sample and projecting your impressions upon society as a whole. Not being snarky, but we need to know where you've set the goalposts and how you've defined them.

[403Forbidden]

2. Except maybe for the Eagle Scouts thing, nothing you mentioned is antithetical to "excellence".

Not keeping score in intramural sports (I never even heard of this as an issue), doesn't necessarily mean the players do not strive for excellence. Simply by performing well, the players can achieve their own group/individual goals.

And criminals also strive for excellence in their chosen profession. Same goes for TV show producers focusing on drug dealers.

[clarice]

11. LOL......I'm not even sure how to respond to that. nt

[403Forbidden]

16. I have a question for you: Why is drug dealing necessarily an attack on "excellence"?

...wouldn't it be logical for a drug dealer to strive for excellence in order to increase profits and escape detention.

[clarice]

17. Perhaps that IS considered excellence on SOME planet. nt

[403Forbidden]

19. There are some very excellent drug dealers doing God's work in Colorado (which is on Earth)...

[img][/img]


"Growing Hope” chronicles the lives of children with intractable epilepsy, following three families from Virginia to Colorado. Their mission is to legalize CBD and THCA oils, compounds that come from the marijuana and hemp plants. The non-psychoactive strain of medicinal marijuana has shown promise in reducing chronic seizures."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/ostrow/2015/05/29/nbc-dateline-on-charlottes-web-medical-marijuana/22562/

[Orrex]

21. Look at them, wrist-deep in Lucifer's Lettuce!

Pray for their souls!

[JHB]

3. Do Tea Partiers bother to spell-check?

Quality just ain't Job 1 for a lot of people.

[clarice]

10. HUH? nt

[RandiFan1290]

20. So obvious

[clarice]

29. Huh?. nt

[FSogol]

4. BTW, Intramural sports are sports played for fun on a club level,

not college sports that are obviously played to win. Who cares if scores are officially kept?

I'm a Proud Eagle Scout and father of 2 Eagle Scout sons.

[Kingofalldems]

5. I think your post is quite snarky.

To answer your question, I have yet to see any of this.

What obsession with the criminal?

What TV shows promote drug dealing?

What disparaging remarks about Eagle Scouts?

Did you make this up?

[EdwardBernays]

6. what does the DEA...

...have to do with "excellence"?

[3catwoman3]

7. Interesting question.

It often seems as if we (not including myself) no longer do. Education and achievement are scoffed at, disparaged, and called elitist. I remember Rick Santorum, himself the possessor of both undergraduate and law degrees, saying, "What a snob," when President Obama supported college education (gotta "love" those RMNJ hypocrites).

The high school our sons attended would have something like 10-12 'valedictorians' every year. It was never quite clear to me why. Surely, by high school, late adolescents/emerging adults have figured out that we are not all the same in terms of our talents, be they intellectual, athletic, musical, artistic, etc.

Should high school just be Pass/Fail? (Bit of snark - apologies.)

[clarice]

9. Thanks for your INTELLIGENT post.....

Not sure that I have an answer to those questions...just throwing it out there.

[clarice]

12. for those who asked...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2428615/Breaking-Bad-good-bad-The-popular-tv-faces-criticism-glorifying-meth.html

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/on-education/2008/10/03/more-high-schools-consider-eliminating-class-rankings

http://www.livingstondaily.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/11/19/police-thankless-jobs/76044798/

[Kingofalldems]

15. Okay--story #1, didn't see any glorification in Breaking Bad.

Story #2 is from 2008.

Story #3 doesn't have anything to do with what you posted. We all know being a cop is tough.

[Orrex]

18. Well...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2428615/Breaking-Bad-good-bad-The-popular-tv-faces-criticism-glorifying-meth.html

If anyone admired Walter White at the end of Breaking Bad, then they were watching a very different show. Hank--the cop--was the most heroic figure in the show.

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/on-education/2008/10/03/more-high-schools-consider-eliminating-class-rankings

The article says "several public schools in Wisconsin." Several? Well, Winconsin apparently has 426 school districts. How many are there nationwide? And the article is concerned about "several public schools in Wisconsin?" I don't see how this qualifies as a worrying trend, and it certainly doesn't help us make generalizations about the state of education as a whole.

http://www.livingstondaily.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/11/19/police-thankless-jobs/76044798/

My impression is that a brighter light has been shone upon police activities that would have been ignored or covered up in decades past. We still admire exemplary police behavior, but we no longer pretend that they're all noble blue protectors who work tirelessly to keep us safe. If anything, our mistrust of the police is proof that we do admire excellence, and we expect our law enforcement officers to act in an excellent manner.

[Bluenorthwest]

28. Breaking Bad is one show gone for 2 years that did not promote drug dealers at all. It's a tragic

tale and a cautionary one with many great bells and whistles over a very classic morality tale, good man does wrong out of a desperation to protect his family and the wrong he does instead destroys his family, his home, his life, and himself.
A person would have to be insane to see a character with cancer making meth in a motor home in the desert to make money to leave his family when he dies as a person to emulate, his life got worse and worse with every episode, his money was nothing but burden and toxin, he drove crap, wore crap and aged so fast people thought the actor was sick.
On top of that, this character never takess a grain of meth himself, he's clean. Those who do use it are seen suffering for it, dying for it, redemption available but costly and dangerous in nature.

Meanwhile, TV shows with police as heroes are as always a leading type, even forgetting the dramas, current comedy Brooklyn 99 is about a precinct of that name and the Mike in 'Mike and Molly' is a cop, his partner cop also a major character. But dramas, you got alphabet CSIs, NCISs, Hawaii 5-O, it just does not end. It's all cops. A few doctors. Occasional detective, some psychic and some not. It has always been thus.

[treestar]

13. Of course

How do your examples contradict that?

Reminiscent of conservatives who lament children being treated kinder than in previous generations.

[clarice]

14. With all respect...this is about philosophy...not politics. nt

[KentuckyWoman]

22. In my humble opinion....... no

Most Americans now would rather have a walk in closet full of cheap crap instead of a few outfits of clothing hand tailored to their measurements. Same with shoes and jewelry and anything else I can think of.

We don't teach penmanship anymore....... being able to read the chicken scratch is "good enough".
We don't spend the extra money on a beautifully hand crafted lamp, or chandelier anymore. Price point is key.

Most people I know don't take very good care of their car or their homes. When the thing starts to get ragged out they just sell it and move on to something newer.

We are getting more casual in our appearance and in our attitudes. We don't sit up straight. We don't tuck in our shirts. We seem to be perfectly satisfied with cheap fast food rather than well cooked home grown meals.

************

I remember how much we hated 'wonder bread' when my mother went to work. She had to. The financial pressures at home demanded she work full time. Eventually out of self defense she started buying us "no iron perma press" and every other mom did the same.

Because of the financial pressures people were looking to get it cheap but still have the quantity of crap blasted at us on the TeeVee. 2 cars and walk in closets. Step by step we've morphed into a society that not only tolerates the mediocre but often turns up our nose at excellence as if it is somehow an insult or injury to everyone else.

Eagle Scouts, students, musicians, workers.... reaching for excellence are often viewed as thinking they are better than their peers.

It's more than just 2 working parents at this point. It's ingrained in society. Unfortunately.

[ripcord]

23. The whole not keeping score thing has always baffled me

If you don't want them to know who won and who lost you should have never taught them to count.

[HughBeaumont]

24. I'm sure lots of Americans admire excellence.

For example, most all of our corporate executives (public and private sector) get cherry salaries, perks and comfy pillow-field exit packages no matter if they do a good or a bad job! Those that do a bad job, well, they simply get punished by being allowed to run for President; or if they're really lucky, go to jail on securities fraud charges, get released early, start a "charity" and somehow be worth even more than when you were indicted in the first place!!

[Odin2005]

25. The US is extremely anti-intellectual and think being more than mediocre is "elitism".

[loyalsister]

26. Athletes, prom homecoming kingsqueens

money, fame, and other superficial forms of status are what excellence means in the USA. It's been that way for a long time.

[clarice]

27. There is nothing superficial about earning a a Magna Cum Laude. nt

[loyalsister]

30. You asked if Americans admire excellence

I pointed out that the meaning and what classifies is no longer academia.