Lowest common denominator or challenge to be the best?

Yesterday I had one of those flights that you want to go on forever, you get someone in the seat next to you that you just want to chat to for the next few hours. Unfortunately for me this was a 50min hop from Brussels to London as I made my way back to Cape Town.

The topic of discussion was excellence vs mediocrity at schools in the UK. The person I sat next to was saying that at Sports Days in UK schools there are no longer any winners but instead everyone gets a medal for participating. Seriously!! It seems that it is stretching beyond the school field too. So the discussion revolved around reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator vs supporting our children to aim to be the best and it was deeply concerning.

As a parent I want my son to have the best and work hard for it. As an adult I am acutely aware that the general rule of thumb is effort in, results out i.e. if you work hard you should in theory be a success and reap the associated rewards at everything you do. I learned this at school. While during sports days the other kids had had a shower by the time I finished a 100m running race when it came to the swimming pool it was a role reversal as I loved swimming and grafted hard at it. So I learned that effort = rewards, that you cannot be No1 in everything, failure is a fact of life and how you deal with it makes you stronger.

So by hearing that there can no longer be any winners and that everyone has to be a winner so we don't harm a childs self worth is alarming to me. It also seems that the shrinks have taken over schools.

The question for me as a parent and adult is this. What do I want the 25 year old version of my 6 month old son to look like and become? Its a deep question and almost hypothetical question as anything is possible. However I, along with my wife of course, can right now build serious foundations that will stand him in good stead. For me, through our actions we have to teach him the effort in = results out equation without any doubt. If mummy trains hard, eats right, and sacrifices she can run Comrades marathon and win medals at the Masters Nationals Swimming Championships each year. Daddy by working hard, giving his all, sacrificing his own time can have a successful career and be a winner there i.e. if you apply yourself you can achieve. Through this of course will come failures and a second equation comes into play; failures = failure if not reacted to correctly i.e. you will fail, accept it, but deal with it and turn it into a success.

So the real question is "are we doing more harm that good by bringing everyone down to one level rather than showing all that there are winners and loosers in life but the only loosers are those who don't learn why they lost and react to it correctly?" Deep I know but I prefer the second part.