The Incredibles has spurred discussion on the notion that every child is special. From When Every Child Is Good Enough:
Competition has long been out of fashion at education schools, as indicated in a 1997 survey of 900 of their professors by Public Agenda, a nonprofit public opinion research group. Only a third of the professors considered rewards like honor rolls to be valuable incentives for learning, while nearly two-thirds said schools should avoid competition.To some critics, that cooperative philosophy is one reason that so many boys like Dash are bored at school. “Professors of education think you can improve society by making people less competitive,” said Christina Hoff Sommers, author of “The War Against Boys” and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “But males are wired for competition, and if you take it away there’s little to interest them in school.”
In his new book, “Hard America, Soft America,” Michael Barone puts schools in the soft category and warns that they leave young adults unprepared for the hard world awaiting them in the workplace. “The education establishment has been too concerned with fostering kids’ self-esteem instead of teaching them to learn and compete,” he said.
The No Child Left Behind Act was an attempt to put more rigor into the system by punishing schools whose students don’t pass standardized tests, but it has had unintended consequences for high achievers. Administrators have been cutting funds for gifted-student programs and concentrating money and attention on the failing students.
“In practice, No Child Left Behind has meant No Child Gets Ahead for gifted students,” said Joyce Clark, a planner in the Pittsburgh public schools’ gifted program. “There’s no incentive to worry about them because they can pass the tests.”
“The Incredibles” might take comfort from a recent report, “A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students,” by the John Templeton Foundation. It summarizes research showing that gifted children thrive with more advanced material and describes their current frustration in prose that sounds like Dash: “When they want to fly, they are told to stay in their seats. Stay in your grade. Know your place. It’s a national scandal.”
But if they do fly, what happens to the children left on the ground? One of the report’s authors, Nicholas Colangelo, a professor at the University of Iowa who is an expert in gifted education, pointed to research indicating the left-behind do not suffer academically or emotionally.
Brad Bird wisdom:
“Wrong-headed liberalism seeks to give trophies to everyone just for existing,” he said. “It seems to render achievement meaningless. That’s a weird goal.”He sounded very much like Professor Colangelo, who says that children want to compete and can cope with defeat a lot better than adults imagine. “Life hurts your feelings,” Mr. Bird said. “I think people whine about stuff too much. C’mon, man, just get up and do it.”