David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Feb. 3, 2004

Is achievement permitted these days?

"Dear teacher: Please feel free to praise my child's scholastic effort if you think it merits consideration, including honor rolls, public display in the school hallways or perhaps even a gold star on her paper. Furthermore, I promise not to file a legal claim against the county board of education or you personally if my child's grades do not warrant inclusion on your honor roll. My attorney will be in touch with your attorney so that we may draft an in-depth contract to formalize this non-binding agreement. Thanks, Dave Spates."

When my kids go to school in a few years, I suspect I'll have to pin copies of this note to their sleeves. Along with advice on bartering away fruit cups for potato chips, avoiding the seat with the wheel-well hump on the school bus and mastering the finer points of dodgeball, I'll also have to give my kids permission to excel academically.

Welcome to the softening of America, where everyone is terribly concerned with everyone else's feelings. It's an America where kids aren't allowed to keep score on the baseball diamond because the losers might feel bad. Boo hoo. It's an America where parents file lawsuits because their kid got into a playground shoving match. Please. It's an America where, as we learned last week, the honor roll has become a source of embarrassment for some underachieving children. Good grief.

You may have read that upon the advice of school lawyers, all Nashville schools have stopped posting honor rolls. Some folks there are even considering a ban on hanging good work in the hallways. It seems a few parents complained that their children might be ridiculed for not making the honor roll, so in typical knee-jerk bureaucratic fashion, the school system caved.

Admittedly, the complainers have the law on their side. You can't release academic information without permission, whether the student is a third-grader with straight A's, a high school freshman sitting high atop the apex of the bell curve, or a college junior who's one toga party away from double-secret probation.

It's a good law, but as with many good laws, a lack of common sense has driven a stake through its heart. The law is intended to prevent me from seeing your kid's grades -- it's none of my business, and nothing positive would come from me knowing how well your little angel did in geometry. But the legal nitpickers have gone overboard and are taking themselves way too seriously. The law was never intended to remove honor rolls from the school bulletin board or the inside pages of the local newspaper. The Chronicle has been publishing honor roll names for ages.

In fact, it's a Tennessee-only quirk. According to an Associated Press story, other states follow federal student privacy guidelines, which allow the release of such things as honor rolls.

I can only imagine what goofiness will abound by the time my kids go to school.

Kids are embarrassed about not being on the honor roll? Give me a big fat break. The honor rolls are not designed to mock those who aren't on it. They're designed, as anyone with a modicum of common sense knows, to congratulate students who do well. It's nothing more than a pat on the head -- a "good job!" That's all it is. It's a little six-week trophy.

But some folks don't like awards, not because some kids get them but because all kids don't. "It's not fair!" they say. Now I ask you, what's unfair about rewarding achievement? If you reward everyone, what's the point?

When I was 10 or 11, I was on a really bad soccer team. We stunk out loud. I don't think we won a game, but at the end of the season the parents treated us to a pizza party during which we all got a marble-and-plastic trophy. I know the parents had good intentions in buying the trophies, but come on. Some of my teammates were beaming with pride. I just sat there behind a pile of pizza crusts and rolled my eyes. If we had played really well and performed beyond anyone's expectations, I'd probably still have that trophy to this day. But we didn't. We were terrible, and we got a trophy anyway. Rah, rah. I think I left mine out in the rain.

The point is that learning how to lose is just as important as learning how to win, perhaps more so. When we achieve, we should be praised. When we don't, we need to learn from our mistakes and try harder next time.

"Dear teacher: This is an addendum to my previous correspondence. If my child makes the honor roll, please submit her name to the local newspaper. If she makes the dodgeball team, however, please submit her name to ESPN. The world has a right to know. Thanks."

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.