Steve MacDonald

I have two sons in high school, 15 and 16 years old.  This week, I received an email from the school, informing me that they were going to be taking a “Youth Risk Behavior” survey, which is a component of the CDC’s “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System” (YRBSS), in conjunction with the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Right out of the gate, I have measurable trepidation about schools (and teachers) and their assumed role as surrogate parents; a role which I do not subscribe to, opting to actually play the role myself. Sadly, many parents don’t feel this way and have subtly and unknowingly abdicated much of their parental duty to the schools and to the ever-encroaching State and Federal governments.  This dovetails with the disturbing trend away from personal responsibility and accountability across much of our current society.

So, you can imagine how I felt after reading the survey, itself.

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Any minute now the left will begin to caterwaul about how unfair it is to not only reward teachers who have more prestigious degrees, but to demand that they have degrees at all.  After all, this kind of wage inequality…

…it could be ‘devastating’ to the (those) who worked hard, but fell short….

OK.  That’s never going to happen, but–all things being equal– it should because those are actually the words (slightly edited for effect) of a professional educator.  A member of the ‘everyone gets a trophy’ club,  David Fabrizio, the principal of Ipswich Middle School in Massachusetts.  Mr. Fabrizio let parents know that the long standing custom of celebrating academic excellence–Honor’s Night–was being cancelled, because “… it could be ‘devastating’ to the students who worked hard, but fell short of the grades.”

Well thanks for that benchmark Mr. Fabrizio. (Though it is hardly the first time we’ve heard this sort of nonsense.)

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