The Fox & the Grapes
A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox’s mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
“What a fool I am,” he said. “Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for.”
And off he walked very, very scornfully.
There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
My dearest Shosh and Jaialai:
Times are tough. I get it. They’re tough for everyone.
The measure of a man is what he does during times of adversity. Lesser men wilt. They give up. They give in to weaker impulses, blame others, then lie to themselves to make themselves feel better. Yes, they are not unlike the fox who told himself the grapes he could not reach were sour and beneath his taste.
You have to but open the newspapers to see reports of such low-grade men, pretending to be their better . They are easy to spot. They are the ones making excuses for their failures or worse — casting aspersion on others and redefining their failures as successes. Weak and incompetent people always make excuses, blame others for their failings, and shifting the burden of leadership unto others, while competent people of strength and caliber say, “The buck stops here.” Yes, weak men are not unlike the fox telling himself the grapes are beneath him. Some will be fooled by that, but not everyone … not those of quality and worth.
If you think only those of low caliber resort to such self-deception, you’d be wrong. For example, Fairfax County School District is among a growing number of school districts nationwide which has adopted a “no-zero” policy where students cannot be failed for having made a “reasonable attempt.”
School districts in the Washington area and across the country are adopting grading practices that make it more difficult for students to flunk classes, that give students opportunities to retake exams or turn in late work, and that discourage or prohibit teachers from giving out zeroes.
The policies have stirred debates about the purpose of issuing academic grades and whether they should be used to punish, motivate or purely represent what students have learned in class. Some regard it as the latest in a line of ideas intended to keep students progressing through school and heading toward graduation, akin in some ways to practices like social promotion.
Under a new policy in Virginia’s Fairfax County, one of the nation’s largest school systems, middle and high school students can earn no lower than a score of 50 if they make a “reasonable attempt” to complete work. And for the first time this year, high school teachers who were going to fail a student had to reevaluate the student using “quality points,” making an F less detrimental to a student’s final grade. Prince George’s County in Maryland will limit failing grades to a 50 percent minimum score when students show a “good-faith effort.”
Proponents of the changes say the new grading systems are more fair and end up being more conducive to learning, encouraging students to catch up when they fall behind rather than just giving up. Many believe that giving a student a score of zero for an F — rather than, say, a score of 50 — on even just one bad assignment can doom students because climbing back to a passing grade can seem almost mathematically impossible. And such failures can put students on a path to dropping out before graduation.
But many are critical of the shift, arguing that teachers are losing important tools to enforce diligence and prepare students for college and the workplace. They say that artificially boosting student grades can mask failure and push students through who don’t know the material they need to know to actually succeed….
Many school systems also are moving toward “standards-based grading,” which emphasizes evaluating students on what they ultimately learn rather than on work habits, student effort, punctuality or homework.
The philosophy has driven Fairfax County to allow students to turn in work late and to retake major exams if they score below 80 percent; the county also limits homework to 10 percent of a student’s grade. Prince George’s officials will not allow behavior or attendance as factors in academic grades and will give students a second chance to improve their score on certain tests or assignments….
Theresa Mitchell Dudley, president of the Prince George’s County Educators’ Association, said that 42 to 69 percent of high school teachers who responded to a recent survey voiced concerns about some of the key recommended changes.
“We have no problem being fair to students,” she said. “But if they are not doing the work and not performing, and we give them a grade they did not earn, how does that make them college and career ready?” ….
“You can’t go to an employer and say, ‘Here’s my work, it’s two weeks late,’ and expect that your boss is not going to fire you,” she said.
You should know, Fairfax is the third wealthiest county in the U.S., with a median household income of $112,844. https://www.forbes.com/pictures/5963ed594bbe6f269f7f2e9d/3-fairfax-county-va-media/#4e7918734606. These are not children of want.
The sad thing is we are teaching generations of children not to try. By giving everyone a trophy just for showing up, we are taking away opportunities for them to learn grit and the value of hard work.
As the line goes in The Incredibles,
If we give everyone a trophy or gold star just for showing up, then those trophies and gold stars will be rendered worthless. My trophy is no longer special if everyone else has one just like it for no more than showing up.
We mask our failing our students with excuses like “self-esteem” and other nice sounding words. But imagine how much self-esteem those children will have when they get older and cannot hold good jobs for want to grit, perseverance, determination, etc. In life, you do not get a trophy or a gold star just for showing up: you must successfully complete the work in time and in a condition acceptable to the organization. If not, you’d get fired.
By not preparing our children to succeed in life, by permitting them to give in to their weaker impulses of not trying their best, we condemn them to a life of failure, of servitude. This is particularly insidious as the world heads into the Age of AI, where machines take on greater shares of human toil. In other words, we are sending children into the world as faceless undifferentiated low-skilled and low-educated labor pool. To send our children into life without sufficient preparation is worst than sending our healthcare workers into battles without the necessary personal protective equipment because the latter is limited to one event in life whereas the former is for all events in life. Even lions train their cubs for successful hunts so they cubs wouldn’t starve when they are older and must hunt on their own. Are we no better?
In life, the only failure is in giving up without trying your best. Failure is in yielding to your weaker impulses and your desire for convenience and expediency. Don’t be like that.
Grit. Get some.
All my love, always and forever,
Dad
P.S., One of my favorite books was All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum. To a large degree, I concur with him. Most of what we need to learn, we were taught as children. It would do you well to revisit those lessons and those stories of old — such as the story of the fox and the grapes, or the ant and the grasshopper.
shoshandjaialai 