Attack of the Baby Boomers!

Before attending her first soccer practice, my daughter Laura, who must have been six or seven at the time, climbed in the back of the van, buckled up, and said, "I wonder what kind of trophy I'll get." Don't blame Anne or me! We didn't teach her that. But that's what her friends and her culture taught her to expect. Her teachers, too. What went wrong?

When I was growing up, I participated in organized sports because I enjoyed the feeling of the summer sun on my back. I loved running across grassy fields. As part of a team, I was given a task, and I wanted to handle that task and succeed because it felt good inside to test my limits and see what I was capable of. In some areas I was greatly successful: with Mr. Toler on the mound during recess in fifth grade, I could smack a softball a mile. With Bobby Joe Harris on the mound in Boys' Club baseball games, throwing a curve ball at twelve years old, however, I struck out every time. In fact, in the course of the season, I struck out 26 times in 30 at bats. There's frustration, and then there's facing reality: this four-eyed phenom was not cut out for baseball. Instead of asking them to pitch slower, I started playing softball. In 1975, I played on a team that travelled to Florida to play in a national tournament. We came in third. I got to play exactly one half of an inning for the duration of the entire tournament in, where else?, right field. No one hit the ball to me, thank God. I must have been an OK player, because I did start some games at second base.

Yes, being successful does wonders for the way you feel about yourself. If you don't have any under-pinnings of self-worth, failure can be devastating. All you have then is your actions and other peoples' reactions. You learn quickly to engage in only those things that carry no risk: of failure, of embarrassment, of ridicule.

Baby Boomers are terrified of failure; so afraid that they created a world for their childen in which failure is impossible. Failure, then, becomes not a learning experience, but a disease to be avoided. If no one is a failure, then everyone is a success, and the concept of success becomes meaningless. Like a soccer trophy. When I was growing up, there were no trophies except for first place, and really, who cared? Well, someone did care, and that bothered the Baby Boomers. First place suggested a hiearchy, and weren't we all about tearing down hierarchies? White over Black, Men over Women? Rich over Poor? In removing the struggle to overcome injustices, we black-balled the notion of struggle. No one should have to struggle. What?

My students today always ask me, "Is this for a grade?" These are some of the saddest words I can think of, and I hear them every day. After eighteen years of teaching at an alternative school, I finally entered the world of the "real" classroom. I learned very quickly that if you didn't put a grade on an assignment, a lot of kids wouldn't do it. These students were unable to make the connection between an education and the rest of their lives. School was an anomaly. The concept of becoming an adult is meaningless. I never would have dreamed of asking my teacher the purpose of an assignment. I assumed they cared about me and my education and were doing their part to make me a better person. I trusted them. Naive? Perhaps.

So, how did we get here? I believe that Baby Boomers, in their compassion for the underdog, the down-trodden, the abused have attempted to create an ethos of benevolence: a feeling that everything will be OK if only we avoid pain and suffering and failure. Everyone and everything is good, and we must resist the urge to stress excellence because not everyone can achieve it.

Some people want to call this ethos " Big Government", but it's much larger than that. And more ephemeral. This is what is so ironic about the movement to eliminate suffering: it weakens us all.

I'm definitely not for a return to "traditional values", an ultimately empty phrase. The Victorian Age has wreaked enough havoc as it is. I'm no reactionary. But a return to, and an examination of "Value" is desperately needed. Read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" if you want to explore this concept further. It should be mandatory in high school. We, as a society, need to examine, debate, refine, and express with utmost clarity what we value in this country. It should start with an overt program-- in schools, on billboards, on stinky ol' TV-- that we value children. Of course it starts in the home, but it does take a village to raise a child.

Can we do this without mentioning God? I don't think so, but that's what the public forum is for.

"Can We Be Good Without God?" was an article in The Atlantic Monthly back in the '90s. It was written by Glenn Tinder, who is a Christian, so obviously, his answer was "No." The magazine really got slammed for publishing the article in the first place. The Church's contention that it holds a higher moral ground is specious, at best. I'm tired of amoral heathens thumping Bibles and wrapping themselves in the flag. They're doing their part to destroy the shreds of decency and morality that still exist in this nation. Which only leads to another problem: how do we re-establish respect for authority? That's a topic for another day. I think I'm rambling now. Perhaps your comments/reactions can lead me to a related topic. Let me know what you think!