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Got an email forwarded from my mother. Synopsis: an econ professor's class insisted socialism works. Professor said, fine, let's try it: your individual grades will be averaged together and you will succeed or fail as a class. First exam, class average B, annoying the A students and pleasing everybody else. Second exam, the A students wanted a free ride too and everybody else was counting on the A students; class average D. Third exam, everybody was pissed off enough at everybody else that nobody was willing to do the work to improve anybody else's grade; class average F. "[T]he professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed."
And I'm reading this and thinking, somebody has thoroughly missed the point.
Do some people deserve to fail at school due to lack of effort? Since 'failing at school' is hard to define as anything other than getting poor grades and/or getting held back due to not knowing what the grade level's supposed to teach, unquestionably.
Should society and/or government keep them from failing? No, because grade inflation and promoting kids who don't pass defeats the purpose of education.
Do some people deserve to fail at life due to lack of effort? Depends how we're defining terms. I figure a good definition is, somebody who doesn't have enough food or doesn't have a home or doesn't have educational opportunities or can't get what health care he needs when he needs it, or who has to work herself to the bone to provide all of those for herself and her family, is failing at life, and everything else is varying degrees of success. Can we agree on that definition?
By that definition, do some people deserve to fail at life due to lack of effort? Unquestionably NOT.
Should society keep them from failing? YES, because that IS the purpose of society.
Analogy fall down go boom; do you want to insert a quarter to play again?
And I'm reading this and thinking, somebody has thoroughly missed the point.
Do some people deserve to fail at school due to lack of effort? Since 'failing at school' is hard to define as anything other than getting poor grades and/or getting held back due to not knowing what the grade level's supposed to teach, unquestionably.
Should society and/or government keep them from failing? No, because grade inflation and promoting kids who don't pass defeats the purpose of education.
Do some people deserve to fail at life due to lack of effort? Depends how we're defining terms. I figure a good definition is, somebody who doesn't have enough food or doesn't have a home or doesn't have educational opportunities or can't get what health care he needs when he needs it, or who has to work herself to the bone to provide all of those for herself and her family, is failing at life, and everything else is varying degrees of success. Can we agree on that definition?
By that definition, do some people deserve to fail at life due to lack of effort? Unquestionably NOT.
Should society keep them from failing? YES, because that IS the purpose of society.
Analogy fall down go boom; do you want to insert a quarter to play again?