Everybody wins?

CP in his latest blog entry writes about coaches who will do anything to take tin, a phenomenon that I have always marveled at. While I can understand O’C’s belief that trophies are useful in convincing administrations to keep the money coming, there is definitely something else afoot among some people that transcends the tin and goes straight to the heart of winning something. I’ve have often talked about the small group of college students who are still trying to win TOC when they should be dating other college students; I am not fond of these children, but at least I understand them. Growing up is a little scary, so the idea that you might be wary of it is, at least, recognizable. But there are (chronological) adults out there with a similar mentality, and they really can’t cash in on the excuse of maintaining a semi-reasonable hold on immaturity.

I wonder if some of this stems from the “self-esteem” boom of the 70s. This was the period when we began to believe that competition was bad and that effort alone was good, and that all effort should be rewarded equally. That’s a tough area, because we do want to educate children to believe that effort, even if it doesn’t win a prize, can be fulfilling. But the solution—to give everyone a prize—was bogus, and deflated the value of prizes, and of competition. There’s nothing wrong with competition per se, but there can be plenty wrong with competition at the expense of virtue. Competition has value, and that value lies in the competing, not only in winning. But that’s a tough lesson to teach, so we came to the conclusion that we shouldn’t have to teach it. This is not far removed from the parents who do not raise their children as parents but as extended friends, incapable of discipline. Children need friends and parents; parents who abdicate their role as the adults in the operation are not doing their kids a service. And teachers who abdicate their role as the adults in the operation are similarly not doing their students a service.

The value of forensics is best seen not in the student who wins all of his or her events, but in the student who learns and grows by simply participating in events. I’ve said this before. It’s no great achievement for a coach to take a natural and have that natural win. It is a great achievement for a coach to take an unnatural and have that unnatural learn some stuff that would have otherwise been unavailable. And that has absolutely nothing to do with trophies. I love to see the Sailors succeed competitively, but that’s not my goal, although it’s a nice plus when it happens. My goal is to develop marginally more ethical people who are capable of having a point of view and expressing it clearly (a very rare skill, believe me, especially if there’s a sense of ethics underlying it). This is a good thing to bring into society. Students who have won a lot of trophies is a relatively neutral thing to bring into society.

If you’re a coach, and you don’t see it that way, or you act in such a fashion that I can’t tell you see it that way, then I just don’t understand you.