To Be PC or Not To Be PC...

That is the question. Thursday on The View (my only morning show), there was a fellow on by the name of Michael Smerconish who wrote a book called Muzzled: From T-Ball to Terrorism – True Stories that Should be Fiction, discussing how politically correct our society has become to a fault. It was a very interesting discussion. Some of it agreed with and some of it I did not. He does think there should be racial profiling, which honestly, I'm not completly sold on, as some of the terrorists that are out there are not Muslim, and really, not all Muslim people "look" Middle Eastern. There are people from many different cultures that are Muslim and would not fit the profile that the government is trying to screen for. However he did mention an interesting story that did make me think, that there were some passengers either getting ready to board a plane or they were already on it waiting to take off (I don't remember which one) and one of the passengers was acting peculiar. It was not described what acting peculiar encompassed but because this passenger "looked" Middle Eastern, the other passengers were wary to report his behaviour to the crew because they did not want to be called racist, and they themselves questioned whether they were in fact being rasict in that situation. I guess the odd behaviour continued and they trusted their gut feeling, reported the passenger and he was in fact planning on hijacking that plane. So maybe there is something to this racial profiling, but then again, they didn't catch that guy so really is there a no-fail method of protecting civilians?

One point that Michael Smerconish raised that I completly agree with is how rewarding we've become with children, especially in schools and the removal of competetion. I don't know how many of you have been to a sports day recently in elementary schools but they are a joke. There are no sports and everyone receives a prize just for showing up. When I was growing up there were running races, long jumps, shot put, obstacle courses and a lot of team races. It was about getting your team to wim but it was still about having fun and doing your best. I hardly ever won, I am not an athletic person, but I still loved sports day because it was so much fun (and you didn't go school work for the whole day). Nowadays there's a bubble blowing station, a jump rope until the music ends station and obstacle courses that are not timed or raced against and at the completion of each station you got some candy. Big whoopdidoo. There is nothing wrong with (healthy) competetion. There is nothing wrong with having winners and having losers. It is imparative that children learn you are not always the best at everything. That you need to learn how to work hard, that you learn to work towards a goal and that sometimes you're just not the best. It may sound harsh but how overwhelming is it going to be for them when they grow up and get out there in the real world and have their first job?! There is competetion for promotions, you have to learn how to work hard to get what you want like saving money to buy a house or a car. If they have a hissy fit in their office because they're not getting hat they want, guarenteed they will be looking for a new job pretty quickly. Disappointment teaches true happiness. If a child doesn't do well in math and receives a bad mark and learns how to study and work hard to understand the concepts, when they receive that better mark, they will feel so much pride in themselves and guarenteed will want to try to have that feeling much more often. But if we just tell all of our kids that they're doing great what will they really have learned? Nothing will ever be good enough and they will never feel satisfaction? And I think that's the real disservice.