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Rigorous

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Rigorous or nurturing schools? The idea of going to a good school and getting a great education is romantic. Most families are enamored of the idea of their children getting a good education and many pay large sums of money for the diploma. Few families love their children enough to allow them to struggle. Yes, struggle, a core course in the curriculum of a great education. Instead, they are lauded with accolades of their inherent value and psalms of their intellectual stature; irreverent of the truth and completely intolerant of any challenge to the ideal of the child's goodness. Heaven help the teacher that dares to hold their students to any standard, much less a standard of excellence.

For the most part, the educational establishment has also embraced this lunacy of hugs over homework, providing graduation ceremonies, including tassels and mortarboards for "graduating" from Kindergarten. The nurture crowd says, "Every child needs a certificate of accomplishment", irreverent of whether the teacher received a single passing assignment all year. We cannot have anyone feeling left out. They need more nurturing not struggling and heaven forbid anyone be expected to dare true accomplishment, that would risk failure and that would shatter our dream, that might make another student feel bad. Not to worry, the administration is regularly there to keep the teachers in line with the parent's wishes to protect the students self image of greatness.

Is it any wonder why our public schools fail to produce students that can pass a standardized test. Strange, SAT scores have dropped year after year, despite more federal regulation and federal money. Our certified teachers have trouble passing basic skills tests to graduate from college with Bachelors in Education. Thankfully, home school and private school teachers are not yet required to become "certified." Is it any wonder this type of indulgence has resulted in our children growing up to be the uneducated teachers we complain about teaching in our schools? Is it any wonder that our "teachers" are no more mature than their students are. Why a sudden increase in the number of teachers charged with having indecent relationships with their students? After all, they are the same age emotionally and they know they deserve to be happy.

But, what is on the other side of the coin? The very things we claim for our children and fail to give them, firstly, accomplishment. How can anyone have genuine self-esteem unless they accomplish

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