Today's Youth: A Generation of Blue Ribbon Winners

Recently I have been noticing a disturbing trend in today's young people. Both as a parent and as a supervisor of young people I began notice that society is raising is a generation of blue ribbon winners. By that I mean that young people get far too much credit for what they do or do not accomplish.

A few months ago my 7 year daughter played soccer. At the end of the season every child from every team received the small medal. That includes the supposed winning team for the season. Now I understand that my daughter is only 7 but at what age do we start teaching children about winning and losing? If every child receives the same award then the winners can't really feel like winners can they? Also, the losers feel as though they accomplished something that in reality they did not. This may sound harsh to some but it is a fact of life that not every one will be on top. If we as a society do not teach children at an early age that there is a distinct difference between winning and losing we run the risk of a having a generation of young adults that will not try to excel at anything. This leads into my next point. I have been in the Army going on 10 years and for the last 7 of them I have been in a supervisory position over the youth of America.

It is these young men and women that really drove me to write this article. I have, over the years, heard all species of excuses as to why something cannot be accomplished. It could range from the simple task of arriving to work on time to successfully completing physical training. Supervising these young people has not been my only experience with them. I also had the fortune or misfortune to be a recruiter for the Army. During my time on recruiting duty I got an up close and personal look at the lives of the Blue Ribbon generation. With a few exceptions I found that today's young adults have been coddled into a false sense of security. No where was this more apparent then in high school seniors and college graduates. High school seniors generally fall into two categories. Either they "know" that they are going to college because mommy and daddy will make it happen or they expect to receive every once of financial aid available in the known universe. Attempting to explain to these young people that life is not all check books and credit cards is the equivalent of bashing your head against a wall. College graduates operate in a similar manner in that instead of continuing with their education they are convinced that perfect job is waiting with open arms. One example comes to mind.

I will call this young man Joe. Joe graduated from a fairly well known liberal arts college in Boston with a degree in photo journalism. During my first meeting with Joe he told me that he planned to be a war correspondent for a newspaper or magazine. When I asked Joe what plan he had to make this happen he told me that he did not have one. Now keeping in mind that I was a recruiter I began to tell this young man the Army story and how we could make his end goal a reality in less than 2 years. His first response was that he didn't need the Army because it would just happen on its own. I worked with Joe for 4 months before the reality of life without work and the prospect of work set in. Joe told me that the reason that he resisted for so long was because all his life he was told that he wanted in life would come to him. The fact that he had to work had to get it was conviently left out. Joe eventually enlisted as a Combat Documentation Specialist aka War Correspondent. Joe was a success story. Unfortunately there were far more that did not realize the truth until later in life. Of course because of the over whelming number of soldiers that have been coddled prior enlistment the Army has softened Basic Combat Training. Now I know that the soldiers from generations before mime say that the training that I went through was soft. I admit that what I experienced was not what my grandfather went through today's soldiers are simply prepared for failure.

Now my generation and those before me have been handed the undesirable task of teaching today's young adults that they all do not deserve a Blue Ribbon for simply showing up. It is not a task they we may necessarily want but it is one that must be done. I challenge all parents and those who supervise to tell it straight. There is of course the after math of doing so. If you are willing to tell these young men and women that they are not good enough for everything you must also prepared to show and tell them how they can accomplish what it is they were promised all their lives.