HS Commencment speech " You are not special"

[reinko]

Learning HOW to lose gracefully may be one the greatest lessons you can teach young people.

[mu-rara]

For me, learning should be the primary goal until about 13-14, and maybe until the varsity HS level.

I don't know if it is really important to win before that. Learn the game. Learn to play hard. Learn to compete. Learn to get better. Have confidence that you can get better.  

Winning and losing isn't that important, in my opinion. I know we all thought it was, but looking back, it wasn't.

I've been coached by some guys who were really into winning, and I learned the least from them. On the other hand, I've had some wonderful coaches who taught me the value to competition and working hard. They didn't talk much about standings.

I agree 02.  13-14 would be even better.   In a world where you've got raving maniac parents screaming at their 2nd grade kids at YMCA basketball on Saturday morning and screaming even louder at the 15 year old referee,  I am hoping for 10-11 years old.

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

I agree 02.  13-14 would be even better.   In worls where you've got raving maniac parents screaming at their 2nd grade kids at YMCA basketball on Saturday morning and screaming even louder at the 15 year old referee,  I am hoping for 10-11 years old.

You're right. In a perfect world, you wouldn't really see "sports leagues", but rather more "sports clinics" or something similar.

More focus on teaching and technique rather than wins and losses.

At 12 years old, it's great to go undefeated, but if you didn't get better that season, it's really a waste. 

[Pakuni]

The U5 soccer team I coached this year went undefeated.
Taste it, Sir Alex.

[RawdogDX]

I thought it was an excellent speech.  My generation of parents (those with kids graduating high school in the last 5-10 years or later) have done a miserable job raising their children.  We are churning out entitled, spoiled little stinkers who have had their lives micro-managed and every little thing handled for them, rendering them incapable of dealing with failure.  It is not their fault.  Our generation for some strange reason has decided that our precious little angels are perfect and have to be protected from unfairness (perceived or otherwise) from those who don't completely comprehend their wonderfulness.  Kids don't learn life lessons like getting bad grades means you have to work harder, or being cut or benched means you have to work harder, or wanting something means you need to work for it.  They expect everything to be given to them and that's because basically everything is.  

How is this for a theory?  The fact that women work really screws things up.  Once women started working, the work force looking for jobs probably grew by 1/3 or something.  So there are less jobs to go around.  Unfortunately, except for jobs requiring heavy physical labor (or math related stuff or anything requiring logic or reason) women are just as good as men and are willing to work for less (if they are married and only harassed by the attractive men), which in turn creates the current scarcity of jobs.  Plus even the hard physical labor jobs they can get because they can sue and say it’s discriminatory to have jobs they can’t do.  (We also have too many lawyers, but that’s another discussion)  So now kids are unsupervised or raised by caregivers who just want to make the kid happy, and parents with two incomes, who feel guilty about not spending enough time with them, buy them stuff to compensate because they have some money but not much time, which turns the kids into entitled little jerks who learn to expect something for nothing.  

Not only that, but I sometimes have to wait over an hour after I get home for dinner or sometimes I have to take them out or get take out.  What’s up with that?

Sarcasm?  Or are you really this much of a tool?
1) Generic "kids these days are terrible!".  You don't think your parents said that about you, that their parents didn't say that about them? 
2) the women who are joining the work place are better employees then average man (because a lower percentage of them are joining, they get better grades, are more likely to get degrees) so our country's economy bennifits.
3) I would love to be a stay at home dad.  What is wrong with that?

[RawdogDX]

Learning HOW to lose gracefully may be one the greatest lessons you can teach young people.

That lesson would have been wasted on this guy! 

[Benny B]

Sarcasm?  Or are you really this much of a tool?
1) Generic "kids these days are terrible!".  You don't think your parents said that about you, that their parents didn't say that about them?  

Not exactly true... while kids today may be terrible, we're not blaming the kids anymore.  This is more of Gen X telling the immediate generation of parents before them that they're terrible parents.

EDIT: (When I say "immediate generation before", I mean late Gen X'ers telling earlier Gen X'ers, not Gen X telling the baby boomers... they'll get their talking-to when social security blows up.)

[CTWarrior]

Sarcasm?  Or are you really this much of a tool?
1) Generic "kids these days are terrible!".  You don't think your parents said that about you, that their parents didn't say that about them?  
2) the women who are joining the work place are better employees then average man (because a lower percentage of them are joining, they get better grades, are more likely to get degrees) so our country's economy bennifits.
3) I would love to be a stay at home dad.  What is wrong with that?

1.  Unlike past generations who complain about the following generation, I was making a point not about the next generation, but about the way MY generation is dropping the ball as parents.  My wife is a speech therapist in the school system and I have been a year round youth coach (my son is off to college in the fall so I am involved with my last team this spring) in several sports for 25-30 years so I have experience in this area and to say that parents are WAY more involved in their kids lives than our parents were is an understatement, pretty much always to the kid's detriment.  
2.  I would have thought that the part about me having to wait an hour for dinner might have given the part about women working away as the joke it was meant to be.  
3.  Nothing, please do (I get the feeling I'd hate to have you around in my office) and by all means continue to share your humorless insights with us on message boards.

[wildbillsb]

For me, learning should be the primary goal until about 13-14, and maybe until the varsity HS level.

I don't know if it is really important to win before that. Learn the game. Learn to play hard. Learn to compete. Learn to get better. Have confidence that you can get better. 

Winning and losing isn't that important, in my opinion. I know we all thought it was, but looking back, it wasn't.

I've been coached by some guys who were really into winning, and I learned the least from them. On the other hand, I've had some wonderful coaches who taught me the value to competition and working hard. They didn't talk much about standings.

And then to help the thread get us a little closer to home and heart, we can re-read these comments:

http://www.brewcityball.com/forums/content.php?275