By Samantha Mayse
(ma real gooood frennnd)
All of the phenomenon I viewed in the Templeton Press videos are real threats to freedom. The
one I found most interesting and pertinent was the video starring Michael Goodwin on the loss
of the freedom to fail. This trend makes a huge impact on my life, all throughout high school
the goal of teachers was not to make kids work but to get them a passing grade. Now that it has
come time for college these kids are having trouble getting work done and keeping up. This
causes kids to become more stressed and more likely to not succeed. If they were allowed to
screw up in high school and take the consequences it would be much better than allowing them
to fail later on in life and lose money and a job because of it. I cannot imagine having people
actually fail be worse than what is going on now. As a high schooler I made many mistakes and
had to suffer the consequences and because of that I now know what I need to do to succeed.
Many kids are not provided that opportunity, mommy and daddy are always there to bail them
out or fix the problem. Teens and young adults need to learn how to deal with their failures
at a younger age so they are not feeling around in the dark when they graduate high school or
college. If this trend continues to accelerate the whole world will have to be dumbed down and
made easier. It will make it more difficult for bosses and people above those who have not had a
chance to fail. They will have to constantly baby them or fire them. If a person continually gets
fired they will eventually give up, it is much better to teach them these skills now than to expect
them to pick them up as they grow. The problem of not allowing kids to fail is part of a bigger
problem, parents babying their children. Kids that grow up in this situation do not have to get
a job, they do not have to do their own laundry, and everything is done for them. This creates a
larger problem of adults that do not know how to take care of themselves or how the real world
works. These adults will have a hard time finding a job after they graduate college and a hard
time at the job once they acquire it. It is amazing to me how many of my peers did not know how
to do laundry before living in the dorms. Just imagine if kids keep getting babied how bad it will
get, they may not know how to write or read because it has all been done for them.
