"Everyone gets a trophy" syndrome - where does this idea come from?

Are you sick and tired of seeing everybody get a trophy? Everybody's a winner even though they aren't? Let's just call it a tie, even when one clearly was smarter or faster?

Yesterday, I stated that John Rawls concept of the 'natural lottery' is the biggest thing that got my attention in his writing. This is a close second. Before I proceed here, I need to stipulate that I'm not laying the blame solely at Rawls feet, because I cannot prove that. But what I am doing is saying that the idea is here, in 1971, at least. But hopefully by putting this on the map someone with far greater capability for research can dig out the roots, because the way this is written it appears as if Rawls is referencing others. And unsurprisingly, it comes from academia and progressive professors.

In John Rawls book "A Theory of Justice", on page 276 he writes the following:

As we have seen, it is incorrect to say that just distributive shares reward individuals according to their moral worth. But what we can say is that, in the traditional phrase, a just scheme gives each person his due: that is, it allots to each what he is entitled to as def ined by the scheme itself. The principles of justice for institutions and individuals establish that doing this is fair.

Now it should be noted that even though a person’s claims are regulated by the existing rules, we can still make a distinction between being entitled to something and deserving it in a familiar although nonmoral sense. To illustrate, after a game one often says that the losing side deserved to win. Here one does not mean that the victors are not entitled to claim the championship, or whatever spoils go to the winner. One means instead that the losing team displayed to a higher degree the skills and qualities that the game calls forth, and the exercise of which gives the sport its appeal. Therefore the losers truly deserved to win but lost out as a result of bad luck, or from other contingencies that caused the contest to miscarry. Similarly even the best economic arrangements will not always lead to the more preferred outcomes. The claims that individuals actually acquire inevitably deviate more or less widely from those that the scheme is designed to allow for. Some persons in favored positions, for example, may not have to a higher degree than others the desired qualities and abilities. All this is evident enough. Its bearing here is that although we can indeed distinguish between the claims that existing arrangements require us to honor, given what individuals have done and how things have turned out, and the claims that would have resulted under more ideal circumstances, none of this implies that distributive shares should be in accordance with moral worth. Even when things happen in the best way, there is still no tendency for distribution and virtue to coincide.

Does it really surprise you that the "all are winners" mentality is rooted in wealth redistribution? It shouldn't. The progressives have long known that if they want to wear us down as a people and remove our industriousness, they need to do it at the school level. Wilson said this as plainly and openly as possible.

Again, I hope people won't automatically run around proclaiming this(page 276) the absolute source of the concept, because that is yet to be proven. What is proven, is that this man knew of an idea that he may or may not have seen written from another one of his academic buddies, and wrote it down here in this book.

But in modern America circa 2012, where is this mentality pushed the most? Some may say little leagues, but this is not accurate. Little leagues get it from somewhere else: the schools. Kindergarten all the way up to colleges.(I didn't get this part of Rawls ideals in my college classes, but I was taught Rawls. That's why I read him in the first place)

It's the schools who are throwing red ink overboard because it's too hurtful.

It's the schools who are pushing very hard this whole "self esteem" nonsense.(I found way too many articles to reference just one, sorry)

It was the schools who banned dodgeball.

It's the schools who have gotten rid of A, B, C, D, and F in favor of S, N, and U. In some places, the letter grading system is being scrapped altogether in favor of some weird numbering system. Note why the school system has proposed this: psychological reasons. It's too harsh, like red ink. And note the numbers: 3, 2, 1. But the numbers are not being used how you may think. The school system is teaching that if you're number 1, you're the loser. And if you got the 3, you're the winner.

There's a 3 for being on or above grade level academically, a 2 for being less than a year below grade level and a 1 for being more than a year below grade level.

What might go a long way toward actually diagnosing/curing this problem is recognition that America does not have public schools. These are government schools doing this. Government schools, full of big government nanny state progressives, who are polluting the youth of America with all of this.

What America desperately needs is a separation of schools and state. The colleges formulate these ideals, and 30-40 years later, they're widely implemented and highly destructive.

http://tinyurl.com/7aromy3