CHARACTER IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HIGH GRADES

CHARACTER IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HIGH GRADES

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

Americans are losing the understanding of which priorities are important to their children and them. In this new millennium we have become obsessed with material wealth. The “its all about money era” has led us down the path of devaluating the importance of man’s character.

As long as you have money, regardless of how you attained it, you are a person to be admired. The pathetic, addicted Hollywood celebrities, crooked politicians and corporate CEOs have become the people we admire in our upside down culture. Our past national heroes and the unsung heroes in our lives living a good moral existence are ridiculed as uncool and boring. Morality has lost its importance.

Modern parents do not want their child to be morally corrupt but they will overlook lying, stealing and cheating as long as the child receives high grades in school. They believe high grades lead to a good university slot that means a BA, MA or PhD, which will guarantee their child a prosperous and happy life.

The over looking of moral transgressions at home and at school, as long as the bright child is receiving high grades, is foolish and short sighted. When children use lying and cheating to make good grades they may gain an advanced degree in their future but it forecasts trouble. It does not guarantee a healthy or worthwhile life.

Americans have been sold a ridiculous bill of goods about “intelligence.” The smarter your child is the more rosy her future. Modern parents focus on cognitive development and put character development at the bottom of the list of importance.

From birth there are educational toys hanging from the crib. Educational infant videos and programs play on the television screen and parents play teacher with colors, shapes, numbers and letters. At the same time they ignore outrageous, out-of-control behavior missing the importance of training a child to be an honorable human being.

When the child comes home from school with a note that he lied, stole or cheated, the parent’s first concern is whether it is going to affect his grades instead of being upset with his immoral behavior. Modern parents are blind to the significant negative impact of establishing immoral habits in their child’s future. The long-term effect of not following the 10 Commandments is being relegated to a non-issue although it means an under developed conscience that will lead the child astray.

High grades and degrees may give a person more options and a higher level of entry into the workforce but it does nothing to guide him in making good decisions in his life. Regardless of the grades or degrees a young person has obtained, misconduct can stain his reputation and label him for life.

Modern parents are often delusional about how much power they have to protect their child. When a child reaches 18 years old his behavior is no longer the responsibility of the parents. The young adults become accountable for their behavior.

Modern parents need to reevaluate the amount of importance they are placing on their child’s academics. Plagiarizing at college, the use of addictive substances, stealing or lying to authorities can result in criminal charges for college students even from the most powerful families. Even if a person is able to avoid detection by authorities immoral behavior in personal relationships with a spouse, children or co-workers frequently leads to personal tragedies, mental instabilities and mental illness.

Moral education in the long run pays greater dividends than the ability to impress how smart a person is or his ability to achieve in an ivy tower environment. A person of good character is dependable and trustworthy even when no one is looking over his shoulder.

Parent’s insistence on their child doing what is right is the most important gift they can provide for him. A child with a highly developed conscience places him on automatic pilot to be shielded from people going down a spiritually destructive path. When a person is doing right he has less time to do what is wrong.

The guidance system of good character training is a parental legacy. Their offspring will acknowledge this legacy with gratitude as they experience the pressures of evil they face directly in the adult world. There is nothing more gratifying than living a spiritually, solid, balanced and healthy life.

A child with strong moral character has a better chance of negotiating the immense number of temptations he will have throughout his lifetime. Morals inoculate a person against evil forces. Without a strong moral compass many people make horrible choices that bring shame and harm to themselves and others.

You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.com.

Laziness Has Lost Its Stigma

LAZINESS HAS LOST ITS STIGMA

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD Traditional Realist

The American people have remained silent while laziness has taken firm root in our society. This acceptance of laziness is contrary to the established "American Dream." Our citizens are given an opportunity to reach their goals through diligent effort, not by being lazy and demanding entitlements. We Americans have worked our way up the ladder saving a significant portion of our wages for investment in our own future.

Laziness is permeating the American way. Citizens of the USA are becoming numb to half-hearted efforts by our children, public servants and even small business people. We have lowered our standards of what makes an honest effort. Whenever a person says he is going to do something in a specific time period and fails to do it, too many of us are neglecting our duty by looking the other way. Many of us are learning to use a pathetic excuse to weasel out of these commitments with few or no consequences.

The epidemic of laziness has to have an enabler. In the early years it is usually the modern parent. The child who receives poor grades because he has not tried is told to try harder next time even though the parents know their child could easily do the assignments. Instead of getting on the child to finish his meager responsibilities at home and at school the parent's laziness passes the buck onto the spouse or the teacher. The lack of a challenging assignment by the teacher is called into question, not the child's irresponsibility to get their work in on time.

Laziness is a form of lying to oneself and others. “I’ll do it later” turns into “I had no time to do it.” Procrastinating is waiting until the last minute and usually rushing to get it done often in a shoddy way. The person who waits until the last minute is either overextended or does not take his commitments seriously.

Parents are not the only ones lowering their expectations of reasonable effort. The American consumer is doing the same. The waiter who does not bring the correct order or is lackadaisical in getting the food on the table in a timely manner receives the full tip without hearing any criticism. “Customer service” is a concept of the past or better put, an oxymoron.

Government workers on the local, state and federal levels feel they are entitled to more pay, more status and more benefits then their private sector counterparts performing the same job. Our public servants refuse to take a reasonable reduction in astronomical benefit packages or refuse to reduce their workforce through attrition to balance state and local budgets. They threaten to strike with other union allies to frighten older dependent citizens into submitting to unfair demands.

Just a decade ago it would be hard to imagine self-employed workers acting arrogantly enough not to do everything necessary to nail down a job. Even during this "Great Recession"' most often the American worker does not call back about a potential job or show up after making an appointment to give an estimate for a service. The work ethic of many small businessmen has gone from go-getter to "I'll do you a favor by doing the job at an exorbitant wage."

All of us, especially parents, need to start forcefully showing our children that laziness will no longer be a valid excuse for failing to get the job done. Parents should provide sufficient negative consequences to their children to improve their effort in school, sports, work or any other endeavor. They should support their children's teachers not undercut their authority. Parents should support each other increasing expectations for their children instead of putting down the parent who sets high standards by saying "you are too hard on your kids." They should stress that success comes through hard-nosed perseverance.

We must start with our children and expand to the general public. We need to show our children that a poor effort by a hired worker or anyone will not be tolerated. Our vigilance as buyers and employers is important in conveying the message to our children that laziness is not an acceptable behavior. We need to raise the bar of doing a conscientious job on every level of society.

Customers should tell any worker who does not fulfill his expectations exactly how his performance is inadequate. It is important to the delinquent workers to be put on notice to give them an opportunity to learn a lesson and get back on the right track.

Laziness must have a severe stigma attached on all levels of society or it will destroy both our economy and society from within. We will all suffer the consequences of a world where we pay for and expect one thing and get disappointed and frustrated by receiving terrible service and inferior goods.

Our nation will rise or fall on the contributions of all of us. When too many people are parasites, taking and not giving, we will cease to exist as a prosperous, viable nation. Only when the vast majority of us start punishing the lazy thus incentivizing them to become significant doers will we flourish.

You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.com.

Know It All Epidemic is Bringing Down SAT Scores

KNOW IT ALL EPIDEMIC IS BRINGING DOWN SAT SCORES

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

Grandparents and most parents are amazed at how smart the younger generation is compared to them. These people say when they were that age they did not know how to use all the electronic gizmos and computers like today’s children. The older generation fails to realize there were minimal to no computerized items. Probably they would be as adept at them as are modern children if they had had the electronics.

Today’s children live in a world where their parents, teachers and other adults have been indoctrinated by child rearing experts and psychologists to rave about any actions of a child that do not maim others or destroy things. Praise is supposed to be the ultimate elixir for the child’s overall development and wellbeing in our politically correct culture.

According to experts, positive reinforcement will insure a happy, healthy and successful person. As long as a child has high self-esteem, it is said she will automatically blossom into an invincible, brilliant human specimen.

The high self esteem movement has worked although not in the way these professionals thought it would. Instead of being beneficial across the board, it has produced an epidemic of KIAD, the Know It All Disease.

This disease is preventing the brains of our children from absorbing new information starting in elementary school. People of any age who believe they know everything have a hard time focusing on information that may challenge them. Whenever their skill and knowledge areas are pointed out to be weak or outright wrong, they arrogantly get huffy and shut down. Since our culture has practically banned honesty in evaluating youngsters in school and sports it is understandable why minors would be shocked by low test scores.

The 2011 SAT, shows reading and writing test scores for college bound seniors were the lowest ever recorded even though many experts complained the test questions were made easier when the test was changed to a three section format in 2005. Only 43% of student scores were high enough to succeed in college. Combine this with almost as many students failing than passing the Advanced Placement tests and the National Assessment of Education Progress results, which demonstrate American students are doing poorly as compared to other nations. There is a significant failure in our government schools.

Predictably education experts who have a vested interest in public education attempt to excuse the SAT results. They talk about the expanded pool of test takers from Black and Hispanic minorities as the reason for these low scores. They ignore the fact that this is not the first time we had to assimilate other ethnic groups. This test has existed since 1933, for eight decades.

These experts fail to note a blatant shortcoming to the U.S. education approach: worthless evaluations or none at all. Children receive unearned high grades for little effort and minimal academic achievement. These inflated grades seem to be placating parents and students. Awards are meaningless when everyone is given one. We are living in a society where every participant has to receive a trophy for attending a certain number of games and are placed on the honor role for doing no more than warming a seat in school.

KIAD has produced a large number of delusional students. They do not have an ounce of humility and possess tons of arrogance. Many educators want the SAT and other standardized tests to disappear. They do not want to be held accountable. Instead of observing what is happening in our schools, they want to dismantle these tests by using “culture bias” as an excuse. This means that any standard chosen to measure learning that predicts success in higher education has to be prejudicial against minorities. This is a ridiculous analysis of standardized testing since it accurately predicts success in higher education. All students need to acquire the same skill set to have the building blocks to understand and learn complex concepts.

Attacking tests or the need for evaluation is a strategy for spreading a real pandemic of students who think they are too smart to learn. This attempt at denying the validity of all testing has to end.

American education needs to stop making silly rationalizations and begin to inoculate students against the Know It All Disease: KIAD. This would be accomplished by giving an honest evaluation of knowledge and behavior to the student and the parents. Students need to be openly compared through posting their grades and being honestly critiqued by their teachers and peers. This allows them to gain a true perspective of their standing in class.

Accurate feedback will undermine false self-esteem while increasing a student’s confidence through self-competence.

Integrity of evaluating students in their actions and behavior will be the silver bullet to obliterate this cancerous KAID. The prevention of this disease will bring more openness, humility and more improved learning behavior in our schools.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Visit: www.drmaglio.com.