Why Britain is a fourth rate nation

A local council in Tweeddale in the Scottish borders has attempted to ban a school ‘competitive’ sports day on the ludicrous grounds of “to protect young players from becoming upset if they lost” as reported in The Times.

Council sports development officers (misnomer if ever there was one) believed that children who lost would suffer from “low self esteem”

Perhaps, or then again perhaps not.

I have been on the losing side both in team sports and individual endeavour on many occasions and hell yeah I hate losing, in fact I’m probably the worlds worst loser but it doesn’t give me low self esteem in fact in has the opposite effect in driving me to excel, to get better and to win next time for one simple reason:

I ****** hate the feeling that comes from losing! And I absolutely love the feeling that comes from winning.

But you cannot understand how fantastic it feels to win until you’ve tasted the dry bitter ashes of defeat.

John Keats (and what setbacks he experienced) wrote of the need to experience the opposites of life, he believed that to truly understand any human emotion in life one had to experience opposites, love and hate, joy and despair, happiness and sadness, defeat and winning, and even the ultimate, living a full life and the experience of even death itself.

Our children today under this misguided socialist egalitarian claptrap, indeed probably most of the current generation cannot handle the experience of losing.

And why……

For they are ill equipped to deal with losing or failing as they have no emotional maturity that comes from experiencing life’s bitter sweet events, for they have been brought up shielded from it, and to expect that everything is given to you, its on demand, immediate, instant and fulfilling and everyone is entitled to it, and that losing or failing, despite even giving 100% is taboo.

The council’s policy that reinforces this utter nonsense is described as “trophy free” apparently to enable children to express themselves “without the focus on the result”.

But the big bad real world out there isn’t like that!

Life outside this socialist egalitarian utopian bubble these officials live in (and we tax payer fund) is tough, it’s brutal, it’s unforgiving but its also wonderful, exciting and immensely rewarding for those with the ability to take the falls and get back on the horse.

It’s a competitive world and we used to be the number one country in it, economically, militarily, educationally, innovatively, athletically and sportingly for one simple reason, our education system that was once based on selection, merit and competitively results focused, both academically and sportingly, produced men and women who went out into it equipped to deal with the setbacks, the failures and the losing but we reaped the rewards as a nation that came from the achieving, succeeding and winning when they picked themselves up.

To find out why we are a fourth rate nation, in fact we don’t even qualify for the bronze medal now, you only have to meet the people who believe in this nonsense.

We fail our children; therefore we fail our future, for if they cannot understand how to lose they will never be able to win.


.