My children play recreational soccer. The league doesn’t even keep score or have play off. Yet, every year each player gets a huge trophy. For the first few years, we kept the trophies. Now we just take a picture of it and throw it away.

I keep wondering why they insist upon such ridiculous trophies. I image someone in the league is a parent with an only child and thinks that children need excessive praise to develop self esteem. I’m annoyed that we have to pay for those meaningless trophies. I’m not against some sort of recognition for the players’ efforts and improvement, but why the pretense to some great award.

This problem of excessive praise is not limited to my soccer league. Parents are the primary culprit, but this practice has been institutionalized at many schools and youth organizations.

Unfortunately, I know a few home educators who fall into this trap. These parents become overly eager to protect their children from any sort of negative feedback and use homeschooling as a way to insulate the child from anyone who could burst his little bubble. You can spot them easily at park day: the children are whiny and the parents are perpetually upset because their little Suzy didn’t get the attention she deserves.

A recent book, Kids are worth it!: giving your child the gift of inner discipline, documents how excessive praise actually lowers self-esteem. “Congratulating children on all accomplishments has created a generation of praise junkies: undermotivated kids who are addicted to acknowledgment.”

I couldn’t agree more. Now, how do I get the soccer league to embrace the idea?

Study finds that Teachers’ unions don’t provide more pay:

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Teachers’ unions have little impact on a school district’s allocation of money, including teacher pay and spending per student, according to a study published this month in the Journal of Labor Economics.
Using data from school districts in Iowa, Indiana and Minnesota, Cornell economist Michael Lovenheim compared district spending trends before and after each district became unionized. He also compared trends between union and non-union districts. Specifically, his analysis looked at teacher pay, spending per student, number of teachers employed and student-teacher ratio.
“My results indicate unions have no impact on teacher pay, either in the short or long run,” Lovenheim writes. “I also estimate little effect on per-student expenditures, particularly in the long-run.”
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The only valid justifications I’m aware of for Teachers’ Unions is they protect the teacher from abuse, improve working conditions and increase the salary of teachers.

I wonder how many teachers would want to stay in their unions if they knew the unions only took their dues, but didn’t help with the salary?

Fascinating study finds that Cleanliness is next to godliness: New research shows clean smells promote moral behavior:

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People are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling environments, according to a soon-to-be published study led by a Brigham Young University professor.
The research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex.
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Our house tends to be a bit of a mess. Our children are not real good about putting things away when they are done. Our solution is that we have friends and family over for dinner about once a week, which forces us to clean the house.

Ruben Navarette worked as a teacher for five years before he become a columnist. He likes President Obama’s school reform ideas. (We’re back to the talk vs. action problem. It is easy to say cool sounding things, but much harder to do them.)

This is the fascinating part of Navarette’s column:

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It was there that he went to bat for low-income black parents who, like scores of parents who send their kids to underperforming schools throughout America, are caught in a frustrating and almost comical paradox. They’re turned away, shunned, treated with condescension and even insulted by self-serving public school “edu-crats” who treat these institutions like their own private offices where they don’t want to be bothered by anyone who doesn’t have a teaching or administrative credential.
Then, incredibly, the parents are blamed for not participating and involving themselves more in that hostile environment and when many of them thought that teaching their kids was the job of, well, teachers.
It’s been my experience that many teachers don’t really care whether parents go to the PTA or help their kids with homework. They just want a constant foil, someone to blame when students flounder and the schools underperform. And, when that happens, in any public school in America, suddenly there’s not a mirror to be found. It’s always someone else’s fault.
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I wonder how many teachers in government schools see parents as the scape goats?

This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is being hosted at at Janice Campbell – Taking Times For Things That Matter.

Janice starts off with:

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Welcome to this hundred-and-umpteenth Carnival of Homeschooling! Because November is National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo or nano), and I’m over 10,000 words into the writing process (and can’t think of anything but writing, writing, and more writing), I thought it would be appropriate to format this Carnival as sections of a book. I even consulted the Chicago Manual of Style for an authoritative list of book parts!
Introduction
For me, homeschooling is first and foremost a heart matter. In Mangled Schedules and Grateful Hearts, an article I wrote for Home School Enrichment magazine, you can read how a father’s presence and influence can shape a family school. Enjoy!
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She continues with several more chapters.

Our society today is very permissive. We are taught to be tolerance to the point of extreme. A ripple effect of this is many parents think they are suppose to only love their children, never to be judgemental or discipline their children.

Why tough love is best: Parental warmth AND discipline produces best adults, admits Left-wing think-tank reports that both love and discipline help children:

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Taking a ‘tough love’ approach to parenting increases the chances a child will grow into a well-rounded, successful adult, a think-tank said yesterday.
Combining warmth and discipline means youngsters are more likely to develop skills such as application, self-discipline and empathy, according to a study.
The Demos report found these traits were shaped during the preschool years – more often as the result of ‘tough love’ parenting – and regardless of whether parents were rich or poor.
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Part of me wonders why is this even news, but given today’s culture, maybe parents need to be reminded that their children will benefit from some discipline, as well as lots of love.

(Hat tip: EducationNews.org)

John Stossel asks is the cost of going to college worth the hope for return?

Too many students graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

I’ve blogged in the past about the problem of rising cost of a college education.

If a tuition was a thousand dollars a year then a Bachelors degree could be worth it. If tuition was a million dollars a year, then there is no economic justification for going to college.

Our society is moving more and more to a point where the cost of college is too much for too many adults.

John Stossel reviews some of the other options.Our society is too quick to encourage everyone go off to college.

Janine and I do plan for our children to go to college, but we’ll try to do it on the cheap. Our goal is for them to do a number of classes in the local Junior colleges.

(Hat tip: via the HSC mailing list)

From Dan Galvin’s Thought For The Day mailing list:

“Worry is the darkroom where negatives are developed.”

You have just eight hours to send in your entry for the next Carnival of Homeschooling.

The Carnival of Homeschooling at be hosted at Janice Campbell – Taking Times For Things That Matter.

As always, entries to the Carnival of Homeschooling are due Monday evening at 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

Here are the instructions for sending in a submission.