Nicholsclan.com : a dimension of mind...

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I stopped at the grocery store last night to score some milk, and as I waited at the checkout I noticed that the cashier in the next aisle was sporting cutoff shorts, a tool belt, and a Tool Time name badge. I looked behind me and noticed a young man at the service desk dressed as a big bag of M&Ms. My cashier was dressed normally, and as I paid I quipped to her, "They couldn't talk you into a costume, eh?"

She caught me a little off guard when she looked sheepishly at me and said, "My parents won't allow it." Then added, "It's against my religion." I told her that was a pretty good reason, and wished her a good evening as I left. But on the way home, the conversation troubled me more as I thought about it.

I understand that there are people who concerned about some of the darker occult origins to Halloween. I certainly respect that people have the right to raise their children in their own way and that includes opting in and out of whatever holiday situations they might choose. I'm also inclined to note that Halloween is really just a socially accepted excuse to dress up in costume and share a sugar high. Dressing up for school spirit week or the high school play would not be troubling to most of the people who are worried that the experience of emulating a movie character for one evening a year will turn their child to the dark side. Nonetheless, there is merit and moral consistency in refusing to participate in something because of what it stands for. If that's the motivation, if non-participation is a social and moral statement, then I applaud and respect the decision.

However, this young girl was not making a statement. She was old enough to hold a job, therefore she was old enough to understand her motivations for not participating. And what she didn't say to me was that she didn't like what Halloween stood for. She didn't say that the concept of Halloween was in conflict with her personal ethics, morality, or beliefs. She basically told me that she wasn't allowed to participate, and her expression said that she couldn't justify the reason.

This is a failing. It is a failing of her parents, and it is a failing of her religion. They have imposed rules without the moral context. She doesn't know the reasons for her behavior, only that she has to behave. She doesn't believe her behavior is right, just that it's proper. Someday she will have children of her own. What will she teach them? Will she impose the rules simply because these are the rules which were handed down? Rationalizing that this is the way it has always been done? Will she rebel and discard what appear to be arbitrary rules? Sooner or later, the latter path will be taken. If not by her, then by her kids, or theirs.

Arbitrary authority always fails in the end. You can't dictate morality and conscience. When your kids are three, telling them "because I said so" is sufficient. But long before they can drive, it's time to educate them on why you say so. Why do you believe what you do? Why are the house rules what they are? What motivates you in making moral judgments and decisions? And before you can teach them, you have to know yourself. If you don't, shame on you.

But I like sticky rice...

He really knows how to make a job sound glamorous, don't he?

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Thanks to Kim, who has some insights and observations on the abortion issue. Kim's comments are below in Purple Text - As always, Italicized Text of any color is quoted material from previous posts.

Regarding your entry about abortion... I honestly find almost everything you said to be dead on with my own thoughts. The large question has always been in how we define life. I am not an avid supporter of abortion. I do believe that it can be (and most likely is) used as a means of contraception for some folks. That's just plain wrong in my book. I am, however, a firm believer that there are times when aborting a child is absolutely the right thing to do. I've known cases where it absolutely was. But in those cases, there were most certainly countless sleepless nights in making such a choice. The quality of life must be considered as much in abortion as it is in pulling life support from a loved one... a decision, unfortunately, I'm all too familiar with. For me, having to make the decision to end the life of an unborn child that had no chance of living a quality style life (or even living any life for very long) would be as tough as it was to end my own father's life. Yet with my Dad, he had a choice. He made his plans very well known under his circumstances. That fact made it no easier for me to sign the papers to not resuscitate him, or to tell the doctors it was time to let him go, but I did it... because it was what he wished for. An unborn baby doesn't get to make that choice. The government, allows us to end a persons life if it is based on their wishes (as in my father's case), why shouldn't they allow parents to make it for their unborn child based on the same type of criteria. Granted, not all would act as responsibly with that decision as we'd all like, but I'm sure most would not take it lightly.

As for the specific law being passed... I'm as horrified as most others with the idea of the late term abortion procedure that is now in practice. And there probably should be some guidelines around it. However, I'm appalled at the idea that we as women may have such an important choice regarding our own bodies taken away from us. That's one of the problems with the new law. But beyond that, the notion that there are no exceptions made for the fact that the mother's and/or babies life would be in jeopardy without the procedure, is just unconscionable. I can't believe that the law makers can't fathom a scenario that late in term that would put the mother's own life in jeopardy and therefore, won't account for that in the law they want to pass.

Your point about how easy we make it in this world to purchase guns that kill innocent people every day is one that people should think more clearly about. Otherwise healthy children can be gunned down walking to school, but a fetus with potentially severe birth defects that will never live longer than a day or a week, or that will never have any chance of survival in this world, still must be born into it so that the government can control our very bodies, is a scenario I can't live with. Not to mention that our very own G.W. can't wait to pass this law to protect unborn children, yet didn't bat an eye at killing as many as he has in the last 6 months to further his own agenda. Incredible.

Based on the kind of person I am, I can't imagine having an abortion. My own children mean every thing to me. I can't imagine even more, that the choice will be completely stripped from me because my government believes I should not be given an option of what to do with my own body... or worse yet, that I'm somehow incapable of making an informed decision about the future of my unborn children or my very own life.

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Yeah!! What he said.

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Having weighed in (waded in?) on most other topics you are always told to avoid, I feel it's time to tackle abortion. As we are about to have the first anti-abortion law passed since Roe vs. Wade, the conservatives are already preparing to take their agenda further. While the current law would only outlaw so-called partial birth abortions, it starts us down the slippery slope. Partial birth abortions sound horrific by description, and would be damn hard for anyone to justify as the right thing to do. (Honestly, you have to wonder how doctors justify the procedure now.) But that's not really the issue.

The problem comes down to "human life" vs "human choice". This is inherent in the very names of the opposing organizations. One is pro-life, the other is pro-choice. I think we can agree, that if it weren't for the issue of human life, that most everyone would support the pro-choice position. That is, if we were talking about a woman's right to have her appendix removed, there would be no debate at all.

So in reality, it all comes down to what defines human life. Willfully ending a human life is murder. Destroying any other form of life is okay. It is. I can shoot squirrels for sport. I can choose to have my dog euthanized. I can have my appendix out. I can take anti-bacterial drugs. All these things are willful choices on my part to destroy another life. But what does it mean to be human?

This is a simple and yet near impossible question to answer definitively. You know it when you see it (maybe), but it's hard to nail the definition. And for a law to be useful, it needs to define the criteria under which it applies. I don't mean to be flippant here. This is deadly serious. And no, I don't have an answer. But I do think there is value in at least exploring the question.

So what is a human? On the one hand, it might be easiest to cite our species. An individual with homo sapian DNA is human. Anything else is not. Case closed? Not quite. There are two criteria in that definition. First is the DNA issue. Right now, humans are relatively unique on the planet. But suppose a space ship lands tomorrow with friendly aliens offering to be our friends. They have no human DNA, so would it be okay for the conservation department to issue hunting permits? Of course not. So DNA isn't really a criteria. The second is more subtle. The definition requires that the life be an "individual". Otherwise, my appendix would be human life. Minimally, an individual must have a developed sense of "I". It must recognize that the creature in the mirror is itself. It must have a level of senteince, it must be self-aware. Fair enough, but many species on Earth, including many apes and dolphins have demonstrated self-awareness. Meanwhile, human babies don't develop self-awareness until they are many months old. Is killing a chimp murder? Is killing a 3 month old baby? So this definition doesn't wash.

What about sentience then? What if we defined human in a more generic sense as sentient life or (to account for the 3 month old baby) the potential to become sentient? This works to a degree. It protects the newborn baby. It also protects the aliens in the spaceship and probably several other species of life on Earth which are currently unprotected. (And that might not be a bad thing.) But the "potential" problem still plagues us. A zygote is a "potential sentient being". For that matter, an unfertilized egg, sperm, or (when cloning becomes viable) any other cells, are all potential sentient lives. This makes my appendix problematic again. Not to mention that it should be illegal for a woman to not at least attempt pregnancy each menstrual cycle and masturbation would have to be outlawed for men. It gets silly quickly.

There is always the qualifier that the life must be viable outside the mother. This would seem to take care of the zygote, appendix, and "spilled seed" problems above. But for how long? It is technologically inevitable that a completely artificial womb will be created. We can already do rudimentary cloning and in-vitro fertilization. In theory, any of the above "silly scenarios" could be crafted into sentient life. So "potential" becomes problematic.

As I said above, I have no good answer here. This is (and probably will continue to be) a highly qualitative issue. It can't be about "life" because we can't say what that is with any certainty. That makes it about choice. The choice of the woman, the choice of her doctors, and in all probability, the choice of the courts to resolve the inevitable grey area.

There are laws against murder, and yet we sell handguns openly. We trust that most people will make good decisions with them. Should we not trust that most women will make good reproductive choices despite the availability of abortion? It is inherently un-American to inhibit choice in an effort to assure lawful or moral compliance. At least it used to be.

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By this point, you've probably read about Terri Schiavo in Florida who is the object of unthinkable political abuse.

The law clearly supports someone's right to withhold treatment (including forced feeding) from someone who has made their wishes clear. (One could debate if choosing to die by dehydration is more humane than a swift and drug-induced act of euthanasia, but that's a topic for another day.) For this case in particular, there is certainly a lot of grey area. Terri Schiavo's wishes were never expressed other than verbally to her husband. While that's plausible, it's not indisputable. There is enough money involved as well as a girlfriend (which after 13 years doesn't seem so very bad either), to cause the husband's motives to be suspicious. And of course the parents of the woman, who want her to live in this state of "alive but intellectually inert" in perpetuity. An ugly and unfortunate situation all around, and one which pretty much is the reason courts exist.

But this is where the "unthinkable" part comes in. The courts rule to allow the feeding tube to be removed. The executive and legislative branches of the Florida government sense the media frenzy and political opportunity this case provides and pass legislation after the fact which in effect overturns the court's decision. The feeding tube is then reinserted in the woman.

I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep through this part of American History class. The whole notion of the 3 separate branches of government is to keep this sort of thing from happening. I see little difference between this situation and a possible situation where the court acquits someone of a crime and then the legislature passes a law which allows him to be tried again on a different charge for the same crime. The latter is clearly unconstitutional. So why in this case is the legislature allowed to act after the fact to overrule the court?

The fact that this political quagmire involves the life/death of a human being is abhorrent in and of itself. But ignoring that for a moment, the precedent here is even more troubling in the long term. And while I'm tempted to cite Jeb Bush as the bad guy here and note that trampling on civil rights, personal freedoms, and espousing right wing Christian agendas seems to run in the Bush family, I can't. The Florida legislature is the one who ultimately pushed this through. If they were somehow strong-armed by Jeb into acting, then Florida has more serious problems than are apparent. Either that, or Terri Schiavo should be running for State Senate as she is clearly their intellectual equal.

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If I was a good son, I'd buy this for my dad at Christmas. (Hint - you really need to watch the video to appreciate the true magic of this)

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Thought for the day: In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes.

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I was having an interesting conversation with my boys the other day, and it got me to thinking afterwards. We were talking about fictional characters from TV or books and whether they were people you would like to be with if you were somehow in their world or they in ours. Indirectly, I was trying to assess whether my kids really were bonding with the characters from their favorite cartoons such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Poke`mon.

I cited some characters from Star Trek and The Animorphs books and noted that the heroes in both series were people I would be glad to call my friends. I'd enjoy their company and trust them, even independent of the wonderful adventures in the stories. I then asked about the Japanese Amime` cartoon characters. I was particularly interested in these because the "heroes" seem to spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy puffing up and verbally posturing to one another. There's a lot of yelling, and frankly, I don't think I'd like them. Not surprisingly, the boys really hadn't thought much about it, but upon reflection they decided that they watched the shows for the creatures and monsters, and more than a little bit because all their friends did. I don't think they did or would care much about what the characters were like. I doubt our discussion will dull their interest, but maybe it will be food for thought as they begin to emerge into the world of people.

But my mind continued to wander from that discussion, and I began to muse about groups being considered as having personalities. After all, most any group when viewed `en masse has a personality of sorts. They have behaviors, attitudes, communication styles, etc. All the same traits we use to make relationship decisions about people as individuals. This is true of small groups like the Dixie Chicks, and equally true of larger groups like the local PTA or the Elks club. Scaled up, it is also true of nations.

Let's consider that. In the great cafeteria of planet Earth, the USA sports a personality as does France, Russia, Yemen, and Upper Volta. So you're now "the lunch lady" in Earth's cafeteria, and all the kids are exhibiting their personalities. Which kids are well behaved? Which ones do you admire? Which ones do you wish for their mothers to wash their mouths out with soap? Which would you send to the principal's office?

It's an interesting thought experiment, and one in which I'm personally finding I wouldn't like how our country is behaving. While I might be intimidated by the USA sitting at the table with all it's cronies, I doubt I would want to join the table. I can picture them sitting there preaching caring and benevolence while at the same time intimating that people should cow-tow to their wishes or else. There would be confrontations in the yard at recess with the kids opposing them. There would be pressure to conform to the will of the "cool group". Assertions that if you weren't part of that group you were nobody.

I suspect I'd find that group to be a bunch of arrogant bullies. I'd pity the hapless minions too weak to stand on their own and too scared to do anything but conform. I'd probably try to keep my distance from the lot of them. But if their influence grew too much and started encroaching on my life, I'd be tempted to react with poignant subtlety. Choosing to super glue their sneakers to the floor in gym class or program the computer to tank their grades rather than challenging the table of the meaty and mighty directly. In short, I'd be a terrorist of sorts. And I suspect I'd feel pretty morally righteous about it as their behavior warrants someone standing up to them.

Running through this logic I find that while I can't support terrorism, I do understand it more. I understand why it is not the domain of the crazed or radical (as it is often portrayed). Terrorists are often very well educated, thoughtful, clever, and determined people. People with a sense of self-worth and of justice. People like you and me - under different circumstances.

From an early age we learn that old saw, "Do unto others and you would have them do unto you." Why shouldn't that apply to the nation as much as to us as individuals? The USA would not tolerate being treated by the world in the manner in which we are treating it. To a degree we have to begin to accept that we are inviting much of the reaction we get in the world. But much like kids at the "cool table" in the lunch room, we can't fathom why anyone wouldn't want to be us. Is it really so generous of us to pull up additional chairs at our table? Or is it just arrogant?

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You really can find anything on the Internet.

A couple weeks ago my dome light in my truck went out. Hardly a crisis, but annoying as we're getting to the season where it's dark more often than not. Of course it wasn't anything as simple as a door switch or a light bulb. When I finally got a chance to do some diagnosis, it became clear the ground wire leading to the light was nearly, but not completely broken. The question was, where? I really didn't relish the idea of trying to trace wires through the headliner and try to figure out what path they took to the underside of the dash.

So I post my dilemma to the alt.chevy.trucks newsgroup and ask if anyone knows the path the wires take or where a likely trouble spot would be. Within 2 hours, a guy posts a follow-up saying that I should pull the drivers side door sill panel and look for the harness with the orange and white wire. The white was my troublesome ground. Well, darned if the guy didn't peg it dead on. I pull the panel and there's the harness. A tug on the white wire and it breaks clean in two. Bingo. A simple wire repair and I'm basking in the warm glow of incandescent dome shine. Cool.

So while I'm feeling good about that, and watching my kids zip about on their scooters, I hear a woman's voice ask the kids if they want the box she's holding. My parental radar goes immediately on alert, and when she sees me she comes and offers the box to me. She says she was just gonna throw it away and that it belonged to her boyfriend. So now I'm thinking that they had a fight and she's gonna get even by trashing his stuff. But about then, the boyfriend pulls up in the car and sticks his head out the window. He says it all works and that he really just doesn't want it anymore. So with all my reasons to be suspicious put to rest, we gratefully accept the box and thank our new friends. We then go inside and hook up our "new" Sony Playstation. I'll be damned... it really does all work.

It's a good day.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer Online shows that Bush is the kind of leader that people will nod vigorously while in the presence of and ignore once they leave the room. Now that's leadership!

I love the 3rd paragraph best. Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.

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I had an experience recently I feel I need to share. I've written before about atheists being the "silent minority". People react to atheists in ways they would never react to people who were different in any other religion, philosophy, or lifestyle vector. To wit:

I was having dinner at a large gathering, and sitting next to a wonderful woman whom I have known for years. She is likely the sweetest most earnest person you can imagine. (She's the sort of woman who would assure Quasimodo that the hump was kinda cute. You get the idea.) At one point, the conversation at the table turned to politics and it didn't surprise me at all that she was a dyed-in-the-wool Bush fan. But, I had already tipped my hand by then. So I asked her what she admired about Bush.

She went on about how spiritual he was and that she admired how he exercised everyday. I noted that it wasn't clear to me why his work-out habits made him a better leader and that while I respected his spirituality, it was also his over-the-top zealotry which made me nervous. She then stated/asked, "Well Tim, you must be a spiritual person, aren't you?" While I didn't wish to make a big deal of the statement, it would have been disingenuous for me to just nod and let it go. So I said that while I had a very strong personal philosophy and morality, that no, I was not spiritual as she defined it. I was an atheist.

She reacted with, "Oh Tim...", and an expression on her face which would have been more suitable had I just revealed that I had terminal cancer and 3 weeks to live. She clearly had no idea how to handle this information, and the conversation abruptly turned to lighthearted things. We went on as if the last five minutes had never occurred.

To be clear, I wasn't offended by the reaction, and I'm not picking on her. I've seen this reaction over and over - and still it amazes me. This is a world where a person saying they are Jewish, Muslim, gay, lesbian, etc. is taken in passing. Yet it seems atheists must still be invisible and outside people's conscious experience. (Everybody probably knows a few, they just don't know they do.) Jews used to note that well-intentioned people simply assumed that they were Jewish only because no one had yet brought Jesus into their lives. I doubt many people would view Judaism that way today. Yet atheism is viewed that way. It is viewed as a deficiency (or worse, an opportunity) by well intentioned Christians.

There are certainly "default atheists" out there. People who are atheists because they've never been exposed to anything else. Curiously, there are way more "default Christians" out there. Both are worthy of pity as their lives remain relatively unexplored. But inasmuch as you would probably not proceed from the assumption that the Methodist dining to your left is in need of your pity, why would you assume the atheist is?

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I spent an interesting few days recently on a business trip in South Beach, Miami. It's the sort of trendy juxtaposition of tourists and celebrities which obviously draws customer care professionals into the mix. And hip-hoppers... let's not forget them. Apparently at the same time we were in town, there was also a Hip-Hop awards festival... and they outnumbered the customer care folks by about a zillion to one.

It was kind of all these people to come into town and demonstrate how desperately culturally out of touch I actually am. I mean I already knew that I had no appreciation for the music. But I didn't realize there was a uniform. The guys are all dressed in oversized basketball or football jerseys with enormously baggy shorts or pants. Large gold chains with medallions are optional but encouraged. Okay, I can cope with that. But the girls' uniforms make you want to ask where their mother's are, and why they let them out of the house that way. Bikini tops over shorts cut so narrow that your butt hangs out both the top and the bottom. A viewable thong sticking out the top is encouraged as are fishnet stockings. Heels are mandatory. Not to disparage the youth culture, but they look like a troop of prostitutes going down the street. Curiously, many of these girls did not possess the sort of figures which you would expect to find in these sorts of outfits. It was just too much - in many respects.

I hardly consider myself sexually repressed or prudish. But sexy has clearly given way to slutty here. It wasn't appealing. And maybe as a parent who was old enough to be many of these girls' father, it was horrifying. I'm sooooo glad I have boys.

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I've so far shied away from the Do-Not-Call List debate and the plight of telemarketers. Being in the call center business, it seems hypocritical to blast my outbound brethren despite being an "inbound guy". Yet personally, I can't stand cold calls from marketers, so I do empathize. In fact, I have been on New York State's Do-Not-Call list since its inception several years ago.

But I find I have to speak out because I have to believe that people are their own worst enemy here. On the one hand it seems ludicrous that marketers are demanding to preserve their right to call people who say they do not wish to be called. How stupid are they? The answer though, is "not very". Telemarketing is a razor thin margin business. These people are savvy businessmen. They pay tons of money for customer lists matching researched customer demographics. If people who said they didn't wish to be called never actually bought anything, I have to believe the marketers would be only too happy to leave them alone. No salesman wants to waste his time on a dead end prospect. So it seems the reality is that many people who say they don't want to be called are looking to the rules to protect them from their own lack of self-control.

That's not to say that if you never buy anything at your house, that you'll never get called. But as a group, some of you are caving in and buying. We all suffer for that. So if you really hate being called, stand by your principles. Refuse any unsolicited phone calls. We're counting on you.

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It was only a matter of time before someone else used the U.S. rationale of preemption to launch an attack on another country. Israel has attacked Syria using that argument, and we are rightly avoiding condemning them for that action. But probably not for the right reasons.

Arguably, Israel has a lot more "imminent threat" to fear from Syria than we ever did from Iraq. And given the beating they are taking from Hamas lately, it's hard to blame them for trying to root out the source of the problems.

But somehow I have a nagging suspicion that we gave them a wink and a nod and a nudge to take a shot at Syria. And for our own reasons. It's no secret that the U.S. has wanted to go after Syria and Iran since before Iraq ever fell. However, in the current climate, it would be political suicide for Bush to launch that initiative. Domestically, no one is going to buy the impending danger story again, at least any time soon.

Given that the roadmap to peace in Israel is too pock-marked with bomb craters to drive on anymore, why not have Israel play the righteous defender of their turf and go after Syria for us? They have little to lose at this point. Certainly, their citizens are likely to support that move. Further, once they are committed to that confrontation, the U.S. would never let them go it alone. First, there is our long history of defending Israel against all comers. It's unlikely we'd deviate from that policy. We could provide logistics support, weapons, "military advisors", supplies, etc., but it would be their war - not ours. That is an important distinction. But even ignoring that, Israel is part of the nuclear club. Because of that, the other nuclear powers cannot allow them to fall to or even be substantially vulnerable to a non-nuclear enemy - especially an enemy whose government is pathologically anti-western. The last thing anybody wants is for Syria to become a nuclear power.

We'd hate to see all that yummy oil buried under 6 feet of fresh glass.

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Revealing a softer and more romantic side to her husband, Laura Bush shared with the world a poem G.W. wrote her while she was away in France. Inconceivably, she recited this at a literary festival.

"Dear Laura, Roses are red, Violets are blue, Oh my lump in the bed, How I've missed you. Roses are redder, Bluer am I, Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy. The dogs and the cat, they missed you too, Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe. The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier, Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier."

I'm not sure what scares me more: that he wrote that drivel, or that she thought it was worthy of sharing. Perhaps she just wanted the empathy of women everywhere for being married to the dolt?

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Kudos to the Amish! (Holy sentences I never thought I'd construct Batman...)

It seems that in the wake of Isabel, many Amish farm families are at risk of losing their crops. Their bishops have granted them dispensation so that they can borrow local power farm equipment and tractors to get the crop in before it's ruined. It's nice to see religious leaders taking a practical approach when it's clearly in the best interest of their followers. A few other leaders would do well to take note of that.

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I think my eldest son has a point mass in his pocket. At least theoretically, a point mass should have an enormous gravitational field around it, which would explain a great deal. For instance, it would explain why towels, pillows, remote controls, etc. are mysteriously drawn to the floor whenever he's near. He claims he never leaves them there, so there must be some other explanation. Further, extreme gravitational fields slow down the passage of time from the perspective of an external observer. This has to be why he appears to me to be stationary and yet claims he was busily working on what he was asked to do.

Come to think of it, this could be the pet rock of the new millennium. Since a point mass would be invisible, I wouldn't even need to go through the trouble of putting anything other than an operator's manual in the empty box. I could sell billions of them and be the bane of teachers and parents everywhere.

Maybe tomorrow... I'm tired.

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The local paper ran a piece today on how American kids are not spending as much time on homework as their peers in other countries. The article didn't take much of a position, but did wonder if this was related to poorer scores American students get on standardized tests. It also pointed out that the pedagogical winds in this country are citing little relationship between homework and academic success. But I think they are missing the point.

The article briefly interviews an immigrant student who says he has less homework than he cousins in India. He notes that if they are assigned 3 math problems, they will do 10 more just to be sure they have the concept down. And that, my friends, is the point. It is not about the amount of work assigned. It is about the amount of work the student is motivated to do. Forcing a student through hours of work each evening accomplishes nothing. And I think this is why educators are citing a lack of connection between homework and academic success.

I would venture that most American students, faced with 3 math problems, would do them and then call it a night. Regardless of whether or not they had mastered the concept, they had completed the minimal assignment. They had not achieved the larger goal of the homework. So why is there a difference? I think most cultures still indoctrinate their children with a healthy fear of failure. Children do not want to be unprepared in class as their teacher might embarrass them in front of their friends. They certainly don't want to come home to Mom or Dad with sub-par grades and have to explain them. But in the U.S., in a well intentioned but misguided attempt to make everyone feel safe, comfortable, and included, we have removed the stigma from failure. Granted, some children are still self-motivated to succeed, but most kids (and most adults too) will lower their effort considerably once any consequences for inaction are removed.

Consider for a moment what the state of the nation would be if tomorrow everyone won the lottery. Suddenly, no one has to work in order to provide for their family or even themselves. The cruel reality is that the majority of people would opt for a life of leisure. Their productive contribution to society would be zero. Students are no different. There are times for carrots; there are times for sticks. Real life is full of both of them. We need to make our children aware of that from an early age. Removing all consequences (or even opportunities) for failure and knocking out obstacles to success is not doing our kids a favor. Go ahead and protect them from the extreme consequences and obstacles, but as Wesley observes in "The Princess Bride", "Life is pain. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something."