[starbase]

if one must err, one should err toward the punishment favored in 1937 rather than none. It seems to set a better tone for society...

Yes I think you're right there. The wooden paddle in high school, actually having to earn grades, no outcome based education (where whatever you said is 'correct' because that's how you felt). We could probably create a huge list which would snuff out crimes like this, for the most part.

I remember in 1987 when I was leaving high school, it was the first year that the area football association gave a #1 trophy to every kid in the league, regardless of where they finished that year. During my time it was never like that, and I can see the results in people just 10 years younger than I am. There's a certain detachment from reality that they are the poorer for having (and the rest of us are too, I'd say).

Oh, well. Maybe I'll start a private school that has the slogan "Discipline First"!!

[okie01]

I remember in 1987 when I was leaving high school, it was the first year that the area football association gave a #1 trophy to every kid in the league, regardless of where they finished that year. During my time it was never like that, and I can see the results in people just 10 years younger than I am.

I was born in 1940; my sister was born in 1948. Yet, it seems as if there is a generational gulf between us.

My values aren't much different than those of my parents -- born in the teens and survivors of the Great Depression. My mom, now 93, and I see things pretty much alike.

My sister's values, however, are those of the sixties -- liberal, permissive, "modern". We see eye-to-eye on virtually nothing -- politics, economics, child-rearing, cultural, you name it.

I can't imagine an athletic (or scholastic) competition where "everybody wins". Like you, I came from era when there was one winner and you learned from your losses.

My sister, on the other hand, believes that competition is "unhealthy". By her lights, there shouldn't be any losers. Unfortunately, that creates a circumstance where there can be no winners, either.

And when there can be no winners, why play...???