[monster]

right. I don't like cut and paste with no added thought.

the overpraise thing happens in sports too. "Yay! you were present at six kindergarten soccer games. Here's a trophy."

If it still works for sports, why doesn't it work for academics?

Here in Ann Arbor, We have many Chinese, Korean and Japanese families. A lot of them are med interns at the U of M hospital. They are all about the academic excellence and the sporting excellence -in swimming and figure skating. Their kids are amazing. They seem happy. But you know what? The parents are not happy. Well not in an American/British sense of the word. Their entire lives revolve around making sure their kids get the best academic grades and win their sporting events. And when that happens, they are happy. But the law of probability says mostly that doesn't happen, so mostly they are disappointed. What sort of happy is that? And what purpose is this serving? Their kids can go on and have the same life... hurrah....

I'll take happy kids now and happy kids in the future, thanks. With a free serving of no more testing memorized shit that means nothing to the memorizer. kthnx.