“Opportunities vs Outcomes”’
With cooler weather this weekend, it was necessary to trim our bushes. This would ensure a uniform look for our house from the street. We have both loropetalum and azalea bushes.
All these bushes are healthy receiving the same amount of sunlight, moisture, and fertilizer. The loropetalum bushes grow 3 times faster than the azaleas. To create a uniform view from the street, it was necessary to cut 3” off of these faster growing bushes.
That got me thinking. All these bushes have the same opportunity, the same amount of sunlight, moisture, and fertilizer. Yet they grow at a different rate. To achieve a uniform view, the faster growing plants were cut down to size. Then, because I have 5 grandchildren, I wondered if we were doing the same thing with the education of our youth.
By structuring our educational systems to create equal outcomes, we are faced with the same issues as these bushes. If we give each child the same opportunities, then, because of their different learning abilities and work ethic, they will progress at different rates. That is simply a fact. If our desire is to have equal outcomes, then the students who have the ability to progress more quickly have to be slowed down. Just like the bushes, the top level will have to be “trimmed back” to create the illusion that all students are getting an “equal education.”
We see this in colleges and schools where achievement scholarships for gifted students are reduced in order to make it “fair” for all students. This is done to create the illusion of an “equal education.” However, this robs those who put in the time and effort, of the opportunity to progress faster, so we may meet this ideal illusion of an “equal education.” This occurs when the outcome is more important than creating the opportunity of having students with different abilities grow and progress at different rates.
Final thought: Students are real people…not bushes. Stop trimming down their education so that we can create the illusion of equality. That means giving every student the same opportunities to grow and progress. Those students with greater abilities or stronger work ethic will not be held back. Opportunities are for everyone. Outcomes are determined by individual effort and ability.
Our country was built on having equal opportunities…not equal outcomes. Our children deserve no less…and neither do we!
That is today's Morning Minute.
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“How do we hold
them accountable?”
An individual is accountable for their own actions and the responsibilities they have been entrusted with. Leaders, however, are different. Leaders are not only accountable for their own actions and responsibilities, but for those of their team members as well. “Real leaders” understand this.
When a sports team consistently underperforms, the owner or athletic director doesn’t replace the team. They replace the leader…the coach.
When a business is not meeting its forecasts and is not improving, the owner or supervisor doesn’t replace the team. They replace the leader…the manager.
When a church is not supporting the faith formation and religious education of its parishioners, the congregation is not replaced. They replace the pastor…the leader.
What about our political leaders? How do we hold them accountable? In our republic, we have the opportunity, indeed the responsibility, to hold them accountable for both their own actions and results, and, those of their team members. In a free society, where our founding documents place the power with the people, the way we replace the leaders who fail to produce the required results, is to vote them out of office.
Yet, we have a political leader who exclaims that if we vote he and his party members out of office, we are destroying “democracy!” If that wasn’t so patently absurd, that statement would be laughable. The only method that citizens have in a “democracy” to change the direction of a country that is wildly off-track, is to vote out of office those leaders, whose actions have produced these horrible results.
We started this message stating that “real leaders” understand that they will be held accountable for their results. When our government leaders collude with social media to stifle free speech, disobey our laws by opening our border to millions of illegals, ignore the flood of deadly drugs killing our citizens, turn our cities over to lawless gangs, use our federal police to intimidate and threaten political enemies, and cripple our economy by destroying our energy independence, we must replace them using the democratic method as provided by our Constitution. We must vote them out of power to save our democracy.
That is today’s Morning Minute.
