Welcome back for another insightfully riveting brain dump from the Tae Kwon Dad. I want to give a big shout out to all the new Black Belts, and everybody else who moved a notch closer to their Black Belts and a thank you for providing me with the perfect segue to this week’s topic.
Confidence Earned Through Accomplishment
This is a true result from a recent survey conducted by Intel – 85% of U.S. high school students surveyed rated themselves as highly confident in their mathematical abilities (the highest rate of all the groups surveyed), yet actually we place 25th as a country in worldwide rankings.
The only conclusions one could reach when trying to reconcile these numbers are: if those kids are right –they really are great at math—but its by No Child Left Behind standards and those standards are lower than the rest of the world’s (okay I’ll concede that given the source of NCLB this is a distinct possibility) or, and more likely, the vast majority of those kids are overestimating their math ability. That false-confidence is not just in math skills either, more than one study shows a remarkable trait among young Americans: self-confidence rises as actual knowledge/skill decreases. Let that sink in for a moment. The less a person knows the more confident they are.
Now young people didn’t develop this inflated sense of self-confidence in a vacuum. They had to learn it somewhere. Fooled you! You thought I was gonna go all Walt Kowalski on you with ‘damn-kids-these-days-with-their-damn-hip-hop-music!’ rant didn’t you? Though it would be easier to take a ‘kids-these-days’ attitude, it’s not fair because children adapt to the world as it’s presented to them, bad music and all.
Whether it’s grade inflation in the Ivy League or graduation ceremonies for kindergarteners, adults have spent the last 40 years coming up with new ways to ‘celebrate mediocrity’ as Mr. Incredible points out. Couple that with a media culture that applauds & rewards ignorance, it’s no wonder kids think that having the attitude of this pair of devil spawn is preferable to knowing something, because sounding confident (and by extension preserving our oh so precious self esteem) has more value in our society than actually being knowledgeable.
Look at the current state of political discourse in this country. Being open-minded, well informed and having the ability to speak complete sentences is vilified as elitist, while being intellectually incurious, selectively informed, and mangling your words is considered ‘authentic’. It’s not just pandering politicians and celebrities of dubious ‘talent’ that act this way either. Spend even the briefest period of time on any social network, forum or comment section and you’ll see plenty of posts/threads that are nothing more than self affirming circles of willful misinformation where reality is an unwelcome intruder that has no place in the conversation.
I have to admit I am guilty of this too from time to time. I just did a quick survey of my Id and it says that 94.8% of you skimming this will find it to be the most entertaining and informative piece of web debris you’ll read today. The other 5.2% just doesn’t get it.
Even our clothes lie to us to make us feel better about ourselves. At 5’7” and 150 lbs I am well under the national average size of an adult American male, yet somehow I wear Large T-Shirts? If I’m a large, what size does CGN Simms wear? That dude is freekin’ HUGE. It must be a Mega Max XXXL! For women the inverse is true but I am not gonna go into the details, I like my women friends and want to keep them.
I’ve been rambling again haven’t I?
You might be asking yourself “What does this have to do with martial arts, and specifically MIMA Grandpa Simpson?” Plenty I tell’ya. From the first time a Little Dragon tests for their yellow belt to Master Strongheart’s next test for her 6th Dan, each increment, every small step forward towards that black belt is EARNED. Either you do the form(s) and break the boards, complete community service, and leadership projects, or you don’t. The Masters aren’t going pass somebody because not passing will hurt that student’s feelings. The confidence and pride a student feels each time they tie on their belt is EARNED and that’s the way it should be.
Last summer the little ninja wanted to earn her next belt before taking a month off to travel with her grandparents. She spent a week in summer camp in order to take the belt test on Friday. Friday came around and despite her hard work, she failed the test. Was she disappointed? Yes of course, but that is not the end of the story. She knew she had another week and one last test she could take before leaving for vacation. 
She worked her tail off for the next week, attending classes every day, and the very next Friday she showed up to retake the belt test, much to the surprise of the Masters. This time however she killed it, easily passing the test and earning her brown w/black striped belt. Sure the Master’s could have taken pity on her and passed her the week before, but what would she have learned? Being cute and wanting something is enough to achieve a goal? That’s not much of a life lesson in my book. I rather she fail, accept constructive criticism, work hard then come back and pass the test because of her persistence, determination and most importantly, because she made the effort. Every time she ties on her belt reinforces that experience. That’s a life lesson worth learning. (And her snap-backs are much better for it too).
Until next time.
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