Note: This story ties into Matt’s Musings 3/21.

I was watching Real Sports with Bryan Gumbel on HBO the other night; his show tackles not only big stories in major-league sports, but sports across the country.

They covered a story about schools across the U.S. prohibiting kids from playing dodgeball.

Their reason: Not everyone wins in dodgeball, and the kids who lose feel bad about themselves. Supporters of the movement feel that no young child should feel like a loser and everyone should be a winner.

Um … News flash: That’s not the real world, people. Last time I checked, not everyone was a winner. Why all of a sudden is this movement of protecting kids from the real world making such drastic strides? Better yet, why is it happening at all?

It doesn’t stop there. No, it gets worse. A school has banned the game Tag, where kids run around trying not to be tagged by the person who is “it.” Instead the principal invented a new game called Shadow Tag where students step on each other’s shadows and they’re “it.”

The principal said playing Tag promotes students hitting each other and can cause students to get hurt.

That same principal has banned any kind of student touching at her school. Kids have to do air hugs and air high fives.

Not to sound cliché but this really grinds my gears.

The reporter of the story hit the nail on the head when he called the movement the “Wussification of America.”

There are even schools in Dallas going as far as not allowing students to fail classes. Some schools have set the lowest grade a student can make to 70; others have set it at 50.

What is going on, America?

The idea may be that the kids are being protected from failure now, and not feeling like a loser, but what happens when they hit college and receive that first failing grade? Or they didn’t make the team they practiced so hard for? It’s going to crush them even more because they’ve never felt failure or been rejected before.

It’s time to get back to the tougher side of things. Sure it’s going to hurt when you’re child comes home crying because they didn’t make the team. But that’s when you push them to practice and try again next year.
The sooner this Wussification movement stops, the better off we all will be.