My niece is a Daisy and she sold Girl Scout cookies for the first time this year.  Needless to say, hubby and I were ecstatic.  No more hunting for someone to buy the cookies from.  So my sister ended up having an issue come up.  There is a classmate/fellow Daisy that my niece is friends with.  My sister is also friendly with the mother.  The mother saw a Daisy from another troop and the girl had a lot of badges.  The mother was talking about that, wondering how the heck that girl got all those badges.  Basically, the mother was hung up on how her girl can work it to get tons of badges.  She was seeing this as a competition because her daughter's troop members don't have many yet.  My sister was bugged by this for a few reasons.  First, the mother was only concerned with accumulating awards, not the learning activities involved.  Second, there was no admiration for the girl's accomplishments.  Third, it was clear that there was a competitiveness at the root of the mother's attitude.  To my sister this was strange.  To me, it was not.

Here is why:  the mother graduated from where I work.  My sister and I did not.  My sister and I grew up in a place and schools that valued hard work, grades that were earned, and community over competition.  Sure, there were problems.  It wasn't all roses and sunshine.  However, we were not and are not competitive people and my sister is having a hard time with being confronted with this.  My sister has also not taught in any district near here, so the climate here is very different from her experiences.  She walked her neighbourhood with my niece, meeting people, and tying to sell her cookies.  This mother bragged about having her husband bring the order form to work and just having people fill it out if they saw the form there.  Minimal effort, maximum result.  And what does her daughter learn?  She had to do no work and will probably earn a badge.  And the mother is OK with that.

I had to tell my sister that this is my daily struggle at work.  I want my students to put in the effort for the grades they earn.  The push back I get when I refuse to award a decent grade for minimal effort is profound.  They learned this from their parents.  I have cousins who went here and we are the age of my students' parents.  They want to have the nice house and the Mercedes in the driveway without knowing how to work hard and save their money.  And at the same time, they denigrate anyone who is not as fortunate as them and in need of public assistance.  The irony is amazing.

And yet, I have colleagues who have framed me as competitive.  Here is why:  if you do not work hard, when you are confronted with someone who does work hard, you have to frame that person's intentions as something negative.  My sister and I are not and never have been competitive people.  Yet status conscious colleagues (the right car, the right town of residence, the right brands) are competitive, without the work ethic.  They pretend they have the work ethic, but scratch the surface and it isn't there.

And I really don't care about them.  But I care about my students, the work ethic they learn from us, and the satisfaction that comes from doing a job well with maximum effort.  And trying to get them to understand that is such a struggle.   They will grow up thinking they deserve all these rewards and benefits without putting in the effort and work.  And then they will believe those that have been dealt a raw deal in life and get some sort of help as takers.  They will not realize that they are takers.