Rewards

Americans are compassionate people. Americans are the first and the most generous to respond when there is a natural disaster--no matter where it occurs. Americans are quick to share the bounty with which they have been blessed with others who are less fortunate. Americans have also shared their technological expertise with developing nations so they could become self-sufficient in many areas.

Americans should be generous with their own. People who are out of work in a troubled economy should be able to collect benefits and should rightly anticipate that those benefits will continue until employment is found.

However, Dr. Phil is right when he says that we must stop rewarding bad behavior in America.

Bill Gates stated it very succinctly when he said, "People should not feel good about themselves until they have done something about which they should feel good."

Our schools are prime culprits in this. Instead of making academic achievement something about which the diligent student can be proud, they reward the 'achievement' of a D+ over a D with equal enthusiasm!

This kind of 'reward' for unsatisfactory performance is not seen on the football field or in the board rooms of corporations and it shouldn't be in our institutions of learning

If we don't begin to apply Dr. Phil and Bill Gates' philosophies to our classrooms, we will quickly lose our edge to nations that demand high achievement of those whom they reward.