RAISING BOYS? OR RAISING MEN

Recently there have been a lot of articles and opinion columns published about how to raise boys. Apparently girls can raise themselves but boys require extra assistance. As a boy myself I can understand. In addition I also participated in raising a boy. I know we often need additional care and feeding. These published items seem to be in response to the shooting in southern Florida.

I looked at some of them. They seem to hold the opinion that boys are raised as fighters and that is the reason we have problems in this world. My wife concluded that the authors of these pieces seem to think if we didn’t raise fighters, we wouldn’t have fights. The alleged studies that were done come to the conclusion that we need less competition. We shouldn’t have winners and losers, just all winners. Participation trophies for everyone. Nobody loses. All outcomes must be equal regardless of the effort or talent exercised. The need to compete, they conclude, is the reason boys become fighters.

Let’s look at this. Sports teams are taught to fight to win. Aside from sports teams, how about spelling bees? How about science fairs? Then there’s the whole grade thing. Studying hard to earn an A is competition, isn’t it? If we just didn’t have this ugly competition thing we could all be winners, right?

What these authors seem to want is for us all to just “live and let live.” We can all just sit around and sing “Kum Ba Yah.”

Well, I have some harsh news for these authors and their conclusions. To survive in the world, we must be willing to compete. To be successful in any business venture, we must be willing to go the extra mile. Some are going to win, and some are going to lose. Those are the facts.

Beyond business there are any of a number of ways we must be willing to be better than everyone else. Consider North Korea, or Iran. Or how about the entire Muslim Islamist movement. Then there’s Russia. Do you suppose these countries and movements are willing to just throw away their weapons and sit down for a civilized conversation? The reality of the world is that some win and some lose. In many cases the losers just die. In some cases entire countries die.

America was born out of revolution. Courageous individuals were tired of foreign interference and foreign rule and decided to create a country of their own.

These founders wrote a constitution. They made laws to govern this new country. They established a military to defend this new country. The whole thing was a giant gamble, but it worked.

Over the years we have had to defend our country and her principles. Often we have had to remind our own citizens of what is expected of them. From time to time we have even had to remind our own government of the guarantees provided to us by the Constitution and the restraints that document puts on the government.

All of this requires people willing to stand up and sometimes even fight. Success is never guaranteed. People who are educated to believe that they are winners regardless of the situation will surely wind up on the losing side of everything. I’m not just talking about boys here. All Americans have a stake in this country. Successful women are just as important as successful men.

So then, contrary to the opinion of these writers, we should not be raising boys but instead we should be raising men and women. Strong, self assured and self reliant, freedom loving, and prepared to fight for what is right. America is not an accident. We are where we are because people have sacrificed and fought for us. We must all be prepared to take up that fight at all times.

Ron Scarbro