Entitlement among children is more prominent now, than it ever has been. You see, I attribute a great amount of my success to the way my parents raised me. It was this certain mindset that, if you’re not first, you’re last. If it weren't for this mindset, that my parents instilled in me at such a young age, I probably wouldn’t be in this position right now, making a speech to my fellow Harvard allums. You go to sporting events these days, where everyone gets a medal. You finish last, you come home with a medal… are you kidding me? What's that teaching kids? That its ok to not work as hard as the rest and be the best? Unfortunately that's our society, and its not only in sports, it's in life, you know everybody thinks they should get a job, everyone thinks they should get a good job, but that's just not how it works. If you aren’t smart enough, dont have the qualifications or don’t work hard enough, then you can't expect to get the job over the person that is just better than you. This mentality of everyone should get a job is what we are preparing our generation for. Kids are being brought up thinking that coming last and not working as hard as the other kids is ok, because they're being rewarded for it. You finish 5th, you walk home with a nice 5th place medal, your parents are all …show more content…
Failure is an inevitable part of life, even for the most successful people on the planet. In fact, it's a necessary step on the path for success. So, if the purpose of our schools these days is to equip our children with the tools necessary to succeed then why are we not teaching them to fail? We grow up with this distorted view of the world where failure is not supposed to happen and when it does it means we’re doing something wrong, but that's not the case. Because failure is not the opposite of success, failure is a part of success. Where we get stuck is when we fail, we think, we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not capable