The Participation Award Days Have Destroyed not Improved Our Children

A message from Telegram's CEO, Pavel Durov and More Thoughts You Need to Know

Pavel’s commentary starts here, followed by a few thoughts we’d like share…

Following the success of the Chinese startup DeepSeek, many are surprised at how quickly China has caught up with the US in AI.

However, China’s progress in algorithmic efficiency hasn't come out of nothing.

Chinese students have long outperformed others in math and programming at international olympiads.

When it comes to producing outstanding performers in math and science, China's secondary education system is superior to that of the West as it fosters fierce competition among students, a principle borrowed from the highly efficient Soviet model.

In contrast, most Western schools discourage competition, prohibiting public announcements of students' grades and rankings.

The rationale is understandable — to protect students from pressure or ridicule.

However, such measures also predictably demotivate the best students.

Victory and defeat are two sides of the same coin.

Eliminate the losers — and you eliminate the winners.

For many students, motivation to excel in high school comes from treating it as a competitive game, striving to rank first against strong opponents.

Removing transparency in student performance can make school feel meaningless for ambitious teenagers.

It’s not surprising that many gifted kids now find competitive gaming more exciting than academics — at least in video games, they can see how each player ranks 😵

Telling all students they are champions, regardless of performance, may seem kind — until you consider how quickly reality will shatter this illusion after graduation.

Reality, unlike well-meaning school policies, does have public grades and rankings — whether in sports, business, science, or technology.

AI benchmarks that demonstrate DeepSeek's superiority are one of such public rankings.

And more are coming.

Unless the U.S. secondary education system undergoes radical reform, China’s growing dominance in technology seems inevitable.

Our Thoughts

The two largest countries population-wise are India and China.

The entire U.S. student population in 2002 equaled 33% of the Indian and 25% of the Chinese student population.

And?

That means their TOP students are equal to ALL our students…

During the 1960s and early 70s, the U.S. HAD BEEN in the top three in all sectors of OECD testing - math, science, and literacy.

Today, the OECD - initiated in 1961 - the measurements used by the OECD have been weaponized by Liberal agendas and their ratings are not so clear cut as they were 50, 60 years ago.

Overall, for the same categories in the 1970s, the U.S. is now in the 30-percentile and sliding slowly downward for the past few decades.

China and India?

India’s last participation in the OECD PISA tests was in 1979 - they placed 72nd out of 73 countries (they withdrew in 2022).

China’s OECD scores [ archive (opens in our online library) ] only reflect the students of Hong Kong - the CCP won’t permit their students to participate in the PISA testing.

Despite the U.S. having the best-surveyed education system on the globe, U.S. students consistently score lower in math and science than students from many other countries.

According to a Business Insider report in 2018, the U.S. ranked 38th in math scores and 24th in science.

Literacy will depend upon State as some States have high school students who can not read nor comprehend what they just read - Seniors in high school literally have a 3rd grade literacy rate.

While discussions about why the U.S. education rankings have fallen by international standards over the past 3 decades frequently point out that government spending on education has failed to keep up with inflation, they are ignoring the overall consequences of undisciplined curriculums.

Too many education systems have lowered their standards to meet the students’ level - it should be the other way around.

What has kept this from being the other way around is the Liberal enforcement of entitlement, complacency, enablement - and just dumbing down the overall education system.

What is being observed is even the studies of education progress are biased - Best Countries studies will use different methodologies or emphasize different criteria, which often leads to different results.

For example, the Global Citizens for Human Rights' annual study measures 10 levels of education from early childhood enrollment rates to adult literacy.

What Do You Need to Do?

Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are being denied a proper education.

Period.

Critical race theory, participation awards, disruptive classrooms, and biased, controlled narratives that will not permit competitive responses are just the tip of the iceberg.

What stands out to those exercising their due diligence - both homeschooled and private schooled children are the best students in colleges as well as trades after high school.

Employers hiring college students know from the get-go they have to train or even retrain their new employees as they have not been prepared for working in the real world.

Higher education institutes like Hillsdale College and Liberty University, which do NOT accept federal or state funding, are graduating students ready and already ahead of the college graduates of the federally funded institutes.

Most private college students are well-rounded in the arts, literature, languages, science, and mathematics.

But none of this is possible unless parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents alike are waving the white flag to discipline.

The more children fight expectations, the longer they have been permitted to reign their lives as they see fit - if this is your child, hunker down and BE the parent your child deserves.

Children are better self-disciplined when they know what is expected out of them - and we’re not talking tyrannical leadership out of the parents.

Children need to feel safe at home, and they will even when being properly disciplined as well as loved.

BE the parent you wish your parent was or couldn’t be (for whatever reason).

By being that parent, you are assuming leadership in the home - and leaders always expect pushback and have performed their due diligence in how to manage that pushback.

Relying on the President is one thing, but he can not do your job as a parent.

Have at it…