Some people are simply born losers
By James Delingpole
Telegraph UK
Yesterday was my five-year-old's sports day and, as all right-thinking parents do on these occasions, I looked him in the eye and said: "Boy. Are you going to win any races today? Because if not, I shan't bother turning up." The boy looked back at me, lips trembling and said: "Daddy, I will do my best." "Then I suppose that's good enough for me," I said gruffly. "But I still thinking winning would be better."
Of course, I didn't really mean my threat. I turned up to those obstacle and egg-and-spoon races well knowing that a child cursed with my genetic stock has about as much chance of becoming a victor ludorum as Tim Henman has of ever reaching a Wimbledon final.
But that's not the point. What matters is that my children should grow up understanding from an early age the vital difference between success and failure; and that the one is most definitely preferable to the other.
In this, however, it seems that I am increasingly out of touch with our "all shall have prizes" times. At my daughter's nursery school sports day last year, I was told gently by a teacher as I cheered her to victory that "actually we're trying not to do the competitive thing, if you don't mind".
At Cambridge, undergraduates are campaigning to end the tradition whereby exam results are posted for all to see on the "wailing wall" at Senate House, lest those who have landed a Desmond or worse be exposed to undue stress.
At lesser universities, academics have all but given up trying to distinguish between the able and the workshy: it's admissions numbers that count these days, not academic standards. And besides, how can they possibly differentiate between the gifted and the thick, now that so many students are plagiarising their
A grade essays from the internet?
One of the few people benefiting from this sorry state of affairs is my little brother, Charlie, who, though still an undergraduate, happens to run the country's most profitable student essay "reference" site. Perhaps he's so naturally clever that he would have ended up making good whatever his upbringing. But I like to think that at least one reason for his success is that he was raised in such an uncompromisingly competitive environment.
Thanks to various divorces and remarriages, I grew up in a big house with six siblings (halves, steps, etc) and we lived in a state of perpetual dog-eat-dog competition. Whether it was at tennis, croquet or the painting contests and quizzes my father used to organise, we all wanted to be the best at everything.
It was all pretty good-natured - apart from the occasional full-scale wars such as the one where my stepmother shoved a garden fork through our barricaded bedroom door - but none of us lost sight of the important fact that it's the winning in life that really matters, not the taking part.
Free from the well-meaning propaganda of PC grown-ups, all children instinctively understand this. It's why they pick on one another's defects so mercilessly, why they respect the leader of the gang.
Deep down, we all know that the world is an unforgiving place; that it's better to be pretty than ugly, clever than stupid, strong than weak, a winner than a loser.
The bien pensants who argue differently ought to get out more. There are only so many Notting Hill villas to go round. And they're not allocated by some central committee on a rotational basis: you've either got to be born lucky or, more often these days, you've got to fight for it.
So why do our non-competitive schools and universities like to pretend otherwise, with their grade inflation and their dumbing down and their teams of counsellors for any child that looks as if they might be struggling with its maths?
Why are we now so institutionally scared of failure that we will do anything - even if it means denying the superior their due: the sweet taste of victory - rather than confront the awkward fact that in order that some people should succeed others must fail?
The idea, one can only presume, is so as to avoid committing that monstrous crime - very nearly as heinous as capital offences like "racism" and "sexism" - of hurting anybody's feelings.
If only (the thinking no doubt goes) we can teach ourselves that the moron with a special gift for graffiti art is every bit the equal of the first eleven footie star or the school classics scholar, perhaps none of us will ever have to endure the misery that comes with unhappiness ever again.
Yeah right. Unhappiness isn't some man-made construct born of an ugly society's misplaced estimation of success over failure. It's God's way of telling us to pull our finger out. When, for example - as I do almost every day - I find myself cursing the fact that I am not nearly as rich and famous as I deserve to be, I do not yearn for the creation of some fairness commissar to bring people doing better than me down to my level.
Rather I go: "Right. Better write an even more brilliant novel next time. Better turn out an even more hilarious, richly inventive, cleverly argued, impossible-to-disagree-with rant for a national newspaper..."
And when I get my piece printed in this spot and someone else doesn't, I think it's great because it means I've won and they haven't.
It's time that we stopped being so paranoid about failure. We should stop trying to pretend it doesn't exist and start to celebrate it - not as a desirable end in itself, but as a vital spur to greater things.
And who better to provide a role model for this noble cause than the great Tim Henman. He's a loser. A failure even. But he doesn't keep battling his way back to the Wimbledon quarter finals again and again (and again) because he thinks failure's great and he wants a bit more. He does it because the more he tastes the bitter ashes of failure, the more intensely he desires the sweet fruit of victory.
telegraph.co.uk |
