The Snowflake Theory

If you frequent Fark.com, as I do, you've run across a phrase occasionally referring to someone as a "snowflake". There isn't a clear cut definition, but if I had to try, it would go something like this:

Snow•flake [/ˈsnoʊˌfleɪk/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciationsnoh-fleyk]:
-noun
1. Refers to a child, usually of a middle class to upper middle class family, who's parents belief is such that; regardless of the child's actual abilities and/or interests, that child should be allowed to participate in the most elite, or near elite echelons of an activity. The results of being denied these opportunities are usually a protest, or legal action, up to and including a lawsuit.

It's certainly been a subject of debate that enacting "No Child Left Behind" and other various and sporadic academic standards may have, in fact, academically crippled our most capable children. Because football is more important that music, we may have lost, or at least displaced, the next Mozart.

The Snowflake Theory runs as such: Every parent believes that their children are beautiful, capable and can be anything that they want to be.

Reality tells a different story: There are things you are good at, and things you are not good at. The things you are not good at, will not put food on your table.

So, the dilemma then is whether or not you can tell these kids that they may never amount to being more than a cashier at Walmart. Not that there is anything wrong with cashiering at Walmart. We still need people for that.

In all fairness, we cannot allow a public education system to nurture our children in the way they need to be in order to encourage the development of skills that they are most. And, well... home school produces inconsistent results at best (I've seen 16 year olds run to windows because they weren't acquainted with the concept of a train). Private schools don't really turn a better education for your child either. Classes are smaller, sure, but it's a business. And tutors are so expensive.

The solution is always more spending in education, but there will always be someone that suffers in the end.

To this day, I still feel that I was capable of more than I was given to learn in school. I still learn a lot everyday, I make it my goal to, but the fact is, at 18, you're not equipped to make the decision on which education will lead to a career you'll want to tend for the rest of your life. You're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education. What if you don't like it? That's why I didn't go. I'd known too many people who'd placed themselves in crippling debt for careers that they didn't want.

Then again, how can you discern who should be getting the extended attention? I mean, it's obvious that if you're suing, you probably don't belong there. And who has deluded themselves in to thinking they deserve that attention?

Not me obviously.

I'm fucking awesome.