[quote=flu][quote=spdrun]It’s healthy to have slacker peers as well as super-type-A achiever peers. Slackers teach valuable lessons to kids as well. How to relax and enjoy life, not run like a headless chicken from organized activity to activity. Play some pickup ball after school. Go to the woods, crack open some beers, and hang out with members of the correct gender.

Success shouldn’t consist of 50+ hour weeks, day-in-day-out with a week or two off per year, only to be made redundant in 20 years and die of a heart attack in 30. Teaching kids how to be type-A heart-attack fodder in their teens is awful.

He played an evil psychopath, but I always found Steve Buscemi’s quote in Con Air to be very apt…

“Now you’re talking semantics. What if I told you insane was working 50 hours a week in some office for 50 years… at the end of which they tell you to piss off?

Ending up in some retirement village… hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time.

Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane?”[/quote]

I don’t think most American kids need to worry about working too hard. That’s part of the problem. Second, there’s nothing cool about throwing away good opportunities. If you want to teach your kids that’s ok, go for it. There’s’ a dozen or so other kids that will gladly take that away who wants it worse than your kid that isn’t motivated..and then you can worry and complain about wealth inequality … Assuming you aren’t wealthy and aren’t leaving a sizable trust fund for your kid…..which since we’re talking about economic “diversity” I would assume that is the case…[/quote]

My kid loved the one high school elective class he took with all the stoners and slackers. It was eye opening. Too much AP