Linda Hall: Rampant positivity is unfair

"Can you in image Richie McCaw putting on a yellow jersey because his team was thrashing the Aussies."

At last someone has said stop! Stop mollycoddling our children and lavishing them with praise for every little thing they do. Stop telling them it's okay to fail instead of urging them to succeed.

University of Melbourne Professor Stephen Dinham is urging teachers to stop lavishing children with praise and never allowing them to fail. He says the untested learning style is threatening to do them more harm than good.

The Professor said "self boosting where students were saturated in rampant positivity" could be dangerous when they get out into "the big bad world and find out they are not so good".

He went on to say that a lack of honest and helpful feedback was leading to confusion for our children.

I couldn't agree more. Whatever happened to giving praise where praise was due.

Imagine those students leaving school thinking they are good at anything they turn their hand to, only to discover in fact they are not. How demoralising for them.

Far better that teachers tell them the truth. No Johnny that's not how it's done. This is how it's done. After all isn't that what teachers are there for? To teach, help and guide these children so they do succeed.

Yes we should encourage our children but they need to know if what they are doing is the right way to do it.

This report comes on the heels of a fair play charter introduced by the Howick Pakuranga Principals Association.

The charter is to encourage East Coast Auckland primary schools students, coaches and parents to play nice.

That's great, however, one of the clauses allows coaches to intervene when the points difference is 40 in rugby, 15 goals in netball and seven goals in soccer. The coaches can then take players from the winning team and put them in the losing team. This was because "children could be devastated if the losing margin was too high".

Unbelievable. What sort of message does this send these kids. The kids in the winning side might decide not to play so well because what's the point if you are only allowed to win by a certain margin.

I'd love to hear what the All Black coach thinks of this.

Can you in image Richie McCaw putting on a yellow jersey because his team was thrashing the Aussies.

It just wouldn't happen in any adult professional team so why teach these kids that help will come along if they get too far behind.

To me that is sending a message of no confidence - we know you can't beat these people so here is some help.

I can remember being in netball teams at primary school and being thrashed. It wasn't a nice feeling but it made me want to do better next time so I didn't feel like that again.

And the coach certainly didn't say "oh well never mind". She made suggestions to improve ourselves, made us practice and practice until we did improve. Plus the feeling of winning a game is fantastic.

Kids need to feel disappointment in order to feel the glory of success.

You can bet that every professional sports player has at some time been on a losing side.

That desire and determination to do better is what makes them successful.

I'm sure their coaches don't lavish praise on them after every game ; that is apart form Mike Hesson.

-Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today.