> But these self-assured graduates of schools where everyone gets at least a

> "B" and sports programs where everyone gets a trophy are not about to listen
> at all, even to constructive comments!  I find myself in exactly the same
>dilemma as Branford Marsalis: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5rz2jRHA9fo

Here an excerpt from Senior Demon "Screwtape", addressing a class of graduates, and describing some of the latest initiatives being used to derail humans:


"In that promising land the spirit of I’m as good as you has 
already begun something more than a generally social influence. 

It 
begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its 
operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to 
say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the 
tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as 
we ourselves will play our part in the developing.

The basic principle 
of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” 

These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the 
students get good marks. 

Entrance examinations must be framed so that 
all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have 
any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. 

At schools, 
the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and 
mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that 
children used to do in their spare time. 

Let, them, for example, make 
mud pies and call it modelling. 

But all the time there must be no 
faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. 
Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English 
already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” 

An even more drastic scheme
 is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may 
be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright 
pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group 
throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT."

- C.S. Lewis: "Screwtape proposes a toast", 1959.

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