Our children need an inherent sense of self-worth which comes from knowing that they are competent, creative, capable individuals. Their outdoing anyone else has nothing to do with that. Children need to know that they are much more than just the grades given to them by the “system”. While the grades are important and mean something, grades are simply one aspect of their personality. It is a mathematical fact that in any classroom half of the kids will be below average. We do the entire nation a disservice by thinking of those students as somehow inferior and conveying that sense to them.