You know how we give trophies nowadays to every kid who participates in athletics, under the guise that we are being “fair”? Well, now the City of Baltimore is taking that further, by extending their participation trophies to grades in schools.

It’s lunacy. They’re creating a system where students who fail to meet the standard, instead of repeating the grade, get pushed through the system with a series of convoluted tags, ‘NC’ for no credit, ‘S’ for satisfactory, turning failure into an acceptable norm. But we’re not doing them any favors, we’re setting them up for greater failure, fostering a culture where mediocrity is rewarded, where failure is not an obstacle to overcome but a convenient loophole to exploit.

There is a time-honored reason we hold students back: to teach them that failure has consequences, to give them the chance to master the basics at their own pace before they move on to more complex tasks. We’re not punishing them, we’re preparing them.

This school district is a disaster, a catastrophe, a disservice to its students. 23 schools, mind you, where not a single student is proficient in math. Ninety-three percent of 3rd to 8th graders are performing below their grade level in math. Reading skills? Not any better. Three-quarters of the students test at an elementary reading level.

This is not education, it’s an insult to the very concept. It’s a travesty, a mockery of learning. The architects of this inane policy might as well have been graduates of these substandard schools.