Good parenting, good leadership, good guidance, good education, what’s it all about? How do we measure success? What is kind? What is nurturing for our children?
Anyone who watches situational comedies on TV has seen the deterioration in manners and mores. The humor between children, between children and adults and among adults borders on rudeness, and is peppered with lots of sarcasm and belittling. There is a tendency in popular culture to demean, to praise mediocrity while celebrating self-expression for its own sake. The implication is that this kind of behavior is healthy self-expression and illustrates the way we should interact with each other.
In a recent Atlantic Monthly, there was a report of a longitudinal study of men over a seventy year period. The question was, what is success, what is happiness? The results of this study illustrated the fact that true success and happiness has nothing to do with your job, the amount of money you make, the college you go to. It has to do with your relationships in your world. The happiest men had good friends, knew how to relate in their work environment and created healthy balance in their lives.
Ragazzi sets a culture of teamwork and respect. We learn how to treat each other. In my twenty plus years with Ragazzi, I have seen incredible about turns in boys: in their focus, in their attitude, in their self-confidence, in their sense of teamwork, in their relationships.
As parents and adults, it is our responsibility to provide the leadership for our children. It is our responsibility to set the standards for what we want our children to know, who we want them to be. We can fight the culture of meanness by our expectations, by how we treat each other, by how we respect each other.
We can’t expect our children to know the difference between standards put forth on TV and true values that only we can teach them. We hope you will work with Ragazzi to create a world full of considerate, polite and focused young men who will contribute to their community and ultimately lead happy, successful lives.
- Joyce Keil
