[Eric]

I was actually thinking about this is a semi-serious sort of way the other day .... the whole idea of risk and consequences .... I was listening to some academic on CBC (colonial broadcorping castration) talking about the function of failure in elementary and high schools (substitute your own terms) ... it seems as if failure is no longer an option in most school systems; and the academic thought that this was not a good thing, because we have to, as humans (well, some of us are) take risks in order to learn ... and taking risks involves the possibility of failure ... kind of agree with him .... we can be harming children by protecting them too much, or by shielding them from the consequences of their actions .... (of course, I'm not talking about jumping off cliffs, or playing chicken on the freeway)