I know that a lot of people will take exception with this title, but it is absolutely correct. In this blog I will explain why.
This is a real easy one if you understand just a little logic. Let's say that you are in a race to run a 100 yard race as fast as you can. The way to do that is to run as fast as you can for the full 100 yards. That is what track stars do. I know that most of you are not track stars, but the same concept still applies. Think about it for a second. Running full out for the 100 yards will result in you running your fastest time. Do you understand that?
Now, think about this. What if you started our just walking for the first few yards and then decided to run as fast as you can? Would your time be shorter than running full out? I do not think so and you know that too. Here is the punch line. Once you get behind, you can never catch up to where you would have been had you would have run full out from the beginning.
Now, let's look at it another way. What if your kids have gotten behind in reading or math? Could you then catch up to where you should have been? It is, again, clearly no. True you could have caught up to where you would have been if before you were not putting out much effort, but you can never catch up to where you could have been.
Now, look at a country like China where the kids are working full out almost all of the time. They are well ahead of our kids, that has to be clear to all. Now, do you think that we can ever catch up? We can do better than we are now doing, but we can never catch up with China unless they stop working so hard. What do you think the chances of that are? What do think the chances of us working as hard as we can? Remember also that we first have to stop going down hill from where we started before we can start going up. The data shows that we are still going down and I do not even see that happening very soon.
It really does not matter what the issue is, the principle still applies. You can never catch up to where you would have been had you worked just as hard. In the USA we used to feel that we were behind and so we worked harder in our schools. Now, many people feel that we can take a brake and work hard later. It is true that one can do that, but "You Can Never Catch Up". Are you concerned about the future of the USA and your children? If not you should be!
