I’ve been unemployed since October.  So when my brother asked me to chaperone his FBLA competition this last Monday I told him I would because well, I didn’t have anything else really going on at the time.  But I’ll be honest, if this is the direction that things are going in I weep for the future generations.

I’ll leave the kids’ behavior out of this since I can simply say that it was abhorrent and leave the rest up to imaginations.  But with this event I could clearly see the direction things are heading in.

Firstly I talk of the ‘competition’ itself.  Not having been a member of FBLA in high school I’m not sure if this is something that has developed since the ‘No Child Left Behind’ policies have come to pass.  Most of the competitions consisted of tests.  There was no real competition, but seemed to be more of an extra-curricular test.  You weren’t graded by how well you could market a product, or how sharp your wit was in executive decisions.  It consisted of rote memorization and so the only competition was who could score higher on the test.

I’m not sure how this really prepares someone to be a Future Business Leader of America.  There were only three items in the competition that I would consider both a) Competitions, and b) showing aptitude for future leadership.  One of them was a category where you were given a scenario and you had to construct the best Network for that particular situation.

Another was actual mock job interviews.  I watched a couple of those.  They were group on one interviews like you might actually see in a large company.  They were graded on who knows how many criteria.  The last thing a web building competition.  You were given a ficticious company and a brief syllabus and you had to build a frontpage for them.

There was two days worth of tests and frivolous competitions such as Scrapbooks.  But mostly just the tests.  In the evening there was a banquet with a speaker.

This speaker told the kids that you needed simply four things to be a great leader: Faith, a Smile, and Followers…his words not mine.  He did not mean Faith, as in faith in yourself..he meant faith as in Faith in God.  The smile, I can halfway see.  He told them to smile through the bad things and to be positive.  I can concede that point.  But the Followers portion was kind of creepy.  As I sat there amongst a sea of young teenagers in black suits this man sounded like he was either starting a cult, or had the briefing on the Dubya business model.

Nevermind Intelligence, Ability to communicate thoughts and ideas clearly, or Charisma; all you needed was faith in god, a positive attitude, and followers to be an effective leader.  He tried to tell stories of people in the past who were told they weren’t good enough but rose above and became famous.  His choice of examples was Einstein, Elvis, and Napoleon.  Why he chose these I won’t know.

But to wrap up, FBLA is essentially something that looks good on a college application and that’s about all it’s good for.  As someone who was deeply involved in Drama in high school, this was not the type of competition that I was expecting.  These young adults were not graded on their ability to perform, their wits, or their ability to lead or sell.  They were graded on who can get the highest score on a test.  Which is how I feel the schools are treating them as well.  They’re not being prepared for the future, they’re being prepared to take a test.  How many of you have ever had to pitch your employer for a business deal and were handed a 50 question test and told whoever scores highest gets the account?  I’m betting no one.