niceness

Everyone at Troy High is very nice. Students and teachers are careful to not offend anyone. People lay a protective film over others' feelings. Take this as a a good thing, if you wish. 

As Bruce Forhnen, professor of Law at Ohio Northern University puts it, niceness is merely a "shallow set of habits and attitudes more concerned with comfort than engagement, ease than excellence, contentment than striving to do one’s best." In other words, niceness hinders students' potential to do their best in school, and consequently sets them up for failure in the real world. After all, no lessons are taught or learned if everything is sugarcoated. Niceness is simply another word for tolerance, a way to avoid challenging anyone, regardless of whether that someone is being reasonable or not. If one gets too comfortable with others being "nice" to him or her, the slightest form of criticism will seem harsh. Harsh criticism that will be taken as an insult and lead to withdrawal. That, my friends, will not ready you for the very much harsh future in the real world. 

Like Vegas, devoted to "immediate gratification," as described in Marrying Absurd, high schools function in a similar fashion. In its policy to be nice and inoffensive, students get the reward of immediate gratification or approval from their peers and teachers. While it may be a boost of self-confidence, this ultimately will lead to self-destruction in the future. 

If you've skipped the entirety of this post, at least take one idea from it in its simplest form: sugarcoating is toxic and niceness is not nice.