Bill Gates, who knows a bit about winning, said “Success is a lousy teacher.  It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”  The once-successful Australian realtor Harry Kakavas probably agrees – now.  Beginning in June 2005, he lost over $1.5 billion in 14 months playing baccarat in a Melbourne casino.  When it comes to losing spectacularly, he’s up there with the 1930s Coca-Cola CEO who repeatedly decided not to buy Pepsi Cola.  According to HistoryCollection.com,” Pepsi went on to eclipse Coke in sales in the 1980s, and in 2005 PepsiCo surpassed the Coca-Cola Company in market value.”  Then there’s Dick Rowe, the head of Britain’s Decca Records who signed megastars like the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Tom Jones, and Van Morrison, and one of the great losers of my generation.  In 1962 Rowe auditioned two new English rock bands and decided that the Silver Beatles didn’t cut it.  He told the manager of the band that became the Beatles that “guitar groups are on the way out, Mister Epstein.” Instead signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes.  Who?  That’s right.

            Pyrrhus of Epirus was truly a world-class loser, although many of his near-contemporaries ranked him as one of the greatest military leaders ever.  When Hannibal was asked to name the three greatest generals of all time, he listed Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus, and himself.  Pyrrhus was a king many times over, and first in 306 BCE when at age 12 he was named King of Epirus in Northwestern Greece.  He lost the throne four years later but regained it  in 297 BCE with the help of Egypt’s Ptolemy I after marrying Ptolemy’s step-daughter.  Pyrrhus eventually married four other women – princesses all.  He defeated the Romans in Southern Italy several times, but lost many men, the battles were deemed indecisive, and that became his trademark.  He arrived in Italy with 25,000 soldiers and 20 war elephants, but lost so many of them, he told some survivors “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”  That’s how the phrase “Pyrrhic victory” came about.  Nevertheless, he then went to Sicily where he defeated the Carthaginians and then the Sicilians.  However, Pyrrhus was an awful king who never paid much attention to actually ruling and after the Sicilians joined with the Carthaginians against him, he sailed back to Greece with two-thirds fewer men than he started with.  On the other, positive hand, Pyrrhus was notably benevolent and brave, always leading his troops from the front line, and he possessed a big toe that couldn’t be burned but  could cure spleen diseases.  He “was killed in a bizarre incident in the city of Argos when, in the heat of battle, an old lady on a rooftop threw down a tile at his head.”  

            Speaking of big-time losers, American school children of today are right up there, too.  A friend recently passed along a shocking article, “The Surprising Reason Kids Can’t Seem to Read Anymore” by Sarah Leeds at Huffpost.com.  She wrote that when it comes to reading for pleasure, “there has been a steady decline over the past 40 years. Thirty-one percent of 13-year-olds reported in 2023 that they ‘never or hardly ever’ read for fun. This is compared with the 29% reported in 2020 and the 8% reported in 1984. In addition, only 30% of eighth graders in the United States read at or above the proficient level, with one-third of 12th graders lacking basic reading skills.”  She listed three main causes for this decline: COVID-19, overreliance on phonics, and “The Screens.”  Immediately after COVID, “students returned to school with approximately 10 weeks less learning in reading compared to a regular year,” and the pandemic “severely limited opportunities for read-alouds and meaningful text exploration, which are the cornerstones of developing a love of reading.”  With phonics, “the pendulum has swung so far toward phonics-heavy instruction that comprehension work, read-alouds and explicit strategy instruction have been significantly reduced or eliminated entirely.  This means that students are becoming proficient decoders without developing the critical thinking and comprehension skills necessary for true literacy.”  She cited a 2024 The Atlantic article that “examined how students arrive at college ill-equipped to read full books. This is likely the result of teachers using excerpts and brief texts to teach reading comprehension in schools rather than whole books.”  This doesn’t engage students’ interest, and “it fails to build their reading stamina and their ability to dig deeply into a text.”

Then there’s the screens.  “According to a 2021 report from Common Sense Media, children’s daily screen time increased by 17% during the pandemic, with 8- to 12-year-olds averaging four to six hours daily.  “Excessive screen time trains students’ brains for rapid, surface-level information processing rather than sustained, deep reading …. Without substantial reading skills, the risk is that future generations will simply be unable to think as deeply and with as much complexity as in the past.”