I want to start rejecting the notion that participation trophies are shorthand for everything wrong with our generation.
Kids should be encouraged to participate. Giving them awards for effort is the right way to teach a child to try new things. We don’t need to be competitive to be great, and the antagonism that comes from competition is an unhealthy attitude in our global economy.
There is no real “us” or “them.” If you have never done something before, and you try your best, you should get a pat on the back and parental encouragement. Especially if you suck. Nobody is born good at anything except crying and shitting. Teaching kids that they need to try to be the best is a great way to discourage the bottom 90% of kids from ever persevering when they aren’t immediately successful.
Participation trophies are good. They represent empathetic and informed parenting. The world is filled with people that will knock your kids down, and parents should be the foundation they can rely upon to prop them up. If the me-first boomer generation had gotten a few of them, we would be in a much better place as a species.
Yeah, my worry is they just turn genuine intrinsic motivation into mundane extrinsic motivation. Kids should want to do things out of pure curiosity and interest, not solely because they’ll receive prizes for it. It’s why I like legos so much as a kid; they’re a toy without any external prize or motivator that you play with purely for the desire to create.
I remember doing a group research project on participation trophies as an undergrad. The general consensus that we got from reading the papers was that they were useless as worst, and a bit helpful at encouraging kids and adults to at least try at best.
Next, we did an experiment with students on campus to complete at a simple game to win candy. Results were clear - the participation candy and no impact on performance but did encourage more people to compete.
Then during the final presentation a teammate went rogue and added a weird rambling youtube video contradicting everything else in the presentation without telling any of us that they were doing that. It’s been almost 10 years since then, and I’m still a bit salty over that presentation. But the lesson learned about participation trophies has always stuck with me.
I want to start rejecting the notion that participation trophies are shorthand for everything wrong with our generation.
Kids should be encouraged to participate. Giving them awards for effort is the right way to teach a child to try new things. We don’t need to be competitive to be great, and the antagonism that comes from competition is an unhealthy attitude in our global economy.
There is no real “us” or “them.” If you have never done something before, and you try your best, you should get a pat on the back and parental encouragement. Especially if you suck. Nobody is born good at anything except crying and shitting. Teaching kids that they need to try to be the best is a great way to discourage the bottom 90% of kids from ever persevering when they aren’t immediately successful.
Participation trophies are good. They represent empathetic and informed parenting. The world is filled with people that will knock your kids down, and parents should be the foundation they can rely upon to prop them up. If the me-first boomer generation had gotten a few of them, we would be in a much better place as a species.
I don’t agree with you, kids should be doing things just because they want to.
We should be encouraging them to participate, we should be encouraging them to do what they want.
Did you ever get any of them?
Even we thought they were stupid bullshit when they were giving them to us
Yeah, my worry is they just turn genuine intrinsic motivation into mundane extrinsic motivation. Kids should want to do things out of pure curiosity and interest, not solely because they’ll receive prizes for it. It’s why I like legos so much as a kid; they’re a toy without any external prize or motivator that you play with purely for the desire to create.
That’s why kids love Minecraft so much nowadays, I call that game electronic Legos or digital Legos when they go into creative
This is one of the best counter arguments I have read. Kudos.
I remember doing a group research project on participation trophies as an undergrad. The general consensus that we got from reading the papers was that they were useless as worst, and a bit helpful at encouraging kids and adults to at least try at best.
Next, we did an experiment with students on campus to complete at a simple game to win candy. Results were clear - the participation candy and no impact on performance but did encourage more people to compete.
Then during the final presentation a teammate went rogue and added a weird rambling youtube video contradicting everything else in the presentation without telling any of us that they were doing that. It’s been almost 10 years since then, and I’m still a bit salty over that presentation. But the lesson learned about participation trophies has always stuck with me.