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I would agree with this, and also that the 'damage' caused by "Everyone gets a trophy" is overstated immensely. My experience having coached children's basketba

• J-dawg 9y ago
  On the subject of "everyone gets a trophy", I can't believe this still happens, because I've only ever heard it described in derisory terms. I've never heard anyone say "the school gave my kid a 14th place ribbon, how cute!". It's always "can you believe they give out ribbons for 14th place now?!" Kids are pretty astute at picking up on this stuff, and I expect that being given a 14th place ribbon just feels a little sad and pathetic to a kid. It probably doesn't do any real harm either, apart from contributing to landfill waste!
  • sailfast 9y ago
    Most of the time kids just get "season" markers. Like, "Thanks for playing on our soccer team 2017" which I don't see as that harmful. They're trophies sometimes, simple white plastic base with some gold circle or whatever (at least the few times I've seen it) - it's a nice way to close out the season and have something on the shelf to remember, not a huge deal. I think kids notice when the trophy says "First Place." I know I knew the difference.
    • Bartweiss 9y ago
      Yep. I've never actually seen a "14th place" ribbon, because I think even optimists know it would just be read as an insult. All I actually got were 'participation' awards, which were basically a trinket to remember the team or event by. There was a "protect kids self-esteem" bit, but that was entirely at the top end - there was no trophy saying "First Place". I certainly never saw trophies 'celebrating' losses.
  • brians 9y ago
    By contrast, my kids (all <8) are highly motivated to go to swim class on cold days by the ribbons given out—every participant, every class.
    • Bartweiss 9y ago
      I wonder how much of this 'debate' is actually just people talking about different age groups? A participation ribbon might well have motivated me at age 6, and frankly I doubt both the morality and common sense of anyone saying a six year old is too happy at a swim class. Keeping kids involved at that age seems like the biggest goal. On the other hand, I have annoyed memories of getting participation ribbons at 15 for doing terribly in races. They felt downright insulting, because I knew exactly how I'd done and I was basically getting a ribbon for taking a bus to the meet. A shocking number of educational issues seem to boil down to "6 year olds are not 15 year olds". That, and "offering things is better than enforcing them" - participation ribbons are way better than banning score-keeping, which I also got to see.
      • crawfordcomeaux 9y ago
        Oh this is a BRILLIANT point! We almost never breakdown our perspectives based on age, much less take a moment to reflect on which of our ages is being represented by a thought. I think the natural bias to put discrete values on things existing on a spectrum is where is all stems from. "We want to keep things simple, so here's this recipe for self-esteem" as opposed to "here's an age-based breakdown of ways to build self-esteem". Even then, the "enlightened" example is missing loads of other conditions, like if the person suffered emotional abuse or has automatic negative thoughts. Also, banning score-keeping is the naive approach. I think an interesting one would be to add a game score & encourage both teams to collaborate to increase it. I don't know how it'd effect things, but it'd be fun to find out!
    • mamon 9y ago
      Maybe they just compete with their peers on number of ribbons - which changes it from "participation ribbon" to an actual prize.
    • 9y ago
  • Clubber 9y ago
    I would imagine getting a 14th place ribbon is akin to having to wear a dunce cap.
    • SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
      Of course it depends on how many people are in the competition. It's not the absolute placement that matters, it's the percentile. Coming in 14th in a 20-kid elementary school class is poor (though someone has to). Coming in 14th place in the Tour de France is damn good. You might not win a medal but you'll probably get sponsorships from cycling equipment companies.
    • mars009 9y ago
      To their eyes is bragging rights that you were able to get last. It wasn't long before medals for places below 1,2 & 3 were removed. Kids are pretty smart (way smarter than some people/parents think they are) and they know how far they can go, and what they can get away with.
  • Bartweiss 9y ago
    Do people actually give out 14th place ribbons? I've only ever seen "everyone gets a participation ribbon", which stops specifying places past 3 or 5. More broadly, though, I definitely remember ignoring all of this stuff as a kid. We weren't allowed to keep score during soccer games because it "wasn't about winners and losers". (One wonders why we were playing a competitive sport, then.) Not just "score wasn't kept" but "get in trouble if you're heard talking about score". So... we had to keep score when coaches and refs weren't in earshot. That was the entirety of the result. If anything, it sort of felt like something we did to protect the fragile adults! After all, the winners still made fun of the losers every game, nothing had changed, but now the adults didn't have to see it happen.
    • satsuma 9y ago
      It was always sort of funny to me to have our ten game soccer season of "we don't keep score" followed by the top performers advancing to playoffs, including a championship. "We don't keep score, there's no winners and losers, but if we win this game we make the postseason."
    • J-dawg 9y ago
      Yeah, I don't see what's wrong with a souvenir to remember the season by. That's not coddling kids, it's just giving them a trinket that will hopefully bring back nice memories. Amateur adult teams do the same thing in the form of t-shirts etc. I agree that this has been blown out of proportion, as csydas said in the parent comment. Criticising participation trophies is mostly a way for certain people to signal that they don't buy in to "all that millennial snowflake bullshit". How much harm can it really do? Having said all that, having to play soccer while secretly keeping score does sound crazy!
    • projektfu 9y ago
      I received a 16th place ribbon in a cross country race in middle school. I thought it was silly but my Dad kept it for a long time. I don't think everyone got a ribbon, though. Maybe the top 20.
  • mars009 9y ago
    The best part is when kids compete for that last place ribbon. Makes for some ridiculous races where everyone is barely running.
    • xorcist 9y ago
      This is a thing with professional athletes as well. See for example the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterne_rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterne_rouge .
• icc97 9y ago
  Parents on the side of sports games seems to be a problem the world over. I've heard of it directly in both Belgium and England with Football (Soccer) games. Parents will subvert the will of the coaches wanting their kid to shine rather than as part of a team. Parents and grandparents will continually scream to their children what to do or abuse at the referee.
• usmeteora 9y ago
  agreed, and this happens in academics too. The helicopter parents who make their kids feel worthless outside of their GPA and ability to get accepted into the top 10 colleges, is disconcerting. One of my college roommates parents was a Professor at MIT, and even though he got into an engienering school ranked right under it, his parents treated him liek the failure of the family and despite him being capable of great things, he had already been labeled as the failure in his family for ONLY having a 3.8GPA at the number 3 school in the world and mine as well work at McDonalds if he was going to destroy the family tradition of going to MIT, producing 45 patents, getting a PhD and writing 3 textbooks before the age of 30. The kid was capable and accomplished an amazing amount but he really viewed himself as quite worthless and had a hard time getting a job after college due to his crushing lack of self esteem. This is the opposite extreme but so is getting 35 trophies for a 5th grade soccer team. I think both are extremes and the conversation needs to be recentered around the idea of grade inflation and positive self regard. Again, you can have positive self regard for kids and NOT give them a trophy just for showing up to school. Theres a large medium here. The biggest benefit of consistent positive self regard (which can exist without trophies and claps for every minor positive step in life) is the ability to prevent downward spirals where kids beat themselves up and begin to internalize the negative feedback and continually snowball their lack of self esteem to where they really handicap their ability to grow, as illustrated by my friend in the example above. if a child is labeled as bottom 30% of the class or the team in middle school, negative feedback is more likely to keep him locked in the negative self image he has, instead of the belief by teachers that he/she has the ability to improve. Regardless of if the kid will ever be the top 10% or is naturally more talented than the top 10%, thats NOT the point of continual positive self regard. The point is to continue trying and learning and self improvement. Labeling kdis in boxes really does limit their ability to grow and change their status and lets be honest, teachers are NOT always the best/the most right about knowing who is more intelligent and smarter, and these things can change alot from middle school to highschool. You don't have to give the bottom 30% of the kids the same grades or trophies, but you can treat them with positive regard, and by doing that remind them they are human and that you believe in their ability to grow. Nothing sucks worse than a teacher immediately writing off a kid as locked in a certain status range. They might actually begin to believe it, and if you don't beleive individuals have the ability to grow and learn beyond their initial casting/grade heirarchy then you really shouldn't be teaching and furthermore, I find these justifications by teachers more of an excuse for the fact that the U.S. is bottom ranked globally right now as a first world country for education. Youre a TEACHER. you job is to enable learning not say its just the way it is that the Straight A kids will always be the straight A kids and vise versa and really you have no control over it. If you feel that way, then please go find another job. I would say negative feedback is far more damaging, and furthermore, the lack of negative feedback does not require trophies and delusional inflations of self worth that apparently according to the author also equal caccooning children from the consequences of life at every step. This is just false.
• deleted 9y ago
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