Participating Trophies or Bust
Imagine your last soccer game of the season and running down the soccer field, when you were six years old. You were trying your hardest while others were just lollygagging down the field thinking about the trophy they will receive after the game is over. You scored three goals that game while nobody else even touched the ball more than two times. The final score was three to nothing. All you can think about is how you won the game for your team, but they still get trophies for doing nothing, besides being there for the games . You went to every practice and games while others skipped practices every other week. People who tried their hardest on the team learned teamwork, dedication, skills, and the biggest
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The first reason I conclude they shouldn’t get trophies is because kids don’t learn that everything in life must be earned and not given to them all the time (Website #3). According to the text, kids aren’t working hard, helping others, and improving and learning new skills because they don’t care as long as they get the trophy as a reward in the end (Website #3). The author stated, that kids need to determine that it is okay to make mistakes so you can learn from them and try again (Website #2). An example from the text that shows kids are learning bad life skills is, lots of younger kids don’t understand the difference between winning and losing, which is a positive life skill to learn as a young child (Website #3). For instance, every kid thinks they are a winner because they get trophies but they could have lost every game (Website #1). According to the text, kids also give no effort and just have their eyes on the prize (Website #1). After reading Today (Website #3) I know that kids may just want to come back next season to get more trophies to add to their collection. According to the text, kids think if they participate they are automatically a champion. In the text, it stated how kids may have a bad attitude because they don’t care as long as they get a trophy in return for participating (Website #3). I think all kids should try their best and not get a trophy because they won’t improve if you give them a trophy (Website #1). Overall, participation trophies are teaching younger children the wrong ideas for later on
Our society has shifted its beliefs in how we should treat competition in young people. The question is asked, should all kids get a participation trophy? As it may seem to be an unanswerable question, it honestly isn’t. Thought that the participation trophies may send the message that “coaches” value the kids’ efforts despite their abilities, trophies do not need to be given out. Your words mean just as much when you remind an athlete that you value them in more ways than one. Some may think trophies are a great idea because it shows that everyone’s a “winner.” However, I disagree with that idea. I believe that kids should know that they need to work their hardest in order to be rewarded and understand that not
Handing out participation trophies does not teach kids about the real world. O’Sullivan says, “We reward them for having a parent capable of registering them for a sport.” Participation trophies are for registering and showing up the day they hand out trophies, they are not for hard
According to a community soccer organization in Southern California, “the American Youth Soccer Organization hands out roughly 3,500 awards each season — each player gets one, while around a third get two” (Merryman). This community also spends up to twelve percent of the athletic budget a year on these types of trophies. The way this community values awards to children is not beneficial and does not teach them important life lessons. Giving every child a trophy in a community may cause them to underachieve; on the other hand it can also be a motivator to keep some kids active in sports. In sports as well as life there are winners and losers and children have to start understanding that little by little.
A participation trophy can help a child's drive to improve. When a child plays a game and loses, but then watches the other team get a trophy they feel that they suck and won't try to improve. Once they get a participation trophy they make the child feel like they did good and that next time if they get better they will get a bigger trophy for winning and not losing. For instance, “Further, studies also tell us that children who participate in sports get better…”(Huffington 1). This exemplifies that children who participate feel the drive to get better at the sport. When inferring that since they participated they are getting an award if makes them feel like they did good, and then they want to get even better to get a better reward. Thus making the kids get better at the sport showing that participation trophies are beneficial to children, but there are more opportunities to show how they are
For instance, in this article by Brenda Iasevoli it talks about reality saying, “They’ll soon realize that only one soccer team wins the World Cup, and how only one football team wins the Super Bowl.” By giving kids trophies for nothing they are not prepared for the real world and will expect to win everything. The article Should Everyone Get a Trophy by Lauren Tarshis also talks about the effects of participation trophies saying “In life, most people are not awarded for simply doing what’s required. A student doesn’t get an A just for going to class. An employee doesn’t get a raise just for arriving to work on time.” This quote is another great example of why you can’t give out trophies to kids if the don’t do the work. They will go into the workplace expecting to get what they when they won’t get that unless they work hard. As a result of kids getting trophies when they don’t win they think that they will be able to get things later in life without winning, which is why people need to stop giving out trophies to
Merryman, an author of two books pertaining to her objective somewhat promoting an ethos appeal, is against the use of participation trophies. Her objective is to rid the role these objects have in a child’s life in regards to how they might view losing. The audience she reaches out toward is any adult who is affiliated with children. To
The maxim “trying is the important thing” will only lead to laziness and complacency in life. Trying is very important in being successful, but there are many more important things that are necessary for success. Parents try to boost their children’s self-esteem and make their children happy by giving them participation medals, but this is actually counter-productive. Larger and larger amounts of medals and trophies are given for increasingly smaller achievements, and this “everybody’s a winner” mentality can make children grow up to expect success and recognition for a mediocre performance. Children may be led to underachieve and not try their best, which may lead to idleness and lack of achievement in the truly competitive environment of
The manner in which a kid’s parents react to failure, as she says, is “as crucial as celebrating their success.” The first step to allowing children to realize it is completely fine to lose is having a positive attitude as their superior and guardian. Children look up to and imitate their parents’ actions and beliefs. If parents accept failure as a way to succeed and enhance their skills, then their child will believe the same perspective. Sarah’s parents, wildly upset when her Little League team lost to their rivals, rambled to her about all his errors. They didn’t accept failure as a stepping stone to achievement. Adhered to her parent’s same perspective, Sarah viewed defeat as a weakness. Thinking less of her capability, she didn’t bother practicing to better his performance. At the start of the next season, she didn’t sign up for any sports and became depressed. A kid’s self-esteem plays a vital role in the development of their skills and success. The perspective in which a child views herself affects her effort and performance. Trophies are seen “as vindication” or a justification towards children who have already developed a high-self-esteem. They feel it is what they deserve, which serves as evidence of how great they already view themselves. Participation trophies that aren’t deserved hinder a child’s esteem and effort even more. The praise that wasn’t particularly earned gravitates their minds towards
(Fader 1) When a child is told that trying their best is enough, it makes it much harder for them to deal with losing a game. They will think that because they tried their best they should have won. Instead of noticing plays that their team did wrong, the child will mostly become angry at the other team. Thinking they “should’ve won” because they tried their hardest. This can make the future of a kid a lot more difficult. This is because if they don’t get into the college they want or they don’t obtain a job they want, they may throw a fit. If they can’t keep their anger in check over losing, it can be detrimental to relationships with other people and their own image. This is not the only other reason why trophies should not be given out to children
All Kids Should Not Get Trophy's Do you think all kids should get trophy's? They should not get trophy's because, not all kids practice hard at getting better. Second it will teach the kids a life lesson that will show them nothing comes free in life and u must work for what u want. Third, people think that kids should get trophy's for just participating.
“If everyone is special, no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.” This was a quote said by David McCullough Jr. in his famous You’re Not Special speech. This quote is very true about the great participation trophy debate. This debate has been going on for a long time and has still not been settled. While participation trophies help boost the confidence of non-winners, participation trophies are useless because no one will be motivated to get better of everyone has trophies and trophies cost a lot of money to make.
Why do we get participation trophies. If you are in a sport and your team loses all of its games, but you still get a trophy than deep down you will not be proud of that trophy, it will just bring back bad memories. If you do not feel like you earned the trophy than you will not get any sense of success and accomplishment when you look at it because you would know that you did not deserve it. When someone is given a prize for failing they will not be ready for they real world because they will be used to being a winner even though they really were a loser. In the real world everyone is trying to be top dog, they do not care if you fail as long as they succeed. Everyone has to be prepared to lose and to bounce back from it, because they will
Opponents argue that participation trophies are fair solution in youth sports. However, if both teams received a trophy it would not be fair to the winning team. The team that wins is the team that put forth the proper effort in preparing for the game. Children need to learn that they cannot win everything in life, it is impossible to always win. But at the same time, children also need to learn that it is okay to lose at times. Losing is a great too...
More specifically, Abate argues that trophies will help boost the kids self-esteem. he writes, “ Self-esteem is a big part of one’s childhood. Watching a peer receive a trophy and not receiving one yourself can be degrading.” In this passage, Abate is suggesting that kids deserve something to show that their effort was worthwhile. Moreover, he argues that kids need something to show that their effort was needed to help the team whether they won or not. He writes, “Any kind of honor can make a young kid feel as if he or she meant something to the team, and that could boost the child’s self-confidence -- children today need as much of that as they can get in our society.” In this passage, Abate is suggesting that kids need trophies to boost self-esteem. In conclusion, Abate’s belief is that all children deserve to be rewarded for their work. In my view, Abate is wrong because kids don't deserve a reward for everything they have done. More specifically, I believe that giving children trophies for just playing a sport will make kids feel that they are entitled to things. For example, if a kid has always grown up receiving trophies for their participation they may believe that they deserve a spot on a competitive sports team because they have always been rewarded the same as the other
When kids win a game or many games they can get to confident and become mean and cocky winners, but if kids experience a loss, they can get an understanding for the other team or player. In the article, why we need to let kids fail the author states that kids have a habit of being more fearful to failure and less willing to try new things because they don 't know how they will handle it (Why We Need to Let Children Fail). According to Ashley Merryman, When kids make mistakes in a game, parents and coaches should not twist those losses into decorated wins. Instead, they should be helping the kids overcome those losses, to help them see that getting better over time is more imperative than a win or loss, and to help them kindly congratulate the child or team that thrived when they failed (Merryman). As Dyan Williams stated in her article, “Thomas Edison failed over 6,000 times before perfecting the first electrical lightbulb. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and missed over 9,000 shots in his career. Oprah Winphrey was fired from an early anchor spot and deemed “unfit for TV."” (Dyan Williams). A failure that results from well-made and goodhearted experimentation can be a