Do We All Deserve Gold? Setting Kids Up To Fail By Vivian Diller

Recently, the topic of participation trophies and direct achievement has been debated among parents, schools, and coaches as it seems that within every event, children are awarded with some form of acknowledgement. Plaques, certificates, medals, and trophies are thrown at kids left and right; but, do they have a significance in a child’s overall ability to discern achievement from failure? Or do these seemingly meaningless trinkets have more worth in memory and core values like perseverance and commitment?

In the 2011 essay “Do We All Deserve Gold? Setting Kids Up To Fail”, Vivian Diller, PhD, writes that “awards can intensify competition, impact self-esteem, get parents too involved and add tension among coaches, but they also teach kids about winning and

losing, about success and failure.” In opposition, Lisa Heffernan claims in her article “In defense of participation trophies: Why they really do teach the right values,” that she “never had to teach [her] son that he would need to win competitions in order to be rewarded. Life, many athletic defeats, and other setbacks taught him that lesson.”

The conflicting idea of participation trophies between the two authors is the overall effect they have on a child’s discernment of what achievement is. For instance, Diller incorporates thoughts from Carol Dweck, a Stanford researcher that studies children and how they cope in adulthood and successfully backs up her claim that parents should praise kids for “their approach to difficult tasks [and] their ability to strategize and concentrate” rather than simple participation. Similarly, Heffernan includes the beliefs of Kenneth Barish, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and argues that “the idea of giving trophies only to the winners doesn’t emphasize enough of the other values that are important” and adds that parents should “remind kids that we value their effort, regardless of ability or results.”

The values that each author holds to these trophies is significantly different than the other and can easily be identified through the recurrence of certain terms. In support of the trophies, Heffernan continuously uses the words perseverance, commitment, and effort. This correlates with her beliefs that participation trophies are more than a piece of cheap metal or plastic, but hold a more symbolic significance for children. In comparison, Diller’s values can be seen as success, dedication, motivation, and endurance. In relation to her opinion, Diller’s repetition and reiteration bring her values forward and redefine the trophy as a symbol of triumph and attainment that holds a significance of accomplishment over others and self.

Another disparity between the two authors is their definition of “participation” and “achievement.” While Diller believes that participation is related to undeserved praise or acknowledgment of minimal effort, Heffernan deems that participation is the acknowledgement of minimal effort simply because “participation” might be someone’s best effort and therefore is an “achievement”.

In juxtaposition, Diller’s definition of “achievement” is to be the best within a group of people and outdoing them rather than just outdoing a personal best. This division of thought is apparent through the author’s individual anecdotes and how different their life experiences are. At one point, Diller was a competitive ballet performer, constantly fighting for a spot on stage and learning from an early age that your best sometimes isn’t enough to get where you’d like to be. Diller remarks that this gave her “a fierce determination to do [her] best at whatever [she] chose to do.” Contrastingly, Heffernan refers to her son’s younger self and how even as an adult, he keeps his participation trophies “as a fond memory of a team that showed up, played hard and- if [she] recall[s] right- lost every

game.”

The effects of participation trophies are still under debate, as no real research pertaining to just the significance of participation trophies has been done yet. However, Diller and Heffernan have proved that these trinkets do have some meaning, whether or not they’re awarded for participation. They’re held as memories, motivators, and reminders to ourselves of who we were, who we are, and who we have the potential to be.