Participation Trophies

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Should Participation Trophies Be Given to the youth?

Participation trophies and awards have been around for years, but it wasn’t until

the early 2000’s that they were really common and popular. Lately it has come up that

participation trophies are a bad thing and all they are doings making the millennials lazy

and poor workers. On the other hand people believe that participation trophies are a

good thing and overall have very good benefits. There are two different articles that give

good example of this feud between supporters and non-supporters. Ashley Merryman,

the author of the article Forget Trophies, Let Kids Know It’s O.K. to Lose, talks about

how trophies don’t change anything in the children or it is harmful. She believes …show more content…

He thinks that through trophies self- esteem will be boosted and kids

will be much happier with progress. Another article called How Participation Trophies

Are Making Our Kids Soft , by Evan Grossman speaks about the problems surrounding

participation trophies, saying “Studies have shown that rewarding kids just for

participating can have a negative impact, producing a self-obsessed, irresponsible, and

unmotivated generation of false achievers.”After reading these articles I concur with

Ashley because people have gone without getting trophies before and they still learned

the skills it takes for team work, but I also to some extent agree with what Parker says

when talks about how trophies boost self- esteem and make the children feel good.

“It’s through failure and mistakes that we learn the most. (Ashley).” This is a

strong sentence given by Ashley because failure is very important at getting better. If the

kids consistently get rewarded for just participating they are being shown that failure is

not an option. “If children always receive a trophy – regardless of effort or …show more content…

But scientists have tested these claims and found them to be false.

(Ashley).” Kids know when they are good and they know when they aren’t good, so

either way high praise doesn’t help them. Kids with high self- esteem are more likely to

feel confident and parent praise can make them narcissistic. While low self- esteem,

praise doesn’t help them. That is the same with trophies. Although I agree with many of

the things written in this article and I believe what she is saying, there are some things

that I have my doubts with. Such as she says that we shouldn’t focus on results, “We

must focus on process and progress, not results and rewards. (Ashley).” But thats all

that anyone focuses on. Its true that it is important to focus practice, progress, and the

process, but I feel as though results are just important as the rest. Another thing that

can be doubted is that although research was done about kids and their self esteem, there are some kids that have low self esteem that praise helps their self esteem a lot.

Many times over, research can be conclusive but it doesn’t always correspond

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