Pros And Cons Of Participation Trophys

Imagine this, you had a difficult game against a rival team, but were able to prevail against them. You would think that the best on the team, you, would get the trophy for winning the game for your team and that you would be celebrated. Think again, as everyone is given a trophy, even the one kid who continued to mess everyone else up and almost lost you the game. What kind of message does it send to kids when they are given a trophy for doing nothing? It breeds contempt and a mentality of expectancy. Henceforth, this stands as reason as to why participation trophies should not be an idea.

The concept of a participation trophy in it of itself, is said to be a confidence and self-esteem booster that gives the kids who tried their hardest

but were not first place some sort of self confidence. This understandable idea can be read in Parker Abate’s, “In Youth Sports, Participation Trophies Send a Powerful Message.” However, this just does not happen as often enough to really be made up as an issue, as almost every kid who tried their hardest know they did and most often are the winners for working hard. When everyone else is given a award saying that they are the winner, it breeds a sense of contempt, that they do not have to try and better themselves at all, as they are given the same treatment as the VIP. When this happens, no one tries their best other than a select few, and when you are shown that the worst on team is being awarded the same as the best, it would make anyone not want to try anymore. Moreover, this can cause issues in later life, seeing as that when someone all their life have been called a winner for basically doing nothing, they are either going to be slapped in the face by life when they try to work, or they will expect something to go their way. Which leads to another big issue that happens currently, a sense of expectancy.
When children are handed something for doing nothing, it will consequently them into having an overly high amount of self importance and that everything will be owed to them. Incidentally, that is a big problem in current society with people thinking that the world owes them something just because they decided to show up. This breeds laziness and an overall sense that they are better than everyone else, which hurts themselves as they will not get anywhere important in life when they do nothing and do not work and expect an award for doing so. Analogous ideas similar to this have been said elsewhere, such as in Betty Berden’s “Participation Trophies Send a Dangerous Message,” in which it states, “Trophies for all convey an inaccurate and potentially dangerous life message to children: we are all winners. [...] We begin to expect awards and praise for just showing up.”
Promptly, it seems more than adamant that the idea of participation awards should be scrapped and given only to those that actually deserve a reward for their accomplishments and that they will have to try harder to get first place again. Those that are not as lucky to get first place and worked to get to where they are should be reinforced that they are doing good, but not by giving them a trophy saying they are the best. All this does is to make the ones who try hard not want to and the ones that were not already working hard continue to slack on into adult life, living a lie in which they think they are better than everyone else and that they should be rewarded just for showing up to work on time.