Should Children Be Allowed To Lose Money

Getting an award for participation is a joke. Receiving a prize for no reason is pointless and does not benefit anyone, especially not children. They need to learn early that exerting a little bit of extra effort into something can create new opportunities for them. Kids should not get a trophy for participation because it does not prepare them for the real world or teach them to work to achieve their goals. Learning new things is what the beginning of someone’s life is all about. Giving children trophies for doing nothing does not benefit their point of view on life. In the real world nothing is just given without any effort put into getting it. “... everything in life should be earned and that effort alone is not a cause for recognition” (Heffernan). The people who win need some recognition because unlike the participation winners these days, they actually worked to get their prize, not just show up. Hours of work are put in to get better at whatever it

“At what time of [a child’s] life do we want to bring home the cruelty that somebody’s better than somebody else” (Turner). Keeping valuable information that kids definitely need for their future lives is unacceptable. They need to understand at an early age that life is not fair and that they cannot always be a winner. “‘Self-esteem among young people in America has reportedly been rising since the seventies’” (Diller). Those reports show that self-esteem levels have risen over the year in younger kids because of the establishment of the participation awards. It makes them feel like they matter when they really do not. Colleges will not look for the athlete with the most participation prizes. They look for the best, and only the best. Participation prizes only cause children to have an improper view on what the real world is going to be like and falsely prepares them for