they bought us those participation trophies
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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I want to start rejecting the notion that participation trophies are shorthand for everything wrong with our generation.
Kids should be encouraged to participate. Giving them awards for effort is the right way to teach a child to try new things. We don't need to be competitive to be great, and the antagonism that comes from competition is an unhealthy attitude in our global economy.
There is no real "us" or "them." If you have never done something before, and you try your best, you should get a pat on the back and parental encouragement. Especially if you suck. Nobody is born good at anything except crying and shitting. Teaching kids that they need to try to be the best is a great way to discourage the bottom 90% of kids from ever persevering when they aren't immediately successful.
Participation trophies are good. They represent empathetic and informed parenting. The world is filled with people that will knock your kids down, and parents should be the foundation they can rely upon to prop them up. If the me-first boomer generation had gotten a few of them, we would be in a much better place as a species.
I don’t agree with you, kids should be doing things just because they want to.
We should not just be encouraging them to participate, we should be encouraging them to do what they want.
Did you ever get any of them?
Even we thought they were stupid bullshit when they were giving them to us
Yeah, my worry is they just turn genuine intrinsic motivation into mundane extrinsic motivation. Kids should want to do things out of pure curiosity and interest, not solely because they'll receive prizes for it. It's why I like legos so much as a kid; they're a toy without any external prize or motivator that you play with purely for the desire to create.
That’s why kids love Minecraft so much nowadays, I call that game electronic Legos or digital Legos when they go into creative
This is one of the best counter arguments I have read. Kudos.
I remember doing a group research project on participation trophies as an undergrad. The general consensus that we got from reading the papers was that they were useless as worst, and a bit helpful at encouraging kids and adults to at least try at best.
Next, we did an experiment with students on campus to complete at a simple game to win candy. Results were clear - the participation candy and no impact on performance but did encourage more people to compete.
Then during the final presentation a teammate went rogue and added a weird rambling youtube video contradicting everything else in the presentation without telling any of us that they were doing that. It's been almost 10 years since then, and I'm still a bit salty over that presentation. But the lesson learned about participation trophies has always stuck with me.
participation trophies are like a 100 years old concept, they also got them when they were kids
I sent my 9 year old and 8 year old to the store together to grab some milk. I could literally lean over my fence and see them the whole way there and back again. The 9 year old in particular has been chafing and asking for a bit more independence and responsibility, and by all accounts he's quite responsible. They did a quick and good job (I didn't want them to know I was watching for them, but peeking over the fence it was so cute seeing them running side-by-side, in-time with the shopping bag between them.)
Several people were like, "you sent your children to the store By tHeMSelVEs?!?"
Like, what part is this is so fucking ludicrous. It was two blocks. I'm like, "Do we have a problem with people running over children with their vehicles in this town? How many in the last year? 10 years? How about abductions? Lots of those? You know someone that had their children kidnapped recently?" I mean, I get that there's always a possibility, but at what point are we damaging kids by coddling them and stifling them? I even gave them explicit instructions on what to do if an adult is being weird, tries to take them, or get them in their vehicle. Ironically, I can't remember the last time someone freaked out because I put them in a steel box and zoomed down a winter highway at 100km/hr. I don't want to be flippant, but I'd be surprised if the chance of being abducted was higher than the chance of choking to death eating candy. Probably more likely to get run over outside the school by some strung-out parent late to drop their kid off.
Educate me if I'm wrong, but sometimes certain risks just seem to be disproportionately weighted.
The generation that created participation trophies is the generation bitching about them
In certain wealthy suburban areas there are still plenty of kids walking to and from school. If you're unfortunate enough to be driving a car during school arrival/dismissal hours, you'll notice this because the speed limit is 15 mph for like 2 mi radius all around the schools.
the speed limit is 15 mph for like 2 mi radius all around the schools.
Damn. In most respects, I'd describe Australian urban planning as "American, but a little bit better".
But you guys seem to to this better. Here, school zones are 40 km/h (I dunno, like, 25 in mediaeval units?), and seem to last about 50 metres beyond the school boundary at best.
Edit: oh and I just remembered, my city's Lord Mayor used the fact that school zones are 40 as an argument against listing the speed limit in small residential streets to 30. "If it's good enough for kids, it should be good enough for adult cyclists and pedestrians!" seemed to be his angle.
The other problem is many residential streets in Australia are too fucking wide. One minor connecting street near my house could almost fit two lanes in each direction, plus parking on both sides. It's absurd, and any wonder people end up speeding on it. On the plus side, all of that space could easily be converted into protected bike lanes. Hell, throw in a wide footpath on either side too, and you'll still have a lane in each direction.
True, definitely a big problem. But from what I've seen, that's also a problem in America, so fell into the "we're America but a little bit better" camp.
Making things about entire generations rather than specific people or groups of people is overly simplistic.
A generation is a group of people
It is possible though. Just give them a bus pass/cash.
Most suburbs and almost all rural areas have trash tier/literally no public transportation. Bus pass won't get you anywhere when you have to wait 3 hours to go two towns over.