Participation Medals versus Team Cuts with Trophies

[Rhea]

Was just idly thinking about this today and trying to decide _why_ I tend to prefer "participation medals" in sports versus championships or teams that have tryouts and cuts. especially for kids.


Many people say, "at some point they have to realize there are winners and losers" or "at some point they have to face their limitations" or things like that.

And I've always thought; school sports, especially for little kids but indeed all the way through high school and college serve us best, IMHO, when they teach lifetime fitness and joy of movement. Can also include happiness in cooperative teams.

Today I was also thinking, How does that "winners and losers" thing serve us in the community, in life? Doesn't it tend to perpetuate an idea that if you can't do it _best_ you're not worth really anything? So how do you get people to volunteer, to serve as committee chairs, to do the toil and drudgery parts of a team project without being a glory-seeking credit-stealer?

I was thinking, no, I really see even MORE reasons for "participation medals".

There's the huge huge HUGE benefit of a more fit population.
There's the huge huge benefit of improved intersocial skills learned while just having a run/play with others.
There's the pervasive benefit of people who learn, "being there and doing what you can is still a benefit"
There's yet another benefit of learning, if you aren't the best you are still welcome, and still a contributor.

And what do trophies and team cuts teach?
Not much useful.
They do teach that teams made up of many hard workers can test the limits of capability. And that's very cool.

...but it doesn't require sports programs in communities or schools to happen. Those kids became ultra-sporties from their personalities, not because only trophy-leagues were available.


There's a place for both, but I don't think it's in schools. We lose SO MANY people to low fitness by making nothing available to the mediocre in public. The champs will find each other and do fun and entertaining things for us, they never needed trophies to try their best and beyond. They'd have done it anyway with a participation medal, and moved up to a higher level. But for the 99.99 percent who are not top athletes, why turn them off to games and movement?​

 

[Rhea]

It further occurs to me that there is also a benefit for the non-"driven" kids (types B and C?) to have something to do after school instead of "hang out." Recreational "participation medal" type sports would provide our society with a much better latchkey system than saying, "if you're not a winner, go home and sit there, or hang out at a corner."

 

[Playball40]

The problem that I see is that the "winners-losers" mantra is still perpetuated because every game (baseball, soccer etc) has a winner and a loser. And kids know it. So, if you get the kid on the team that is, well, less than athletic, the other kids on the team often ostracize them and make them feel worse than if they didn't play at all (sadly some coaches do the same). Only a scoreless game like in Field of Dreams would really work.

We used to have an afterschool program run by the school when I was a kid. It was called "after school play" and we rotated between all types of sports. We also rotated teams and just played for the "fun" of playing. It wasn't an "organized sports team". Just a bunch of kids playing games each night. AND it was free and run by our PE teacher. Those were the days.

 

[Rhea]

That's exactly the kind of thing I support.

I would also advocate, when there is an actual contest type game, that the winners and losers can actually be minimized with enthusiastic support of individual efforts. Just the way we used to cheer them when they were very young, "Good try!" etc. The way adult after-work teams can work. Changing the emphasis, even though there is still a score.

 

[dx713]

That's exactly the kind of thing I support.

I would also advocate, when there is an actual contest type game, that the winners and losers can actually be minimized with enthusiastic support of individual efforts. Just the way we used to cheer them when they were very young, "Good try!" etc. The way adult after-work teams can work. Changing the emphasis, even though there is still a score.

As soon as there's a score, some kids will want to brag, and try to avoid being "saddled with" the less athletic kids, and you can't re-educate all the parents.
It might be pessimistic, but I think that scoreless or cooperative games are the only way to go. The good point is that they do exist, some people did research on them.

If you need to keep traditionnal sports and scores to appease the parents, some place much more onus on collective play (you can't win alone) and each one finding its place in the team (from the slow but stable heavyweight to the fast nimble, from the bold hothead to the shy but tactical who listens to the coach...).
Around here, the best I know is "baby-rugby" (kind of rugby union without kicks, line-outs, and kicks, 7 vs 7 on a small pitch), but it wouldn't appease parents because Rugby has quite a violent image. Also, it would need extra coaches, as kids playing a rough sport need close monitoring (like kids don't play it rough when they play soccer...).

But I agree with your OP, competitive sports should have no or as little as possible place in school. Pressure to perform in traditionnal education (have good grades or you'll be a poor unemployed forever, hear of the crisis?) is high enough.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I disagree with participation medals.

However, I would like to see how kids sports are handled revamped. The problem isn't winners and losers, the problem is eliminations. There should be none.

I was on the chess team back in high school and that's how it worked--nobody was ever knocked out of a competition. The most inept player would still be in it to the very end.

 

[fromderinside]

I was on the chess team back in high school and that's how it worked--nobody was ever knocked out of a competition. The most inept player would still be in it to the very end.

Except with an eight member chess team and only six slots permitted in competition between schools two members were left out. Damn that coach!

We are equal but not really. Would you hire a frail girl to lift 200 pound small bails of cotton onto a truck? Why not reward one for excelling? Is it a crime for one to have the ability to design your house and for you to pay them handsomely when you can't design the house you need?

Participation is nice and it should be its own reward. If one is participating in a competitive endeavor should not those who contribute most be recognized? How did that from each according to one's ability to each according to one's need thing work out by the way?

 

[arkirk]

I disagree with participation medals.

However, I would like to see how kids sports are handled revamped. The problem isn't winners and losers, the problem is eliminations. There should be none.

I was on the chess team back in high school and that's how it worked--nobody was ever knocked out of a competition. The most inept player would still be in it to the very end.

That sounds like a very strange chess tournament indeed. Chess tournaments are nothing but eliminations. Perhaps you can tell me how the most inept players are still "in it" to the very end.

 

[fromderinside]

I disagree with participation medals.

However, I would like to see how kids sports are handled revamped. The problem isn't winners and losers, the problem is eliminations. There should be none.

I was on the chess team back in high school and that's how it worked--nobody was ever knocked out of a competition. The most inept player would still be in it to the very end.

That sounds like a very strange chess tournament indeed. Chess tournaments are nothing but eliminations. Perhaps you can tell me how the most inept players are still "in it" to the very end.

Loren Pachtel said chess team. Teams compete against teams. Teams may participate in tournaments. But those tournaments are usually round robin in design focusing on team merit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I was on the chess team back in high school and that's how it worked--nobody was ever knocked out of a competition. The most inept player would still be in it to the very end.

Except with an eight member chess team and only six slots permitted in competition between schools two members were left out. Damn that coach!

We had 5 for varsity, 5 for junior varsity--but the JV team wasn't full. Perhaps there were schools with more chess players that had more that wanted to compete than could go but if it happened I wasn't aware of it. I was in the varsity, I had basically zero contact with JV players from other schools.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I disagree with participation medals.

However, I would like to see how kids sports are handled revamped. The problem isn't winners and losers, the problem is eliminations. There should be none.

I was on the chess team back in high school and that's how it worked--nobody was ever knocked out of a competition. The most inept player would still be in it to the very end.

That sounds like a very strange chess tournament indeed. Chess tournaments are nothing but eliminations. Perhaps you can tell me how the most inept players are still "in it" to the very end.

By simply not eliminating anyone.

I forget how the team scoring worked, we never fared well anyway as we didn't have enough good players.

I was the only one on our team that stood a chance on board 1 and I lost most games as my ability and my play style heavily favors a fast game--at tournament speed almost all of them were well above me. (In a high speed game it was quite another matter--I won more than I lost against the very same players when the clocks were 5 minutes/game rather than 40 moves/hour.) Our board 2 player actually won more than I did because he was paired against players a lot closer to his level. Our board 3 player wasn't really more than junior varsity in strength but she had a pleasing face and fairly large boobs--the distraction factor got her a lot of undeserved victories. Beyond that it was whoever was available, definitely only JV material. (Somewhat understandable as we had no school history of a chess team. I'm the one that managed to put it together at all and I wasn't even aware of the tournaments when I did it--I was just trying to organize it as an after-school activity to find other competent opponents--a failure as I already knew the board 2 guy!)

In each round we would be matched against another school, I don't know how the matching was done. Our personal scores were based on how we fared heavily adjusted for the difference in rating (most of the time a loss would cost me 1 point but a win would get me 63--and I pulled off a lot of upsets by my opponent not being good enough at time management and when they were running low I would go on the warpath and play fast--denying them the ability to think on my clock.)

Our personal standings were based entirely on those scores, the tournaments were actually irrelevant (other than we got 5 bonus points for playing board 1, down to 1 for playing board 5--they added these because otherwise the scoring was purely a transfer of points, without an infusion of points a new player would start with a midrange rating which wouldn't be right) other than that they were the only rated games we played.

- - - Updated - - -

That sounds like a very strange chess tournament indeed. Chess tournaments are nothing but eliminations. Perhaps you can tell me how the most inept players are still "in it" to the very end.

Loren Pachtel said chess team. Teams compete against teams. Teams may participate in tournaments. But those tournaments are usually round robin in design focusing on team merit.

They weren't full round robin--tournaments were one-day affairs, playing every other school at tournament time scales in a day is not possible. You have the right idea, though.

 

[thebeave]

This "everyone gets a trophy" mentality that goes on in schools today makes me glad I don't have kids. I'd go effin' nuts if I had to observe all this going on with my kids. I loathe this kind of thing, despite not having been much of an athlete (mental or physical) myself in school. Often, I was the last or second to last to be chosen for PE games. Yeah, it was somewhat humiliating and embarrassing, but I survived, just like kids have for thousands of years. More importantly, it harms kids over the long run:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/opinion/losing-is-good-for-you.html

AS children return to school this fall and sign up for a new year’s worth of extracurricular activities, parents should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers this: “Which kids get awards?” If the answer is, “Everybody gets a trophy,” find another program.

Po Bronson and I have spent years reporting on the effects of praise and rewards on kids. The science is clear. Awards can be powerful motivators, but nonstop recognition does not inspire children to succeed. Instead, it can cause them to underachieve.

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.

Having studied recent increases in narcissism and entitlement among college students, she warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up. In college, those who’ve grown up receiving endless awards do the requisite work, but don’t see the need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.

I like this post in the comments section of the article:

One of the biggest complaints about my generation (millenials) in the workforce is that we're too "lazy", don't seem to care and don't take initiative. The author of this article hits the nail on the head for one reason why this seems to be a trend.

I'm 24 and a college graduate, and my peers and I were constantly praised from kindergarten through college. Like in the article, we all got trophies and certificates of achievement in grade and middle school, high grades in high school (partially so we could get into good colleges) and good grades for just showing up to class in college.

Competitive skills are not inherently developed; they are learned. What we have now is a group of young people coming out of college and high school who are just discovering that it takes more than showing up to succeed in life, and it is in no small part due to the "everybody is special" culture that we were steeped in as adolescents.

 

[Rhea]

We are equal but not really. Would you hire a frail girl to lift 200 pound small bails of cotton onto a truck? Why not reward one for excelling? Is it a crime for one to have the ability to design your house and for you to pay them handsomely when you can't design the house you need?

Participation is nice and it should be its own reward. If one is participating in a competitive endeavor should not those who contribute most be recognized? How did that from each according to one's ability to each according to one's need thing work out by the way?

It depends completely on the goal of the program.

If the goal of the program is to "excel" then by all means, let the people who don't excel do nothing at all and who cares if they drop out because they were not "excelling" and they are not the ones you care about "hiring".

Unless your goal is community interaction and lifetime fitness, in which case, why on earth would you let failure to excel get in the way of participation? Why would you let the people who excel think they deserve to never participate for fun with those who don't?

but nonstop recognition does not inspire children to succeed.

Succeed at what?
Getting together with a group for fun? I think it does inspire them to succeed at that.
Succeed at getting to the olympics? Not really on the radar of 99.9999% of school kids.

I would submit that separate levels are valuable - a fun league and a competitive league. And if there is only money for one, the fun league afterschool serves our community better than a competitive one. If there is money for both, I would encourage the competitive players to _also_ show up for the fun league so that they can learn how to participate, and maybe teach a skill increase or two.

But for schools and parks and rec programs, I do believe our society is better served overall to have everyone doing a little fitness and getting cheered for being there.

Pondering....

Based on some of the quotes, I wonder if it is because some people don't really know how to cheer for participation? The article quoted lamented that they were "constantly praised". Perhaps it was because people didn't know the difference between, "you're really good!" and "we're so glad you're here!" The praise and medals can be accurate and supportive without being dishonest about skill. Maybe some people don't know about that yet.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The praise and medals can be accurate and supportive without being dishonest about skill. Maybe some people don't know about that yet.

Yet?
This 'self-esteem' program has been in place long enough for kids to get entirely through their education and college and into the work force thinking that showing up is something to be praised.
When will it be made clear to these kids that our being happy at their participation did not mean that their course work was worthy of praise? When do they get to know this distiction?

 

[dx713]

The praise and medals can be accurate and supportive without being dishonest about skill. Maybe some people don't know about that yet.

Yet?
This 'self-esteem' program has been in place long enough for kids to get entirely through their education and college and into the work force thinking that showing up is something to be praised.
When will it be made clear to these kids that our being happy at their participation did not mean that their course work was worthy of praise? When do they get to know this distiction?

I think the OP was about school sports, not general education (or, to answer other posters, sports leagues)

All depends on the goals. Do you aim to train good sportsman or promote health and body consciousness? If the goal of school sports is indeed to promote healthier citizens, and leave selection of competitive sportsmen and elite to outside clubs, as it is in my country, I agree with the OP that care should be taken to make everybody have fun mobilizing their body, instead of gearing the activity toward pleasure for the few best.

On general education, a balance must be found. While I understand your concern, helping self-esteem in young people, and especially young people from lower class who don't have readily accessible role-models for academic success is important. Trying to get even the less bright kids see the fun in some academics exercise should lead to better educated citizens, which is good for the whole society.
Where to set the cursor between "educating the citizens" and "selecting and training future professionnals" is an ongoing education debate.

But believe someone from a country with a very "selective" school system geared toward wedding out the masses from the future elites, it's not all rosy. We might have great elites, but in the process of "failing" them out of the way, we disgust out of culture and intelligent debate a lot of kids who, despite not aiming towards intellectual jobs, would have had enough smart to take pleasure in some culture and make some intelligent contribution to the political debate.
A balance has to be found.

 

[doubtingt]

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.

It is critical to note that this cited research is not about the harms of "praise" in general. It is about being praised for "innate abilities" as the quote shows. What Prof Dweck studies more broadly is students beliefs that performance is due to innate abilities versus learning and effort. Basically, she finds that believing in innate abilities is bad for all but those who always perform the best. For those who typically struggle, belief in abilities makes them think they have no chance of doing well, no matter how hard they try, practice, etc.. Even for those they often perform well, in the times when they encounter difficulty, they will infer that this is just something they are not good at, so they quit.

Praise can promote the idea of innate ability, if it comes in forms like "You're so talented" or "You're so good at that!". Such praise uses terms like "good" and "talented" that are inherently relative and imply "better than other people". The reason kids like this praise is that they like hearing that they are better than others.
Not to mention, such praise is a lie when given to the average or below average performer.

But if you praise participation and effort directly, rather than give false praise of "good" performance, then that shouldn't foster notions of performance being about innate ability or notion that one has abilities that one objectively does not.

Note that all of this is separate from the fact that objectively, variance in performance is usually partially due to innate talents. Although this is more true in athletic competition than competition in the "marketplace" which has much to do with luck and lack of ethics. IOW, whether a person lacks the innate talent to be the best at something might be true, but it might also be true that it is better for their future success not to be believe this.

 

[Rhea]

The praise and medals can be accurate and supportive without being dishonest about skill. Maybe some people don't know about that yet.

Yet?
This 'self-esteem' program has been in place long enough for kids to get entirely through their education and college and into the work force thinking that showing up is something to be praised.
When will it be made clear to these kids that our being happy at their participation did not mean that their course work was worthy of praise? When do they get to know this distiction?

The "yet" was exactly that - the people giving the praise not getting the idea that you can praise without being falsely flattering. Make the praise real. As dx713 and doubtingt say above, this is the real gap. NOT kids getting rpaised for participating, but the praisers thinking the only thing worth praising is "talent" or "winning" and then feeling that they are being told to lie about that talent or performance.

And my point was that some people - the praisers! - don't get it yet that you can praise without falsely boosting self esteem.


Why do we want to tear down large participation for the kids just because people are too indoctrinated in "2nd place is the first loser" to say anything nice to a person who did not come in first? Most of the arguments I have heard against "participation medals" (including here in this thread) appears to be based on the complaint that we can't be calling them winners when they aren't winners.

And my point, and the point of most of those who support increased participation and medals to celebrate it, is that there is more to life than being the winner at a middle school soccer game. Much MUCH more to life. And it seems to me that it is worth promoting fitness, friendship, camaraderie and high-spirited laughter, even if means we have fewer opportunities to hear, "you're better than all of them!"


And yes, my post was born of sports thoughts.


But in academics, too, if one thinks about HOW to praise, you can be simultaneously realistic and supportive. Like, "Yes, spelling sure comes reliably to him, and you're much more fluent in math. So the areas where you two need to work harder are different." I recall my son being flabbergasted in kindergarten that some of the kids didn't know how to read yet. But I was no way going to say, "you're smarter than they are good for you!" Instead, it was more supportive of both him and his classroom to realize (and say,) "you may be able to read without working hard to get it right, but she knows how to raise her hand and shut the bathroom door when she pees. So you'll find that everyone in that room is working hard on something, but it won't be the same things; and all of you together make the classroom more interesting than if everyone was exactly the same."


and at career-guiding moments, the same thing, "this area is one in which you will be all out, all the time to stay current. This other area uses your strengths so that you can stay current and even get to the top without have anxiety about falling back. Choose the way you want your job to be and go after that." Just braodly.

But yeah, the main topic here is school sports. And the better goal for school sports, IMHO, is community fitness and unity for as many in the community as possible.

 

[fromderinside]

Yet?
This 'self-esteem' program has been in place long enough for kids to get entirely through their education and college and into the work force thinking that showing up is something to be praised.
When will it be made clear to these kids that our being happy at their participation did not mean that their course work was worthy of praise? When do they get to know this distiction?

The "yet" was exactly that - the people giving the praise not getting the idea that you can praise without being falsely flattering. Make the praise real. As dx713 and doubtingt say above, this is the real gap. NOT kids getting rpaised for participating, but the praisers thinking the only thing worth praising is "talent" or "winning" and then feeling that they are being told to lie about that talent or performance.

And my point was that some people - the praisers! - don't get it yet that you can praise without falsely boosting self esteem.


Why do we want to tear down large participation for the kids just because people are too indoctrinated in "2nd place is the first loser" to say anything nice to a person who did not come in first? Most of the arguments I have heard against "participation medals" (including here in this thread) appears to be based on the complaint that we can't be calling them winners when they aren't winners.

And my point, and the point of most of those who support increased participation and medals to celebrate it, is that there is more to life than being the winner at a middle school soccer game. Much MUCH more to life. And it seems to me that it is worth promoting fitness, friendship, camaraderie and high-spirited laughter, even if means we have fewer opportunities to hear, "you're better than all of them!"


And yes, my post was born of sports thoughts.


But in academics, too, if one thinks about HOW to praise, you can be simultaneously realistic and supportive. Like, "Yes, spelling sure comes reliably to him, and you're much more fluent in math. So the areas where you two need to work harder are different." I recall my son being flabbergasted in kindergarten that some of the kids didn't know how to read yet. But I was no way going to say, "you're smarter than they are good for you!" Instead, it was more supportive of both him and his classroom to realize (and say,) "you may be able to read without working hard to get it right, but she knows how to raise her hand and shut the bathroom door when she pees. So you'll find that everyone in that room is working hard on something, but it won't be the same things; and all of you together make the classroom more interesting than if everyone was exactly the same."


and at career-guiding moments, the same thing, "this area is one in which you will be all out, all the time to stay current. This other area uses your strengths so that you can stay current and even get to the top without have anxiety about falling back. Choose the way you want your job to be and go after that." Just braodly.

But yeah, the main topic here is school sports. And the better goal for school sports, IMHO, is community fitness and unity for as many in the community as possible.

First,most athletic activitiy programs are mostly adult volunteer coaches, umpires, referees, linesmen, committees, trainers, schedulers, commissioners, transporters, sustenance providers, fans, and the like. So praise comes in all forms from 'win' to 'great save' to 'I loved watching you play'. Expecting a regional or national movement to become 'activity praise[' oriented is really a bit much. So the whole idea of activity medals is relegated to primary education if at all. I'm not in favor of attendance and completion awards for students who are trying to become the next generation of American, Australian, Russian, etc, doers and leaders. Such wouldn't be sufficient given most nations consider at least some other nations as evil, opponents, competition, etc. Neither would such a program get to super sized acceptance circles since most of us live in segregated, not brown communities nor are those communities ever likely to be cum bye ya things.

So all the above is splashing in state social experiments for the benefit of some not dead yet behaviorist types.