The "Sissifying" of America...
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yeah, i was talking about this general idea with my mum and she said it started in the 1950's thereabouts when mothers started coddling their children, and then all this child psychology stuff came out saying to be really nice and value feelings and such.
it's kind of ridiculous bc if you suck at something, and someone's like "oh you're so good!" it's not like you believe them anyway. it's better to hear that you need to work harder, actually put in the work, and then feel good about what you've done. the "no losers" mindset just lets kids/people not put effort into what they do.0 -
Avoiding this thread since everything on the first 5 pages "completely and totally agrees"0
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I don't care what you are... quit wussying up these kids... They're going to face the real world one day, and it's gonna SUCK!!0
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John Mayer said there's no such thing as a real world.
Btw I hated not getting anything for being there. I never won ANYTHING. Not even at the State Fair. Hell at least give me a $1 toy cause I spent 3 hours throwing a damn ball at Betty Boo's face!
My brother has a shelf full of trophies and medals from everything from football, baseball, basketball, even art, choir, and drama. I have maybe 5 at the most and a crappy 3rd place pageant trophy from daycare. (All because my mother didn't raise enough money).
Not saying give the failure the same trophy as everyone else. But at least give em something for pretending to try.
But I'm the only one that disagrees with participation ribbons so ignore me like I'm sure you will.0 -
My generation started the participation trophies... I remember the first few years of baseball as a kid (20 years ago) they didnt hand them out and then by my second / third year every one got a participation trophy but then they still gave out 1st place team trophies and individual awards.
This would not be an issue if it was just the very young, but this is being used up until high school, in some cases high school. Kids are being graduated from high school after failing the exit exam 3 times and still managing to get out because almost all California schools have a "work to pass" system.
It is funny to me because I remember speaking with a Korean friend of mine in school and she was telling me that in Northern Korea (where her family was from) they use the same philosophy to indoctrinate children at a young age. No one loses, your team is as only as good as the team you are competing against in order to solidify the idealism of communism and that they make no attempts to hide it. I am not saying we are going to fly the red flag here but geeze, it sure doesnt help.
In Capitalism there is always a winner and a loser, it depends on how much effort you put into it. In communism there is always nothing, no one really wins and no one really loses it is a team effort (unless of course you are talking about national pride and then you are DISTINCTLY different than your competitor).
I think there is a huge value in learning how to win and learning how to lose. Losing is not a bad thing, but in order to appreciate the value of winning you must have to suffer the agony of defeat. Besides, when you teach your kids you are good simply because you participated it gives them a false sense of direction that they should simply not go down that path with.
Hey TOMMY here is a prize for striking out on every pitch, YOU ARE GOING TO BE A STAR ! Seems a bit backwards to me.
Losing builds character, losing is uncomfortable and awkward no one wants to lose. Instead nowadays every one thinks they are a winner and simply not challenged, until they put their foot in the real world and it gets ran over by a truck !
You are equating two entirely different things. Passing a competency exam to graduate high school would be demonstrating competence, and failing should mean you need to go back and learn the theings you don't know. But these are not competitions where someone wins and someone else loses. Everyone can pass and everyone can fail. You're not comparing two people with different natural abilities. In the case of sports, or the OP's kid's reading competition, having one team "win" means other teams must "lose." It compares the kids to each other, not to their own abilities or to an objective source. No matter how well or how badly everyone does, someone loses if you subscribe to the winner/loser pattern. And sometimes the winner isn't the one who worked the hardest. THAT is what I don't advocate for elementary school children. They still experience failure--when they fail a test or the like. But there are no winners and losers.
Really ? I don't think I was that far off base in the comparison of the two. When I was in high school I had been a TA for two teachers and what I saw was astounding. The school system literally wanted or more or less DEMANDED that even if a student failed they were suppose to motivate them by telling them good job, good try, or some other trivial crap that amounted to nothing. They had a strict policy of using positive affirmations to each student regardless of their skill level. I am sorry but if you keep telling a kid that is not trying at all, a kid that is lazy, to self righteous and arrogant that he is the best at every thing he has done, what makes them want to push them to be any thing else ? I can remember when I graduated from high school (last year before they required the high school exit exams in California) there were kids who I knew failed high school but they just pushed them a long to graduation. These kids thought they were freaking geniuses !0 -
Honestly. Kids LIKE competing. Just watch that pageant show. Really young kids love winning. They LOVE it! They hate losing but they learn to deal with it. If they don't learn these basic coping skills now how are they going to learn them when they're older? Really?
I understand some people were deeply hurt by the fact that they couldn't win (due to no fault of their own sometimes) but really... I grew up in competitions and losing didn't scar me for life (and I NEVER won. Ever!). I don't have self-esteem issues (except about my weight) and I'm still happy to compete... and I'm willing to wager I'm not the minority. I'm sure there are many others who grew up just like me and don't have issues because they competed in a skipping contest in second grade and didn't win and didn't receive participation rewards.
Learning to internalize the participation reward is an important lesson. Externalizing it is setting kids up for learning bad habits.0 -
I chastised her? I surely did not. Learn to read. I SPECIFICALLY said I was very happy to have her finish third. Can you not read, or did you intentionally miss it, and my point?
My entire post was facetious and you are clearly to dense to realize this. No blue ribbon for you.0 -
i stil think we are't all agreeing on exactly what we are talking about here.
Some people seem to equate giving rewards for participation the same as blinding the child to the reality that they didn't win. Not so.
I'll just say this:
Marathons give awards to the top three in each class...yes. But they also give t-shirts to everyone who finishes the darn thing, and sometimes even free booze! Maybe I didn't understand the OP's situation, but I'm still ALL FOR rewarding kids who try and don't win because they know they didn't win and they know they can try harder....but I keep reading comments here and getting hte idea that people are saying things like just let the kids lose and tell them if they want to win to try harder next time.
Which in my mind looks like a parent chastising their kid for not winning.
But in my practice, I don't tell my kid he doesn't have to try harder, but I don't tell him he has to. I give what's called constructive criticism- but only if hes in a place where he can handle it.
Here's a scenario:
T-ball league. My son LOVES baseball. Other boys on the team are being mean to him because they think he isn't playing the game right....mean to the point that my son doesn't want to play because it's making him feel bad. Did i tell my kid to get his *kitten* back out there and try harder??? No. I didn't. I told him that I thought he was playing really well and that the point was to have FUN not to win and that I wanted him to enjoy playing. That's what cheered my son up...and when he went up to bat, not only did he hit the only home run in the entire t-ball league for the year, he hit a grand slam!!!!! And those boys didn't give him crap anymore.
I guess i just made him a sissy.0 -
I chastised her? I surely did not. Learn to read. I SPECIFICALLY said I was very happy to have her finish third. Can you not read, or did you intentionally miss it, and my point?
My entire post was facetious and you are clearly to dense to realize this. No blue ribbon for you.
That's OK, because if it was facetious, I don't deserve one. If that was an attempt at humor, I have never seen drier. See? I learned by losing. Exactly the point of my post.0 -
I just assumed this was about boys wearing skinny jeans.
My beard doesn't approve.0 -
As someone who doesn't have a competitive streak, like, AT ALL, I don't understand the problem with EVERYONE winning.
If I want to excel at something, I do. That's it.
Can someone explain to me why there has to be a loser? Like, why that is a good thing?0 -
There's 13 pages of replies stating why people believe this. Personally, I feel it's important so that children can learn they won't always get what they want, won't always 'win' and how important hard work is to success; thus preventing them developing an over-inflated sense of self-entitlement.As someone who doesn't have a competitive streak, like, AT ALL, I don't understand the problem with EVERYONE winning.
If I want to excel at something, I do. That's it.
Can someone explain to me why there has to be a loser? Like, why that is a good thing?
You need to remember most people are lazy, and unlike you won't work for something if they don't think they should have to.0 -
John Mayer said there's no such thing as a real world.
Btw I hated not getting anything for being there. I never won ANYTHING. Not even at the State Fair. Hell at least give me a $1 toy cause I spent 3 hours throwing a damn ball at Betty Boo's face!
My brother has a shelf full of trophies and medals from everything from football, baseball, basketball, even art, choir, and drama. I have maybe 5 at the most and a crappy 3rd place pageant trophy from daycare. (All because my mother didn't raise enough money).
Not saying give the failure the same trophy as everyone else. But at least give em something for pretending to try.
But I'm the only one that disagrees with participation ribbons so ignore me like I'm sure you will.
Yeah. You're the "only one." Just ignore my posts. Not like I was on your side before you had a side or anything. Speaking of being ignored...0 -
My generation started the participation trophies... I remember the first few years of baseball as a kid (20 years ago) they didnt hand them out and then by my second / third year every one got a participation trophy but then they still gave out 1st place team trophies and individual awards.
This would not be an issue if it was just the very young, but this is being used up until high school, in some cases high school. Kids are being graduated from high school after failing the exit exam 3 times and still managing to get out because almost all California schools have a "work to pass" system.
It is funny to me because I remember speaking with a Korean friend of mine in school and she was telling me that in Northern Korea (where her family was from) they use the same philosophy to indoctrinate children at a young age. No one loses, your team is as only as good as the team you are competing against in order to solidify the idealism of communism and that they make no attempts to hide it. I am not saying we are going to fly the red flag here but geeze, it sure doesnt help.
In Capitalism there is always a winner and a loser, it depends on how much effort you put into it. In communism there is always nothing, no one really wins and no one really loses it is a team effort (unless of course you are talking about national pride and then you are DISTINCTLY different than your competitor).
I think there is a huge value in learning how to win and learning how to lose. Losing is not a bad thing, but in order to appreciate the value of winning you must have to suffer the agony of defeat. Besides, when you teach your kids you are good simply because you participated it gives them a false sense of direction that they should simply not go down that path with.
Hey TOMMY here is a prize for striking out on every pitch, YOU ARE GOING TO BE A STAR ! Seems a bit backwards to me.
Losing builds character, losing is uncomfortable and awkward no one wants to lose. Instead nowadays every one thinks they are a winner and simply not challenged, until they put their foot in the real world and it gets ran over by a truck !
You are equating two entirely different things. Passing a competency exam to graduate high school would be demonstrating competence, and failing should mean you need to go back and learn the theings you don't know. But these are not competitions where someone wins and someone else loses. Everyone can pass and everyone can fail. You're not comparing two people with different natural abilities. In the case of sports, or the OP's kid's reading competition, having one team "win" means other teams must "lose." It compares the kids to each other, not to their own abilities or to an objective source. No matter how well or how badly everyone does, someone loses if you subscribe to the winner/loser pattern. And sometimes the winner isn't the one who worked the hardest. THAT is what I don't advocate for elementary school children. They still experience failure--when they fail a test or the like. But there are no winners and losers.
Its unfair to state the winners weren't the ones who worked the hardest, they might had been the ones who worked hard and then see the team who lost being rewarded the same is crushing, especially when you did indeed work hard and did things right.
Sometimes the winners worked the hardest...but often they are not. It's just as unfair to state that the one in first place always worked harder, because it just ain't so. And it's no more crushing for them than it is for the kid who worked harder but wasn't first.0 -
Like everything else age-related, it's hard to put a number on it. I see another poster who puts that number at 2nd grade. I place it in high school, possibly junior high. But absolutely there is some age, below which, one rewards for participation and effort, not raw score. Key to this is how "voluntary" the competition is. If everyone must participate, as in school events or phys ed class, effort counts for more than score. Even in junior high, if kids participate in extracurricular sports and activities, these appropriately have winners and losers.
You just proved my point...there is no one age fits all so assuming your theory was correct it is impossible to actually apply.
Secondly there are competitions that occur all through school in phys ed and otherwise where there is no choice of participation.
What you advocate sounds great in a coffee room discussion but creates havoc when introduced into the real world.
Maturity comes to people as they grow and experience life,it is not something that needs to be nor successfully can be scripted or managed.
Part of lifes experience is failure and disappointment as well as success and happiness.
If you do all you can to remove those things from the maturing process you have a person in their teens or even older that have not advanced beyond the tantrum stage of childhood.
Give kids credit for the ability to grow up without their hands held into adulthood,they will be just fine for the most part and capable of leading productive lives.
Despite the fact that we don't all mature at the same rate, we manage to put a number on maturity when we set an "age of majority" where we allow people to vote, drink, marry and so forth. Should we abandon that and allow 8 year olds to smoke, drink, get married and vote, since we can't accurately put an age on when they are ready for these things? Our inability to put an exact age on it hasn't prevented us from applying the principle.0 -
I totally agree. School's are taking "fairness" WAY too far...Life is not fair, and kids should learn that hard work and persistence is the only way.
This whole "no child left behind" thing is total BS!
Don't know what it's like in the US, but here in NS, Canada...no child, no matter how terrible they do in school gets held back a year. Every kid passes, no matter what.
Why the hell would they even try then ??
The World will end up with people too stupid to flip a burger.
Yeah. Stupid US Constitution takes it even further! You know that people actually expect to be treated equally, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin etc! Fairness is WAY out of hand!0 -
5th grade is old enough to have winners and losers. You need to learn to win and lose gracefully at one point. I understand 'everyone's a winner' when the child is very, very young.0
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There's 13 pages of replies stating why people believe this. Personally, I feel it's important so that children can learn they won't always get what they want, won't always 'win' and how important hard work is to success; thus preventing them developing an over-inflated sense of self-entitlement.As someone who doesn't have a competitive streak, like, AT ALL, I don't understand the problem with EVERYONE winning.
If I want to excel at something, I do. That's it.
Can someone explain to me why there has to be a loser? Like, why that is a good thing?
You need to remember most people are lazy, and unlike you won't work for something if they don't think they should have to.
Right. Most people are lazy. Not you, of course. But let's make sure all those other, lazy people, know that winning or losing determines how hard you worked, not the actual work you put in...0 -
I agree, and would add that the travesty is, we are teaching kids that losing a game makes one a loser! Not so - learning to lose graciously and using that experience to give a person impetus to improve... that's how we used to create winners. We teach kids today that falling down = failure, where before falling down was always an opportunity to learn how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again.
Now we're a nation that punishes productivity and rewards mediocrity. We teach future generations "NO WE CAN'T" - we have to have somebody step in and do it for us. Sad.0 -
Wow.
In this thread, practically everyone believes they're right and everyone else is wrong.
What I find absolutely hilarious is that you're both debating two sides of the same crucial coin.
If we always teach kids it's OK to fail, chances are they won't go for the pulitzer.
If we always teach our kids it's NOT OK to fail, chances are they will.
But if we always teach our kids that it's OK to fail AND that it's NOT OK to not give it the best try they can, you can get your butt they're more than likely to reach whatever goal they want.
You can't think of this as a black and white topic. Do or don't. Yes or No. Life is about balance and THAT is the lesson kids needs to learn.0 -
Well, I was the last one picked, too, and I wasn't the fat kid. The fat kid got picked ahead of me. I was clumsy. I have Asperger's, (a form of high-functioning autism) so I'm smart, and classes and tests were EASY for me, but my muscle coordination is very bad due to Asperger's so I'm not good at sports. Add to that that I have no depth perception, so I can't throw accurately or catch. No amount of practice will fix this. I am physically unable to tell where in space things are. And I did do what could be done about it. I was mercilessly teased because I looked like frankenstein after eye surgery that was supposed to fix my vison problems. It didn't, so I am still unable to tell where things are in space, still can't throw accurately or catch. What else would you suggest I do about it? Or do some people just deserve to be treated as losers because they are born losers?
Doesn't mean you born a loser. It means you were born with or developed special needs. Maybe, you shouldn't have been set-up for failure if that is the case.
You tap into the talents someone has.
All kids have special needs, not just those on the autism spectrum. All kids are different. It's possible, even desireable, to encourage kids to compare themselves to them selves, not to other kids, to measure success. You're not "sissifying" kids by asserting they can all be winners. They may not all BE winners, mind you, but it is absolutely true that they all can be.
BTW, I didn't know about my Asperger's when I was a kid. I was diagnosed as an adult. It explains a lot of the whys of my childhood, but, because my IQ is actually high (which isn't unusual with Asperger's) I received no special attention in school. I dreaded phys ed classes, where I'd be made fun of and explicitly called a "loser" regularly becaaquse of things I could do nothing about.
I think you are hung up on the bullying side of it when the issue at hand is whether not declaring "winners" or "losers" is making "sissys" of this generation. Should you have been bullied because you weren't as coordinated at sports as other kids? No, ofcourse not. I think what most people are trying to say on here is that during competitions, whether that be athletic or academic, there should be a clear cut winner. No one is saying a kid should be bullied for not excelling in a particular area. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and by having competitions with a "winner" and "loser" our youth will be able to better hone in on what they do well at.
Declaring children winners and losers is what encourages bullying. Because some "natural strengths" are simply valued more than others at various ages. NOW, my intellectual skills are more valued, but in school, skill at sports was way more valued, at least among my peers. If I had been good at basketball or softball rather than math and science i doubt I'd have been bullied. Furthermore, there were prizes and praise for winning at basketball, but only humiliation for winning the science fair. Plus, I was forced to participate in sports, but the kids who weren't interested in or good at science didn't have to participate in the science fair. Participation awards should be given whenever participation is mandatory.0 -
There is now evidence that shows the "self esteem" movement wasn't based on good science. Read a book I read call "Will Power."0
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Not so. The Declaration of Independence says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."Yeah. Stupid US Constitution takes it even further! You know that people actually expect to be treated equally, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin etc! Fairness is WAY out of hand!
In the vernacular of the times, the "pursuit of Happiness' referred to a person's self-determination - the ability to turn one's hand to any trade or profession and keep the fruits of that labor.
America, as a nation, promises equal opportunity. Not equal outcomes. For outcomes, you have to earn your way to what you want.0 -
I still don't get where people are talking about kids being called LOSERS.... AGAIN, and for the FINAL time, a child is not a loser if he loses. All I was saying is that kids need the chance to learn from when they do lose. Losing can provide powerful teaching moments if handled well by adults. IMO, Kids need this to learn how to deal with life in the future. Life isn't everybody winning a blue ribbon because they participated. Life is difficult enough when you know how to lose, and much more difficult when you don't know how to lose.0
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I agree....and the kids now are told how wonderful and perfect they are...so they believe everyone in the world thinks they are wonderful and perfect without really having earned anything. (yes I am the mother of 4, bonus mom of 1, grandmother of 4) Kids do not know how to earn anything anymore....drives me nuts0
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Here's a good one, my high school student wasn't handing the work on time. Well, we go to conferences and the teacher says "He has plenty of time to make it up, I'll let him hand it in late". Hubs is like, "Fail him". Bottom line is, it affects their "numbers" if you have a bunch of kids who fail. They let him slide.
Oh, here's the new thing now you don't get zeros for not handing in work, you get 50% because it brings down the grade too much.
What's worse are the parents who yell at the teachers for their kids' failing grades. I had that happen in my high school. It was AP Biology (not regular biology, but an elective that you chose to be in if you thought you were up for the challenge) and we were dissecting cats. I was absent the day that the groups were chosen, and I ended up getting stuck with the lazy b!tches in the class.
Throughout the whole dissection, I did the lion's share of the work, and I was hopelessly behind the other groups in the class. The dissection grade was based on the progress that we made and the accuracy, so when it came time to get the grades, my group was dead last when it came to progress. The teacher did take pity on me, though, seeing as the other groups had three people working together to get the project done, and I was by myself. So, even though the grade was supposed to be on a group basis, and not an individual one, I ended up getting a B (I deserved this because I made a few errors while doing the dissection) and my other group members both got Ds.
Their parents were furious over the fact that they weren't doing well. They were both Seniors, both in National Honor Society (even though they cheated their way there) and they were both in sports, so this bad grade could jeopardize a lot for them. Instead of yelling at their kids for being lazy and cheating, the parents came in to yell at the teacher and try to get him fired for doing his job. Very frustrating...0 -
My reaction when I hear my fellow college mates telling me how the parents nowadays treat them
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Too true man. We have an epidemic of narcissists and self-entitled spoiled f*cks quickly entering into adulthood, while high school and elementary school promise to keep the flow of them coming. As you said, mediocrity is encouraged and winning or succeeding becomes some sort of "extra, unnecessary work that only dorks and teachers pets would care about". Quite possibly the most infuriating aspect is that I'm unemployed, NOT on unemployment, and looking frantically for a job, and I see/hear people *****ing about wanting to switch jobs just because they have to actually do work. Cashiers, busboys, daytime shelf-stockers, prep-cooks.. all EASY and entry-level jobs that I would kill to get, are filled by selfish, lazy, spoiled teenage + young adult narcissists.0
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That was my first thought when I was watching the news about the school shooter at the college in CA. Saying he was after an admin person because he had been kicked out of school. My first thought was he probably always got a ribbon for showing up and never learned how to fail.0
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Don't blame us sissies if your kids aren't as wonderful as they think they are.0
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