The "Sissifying" of America...

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!