Funny you should ask.
You know what I did? I watched more or less the same 21 kids (out of a couple hundred) get award after award after award. I am all for rewarding hard work. Made the honor roll? High five, here's your certificate. Clap, clap, clap. But every individual subject created an award to hand out. For example:
English: "These students have shown an extra ability to use words in both creative and critical thinking."
Science: "These students have adeptly handled beakers and gone on field trips."
Art: "These students have shown extra skill in art."
Math: "These students have demonstrated a working knowledge of equations, as well as strong computation skills."
And that literally only scratches the surface. I'm not positive, but I'm fairly certain that I heard awards for such skills as "showing up at school", "high lunch attendance," and "having a pulse." And of course there was a main body of about 21 kids who received one of every award. Each award then had an additional 10-20 recipients randomly peppered in with the overachievers.
*My son received no awards. Slacker.
It felt a teeny tiny bit like overkill to me. Kind of like the "every kid gets a trophy" at the end of parks and rec soccer season. Ummm... what did they win, exactly? I'm not necessarily saying we need to make everyone feel like a poo-bag for not coming in first,but does anyone even know what it feels like to lose anymore? This past year, at the Cub Scout's Whinewood Derby, when my 10 year old realized he was going to come in just about last, he said, "Can we just leave before they give me some stupid certificate that says my car is the most red?"
He's catching on.
7 comments:
This kind of thing drives me crazy. Not one of my kids has ever had a "graduation" ceremony yet and I'm ok with that. It seems like kids get rewarded for moving up every grade these days. No pre-school or kindergarten or elementary or middle school graduations here, which I think makes the real thing (high school and college in my opinion) so much more special. Just my opinion though.
I was reading a study the other day that concluded that all this praise and "we all win" ways of doing things are giving kids an overblown sense of entitlement. I see it everyday in the athletes I coach. It's ridiculous how much kids are coddled these days. It's doing them a huge disservice.
I feel like a poo bag
Could this be one of the reasons that kids feel that they are entitled? We keep rewarding them for no achievement, why then should they feel that they need to do anything to succeed
I had to head up Pinewood Derby and each car got an award... we didn't have "most red" but there was the "stealthiest" and "best flames." It was painful job but there are those parents who care way too much that their kid gets some sort of certificate, even if it clearly stands for "not the winner."
Oh, my gosh, Andrea. As always...this post is so spot on. I read it to Mike and he belly laughed at the title of, "Whinewood Derby" and he laughed again when I read the line about your cub scout wanting to beat it out of there before being patronized with a meaningless certificate. Mike said, "That was pretty good. He's totally right."
I think Mr. Awesome is right. It it is thinking like this that helps perpetuate all of the entitlement problems in the world today.
I think it is very telling that in the last decade we have heard conference talk after conference talk warning us about the dangers of entitlement.
Poobag is my new favorite word. Can I get an award for fully accepting it's awesomeness?
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