Zack Hill by John Deering and John Newcombe for February 05, 2012

Really!

Yes… never really understood the idiocy in that, and just with the insane odds against me of sounding sexist I bet it wasnt a man who made that idea up.

Yeah right. In the real world no one gives a flying fig about your “self esteem”.

so he got an award for self-esteem then… sad…

I would say that he got that trophy for participation.

Because it is a union…the teacher’s union.

Everyone (almost) knows that the losers really know they lost and that the trophy is a sham. This practice actually does more to lower self esteem even more.

What a great life lesson. All you have to do is just show up and put forth no effort and you will be rewarded the same as those that do.

Political correctness has to go.

Re Stagger Lee’s post: “What a great life lesson. All you have to do is just show up and put forth no effort and you will be rewarded the same as those that do.” Obviously a sarcastic remark, but at the same time reflective of the same kind of delusional political correctness and pseudo psychology that underlies the concept of socialism, an unworkable form of government that was put forth by Lenin and failed epically.

@realist666: There’s an easy answer.

This doesn’t actually happen except in a few isolated incidents. The vast majority of kids do not get “participation trophies” for most events. Losers are not given giant trophies. Sometimes, people who participate may get a kind of consolation prize that isn’t as big as the winners’, such as if two teams play each other and one gets a trophy while the others get a ribbon. In that case, the idea is to recognize that the kids did something, which is better than sitting at home not doing anything. But it’s not ever confused with winning. And nobody takes home a giant trophy like that for losing. Ridiculous… but fortunately also false.