Reward is based on what???
 

I have a liberal friend who likes to discuss politics with me. We were chatting about his grandkids playing in little league baseball. He was bragging about how all the kids get trophies these days. I asked, "all the kids?" Yep! They get a trophy whether they come in last or first. I told him I thought that was BS. He told me that they get it for participating. Again I said "BS". Trophies are for winners I told him. The reward the kids get for participating is that they get to PLAY BALL. They also get a cap and jersey. Have we produced sissies that need to be stroked at every turn in their life? There was a time when performance was rewarded rather than this mindset that everyone needs to be stroked whether or not they perform. This bothers me because where does it stop? I see this trend in corporate business as well. A CEO can shipwreck a company and be set for life, it is called a golden parachute. Maybe if we start out with our kids and they get that success should be merited on performance we will stop churning out sloths that expect reward for just showing up.:damn:

They give trophies to all the kids for two reasons

1. It keeps the kids motivated to stay on the team

2. It keeps the parents motivated to continue paying.

If the kid loses interest, the money stops coming in
If the parents lose interest, the money stops coming in

The trophies are just a financial investment.
I don't think it is socially any deeper than that.

Follow the money

I think you've nailed the reason but I think Frame is talking more about the unintended effect.

I think the goal is to breed a new type of super-soldier who demands a medal for throwing down his rifle and fleeing at the sight of the enemy.

"Hey! At least I showed up didn't I?"

when i played little league football, you got a little wooden plaque for participating.

if you made it through playoffs and placed in the division you got trophies of various sizes depending on whether or not you placed 2nd 3rd etc

if you won a bowl game, you got a t-shirt, a HUGE trophy with the names of all the team members on it, and each player on the team got a series of ribbons - each ribbon stating the position they played which came looped around the trophy.

its called incentive - a kid has to want to do better

this trophies to everyone BS raises kids to believe that no matter how poorly or how majestically they perform the level of reward will be equal.

like it or not, this BS sticks with little kids until they become adults.

its pathetic

So all the kids get the same trophy?

I dont mind seeing kids get rewarded for participating. I dont see equal reward accross the board. Sorry kid, maybe a spelling bee is for you :yeah:

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o...james/610x.jpg


Now there's a sport with equal reward across the board:up:

The team gets the huge trophy.

the kids get a smaller trophy based on what position they played.

losers get a piece of wood to hang on the wall that basically says they at lease played.

We had small trophies for the champs, paperweights for the runners up and everyone got a picture of themselves in a baseball card pose. Uniforms belonged to the Insurance agency that was our team sponsor. At the end of the season they collected them back up to reissue to next years team.

Oh, we did get to keep the hat iirc.

If kids are only motivated by a trophy/trinket at the end of the year, then they've got bigger problems than everybody getting the same trophy. Kids should play sports because they're fun and healthy.

I played hockey when I was a kid, and I was awful at it. But I have some wonderful memories of it - mostly from playing on teams that were so bad that we didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. We only won a couple games a year, we never got trophies or medals or anything like that, but we got some good exercise and had a heck of a lot of fun.

Ya know I used to race sailboats.

The trophys went 3 deep in three divisions.

Sometimes you would get a T'shirt. sometimes a beer mug.

We always had a good time.

Oh by the way the trophys were just momento's.

Everyone payed their own way, took their knocks, did the best they could. Afterwards they pulled up on shore and laughed about it all.

I disagree.

Kids should play games because they are fun and healthy. Once you make it part of the business of formal competitive sports (and it IS a for-profit business), you are moving out of the realm of what's good for the kids and into the realm of what's good for profit and the sports businesses.

If we really cared about the kids we would just give them the equipment and enable them to play the games for fun. But there is no profit in just helping kids. There is a profit in running competitive sports leagues.

That being said, I do agree that there are too many trophies being handed out to the kids. The Frau's daughter was involved in competition bowling. She was good, not great. Her league was handing out huge trophies (that I had to pay for, by the way) for pretty much every competition. The top shelf of her closet is full of trophies, I am not exaggerating. She was involved in competitive bowling for two years and has probably 25-30 trophies! And these are huge trophies about 2 feet high!

When she moved out of the house (the first time grrr) she wanted to throw them out! I made her donate them to a youth league to be reused. But the trophies meant nothing to her because there was nothing special about them.

Back in the stone age, I used to play competitive chess. I was involved in chess tournaments for about 11 years (the last four years I slacked down a lot due to work). I was a good chess player, not a great one. (USCF in the high 1500s). During that time I received one trophy for coming in second place in a big scholastic tournament. It is a small wooden free standing plaque. I treasure that trophy. I treasure it because it meant something and frankly it is the only trophy I have ever gotten in my long ill-gained life. I treasure it because not everyone got one.

And yeah, sometimes my ego gets a boost when I walk in to my library and I see that little wooden trophy stuck away in the corner. I won that. Me. My effort.

The Frau's daughter does not get that feeling. To her, and the rest of the kids in the league, the trophy was just something handed out. The only value was in the number of trophies and who could fill up the shelf faster.

But the trophies served their purpose. It kept the parental monies flowing into the league.

All in all, I think I will stick with my tiny wooden trophy thank you.

Man! Back in the day I remember how fun it was to oil up that Mitt and get ready for practice. I loved little league and the fun it brought. We did not focus on trophies and such, we just wanted to play and then we wore T-shirts with the team logo on them. Back then we had cool names for the team that were named after bugs. The Fireflies, the Yellow jackets, etc...what young lad would not love that. Now I hear that the coach has to be trained in CPR??? WTFO...Is that because the kids are too fat from eating Nachos and playing nintendo? What is with these pizza parties? Do kids need to eat pizza after each game? We got pizza if and only if we came in at least third place. Sorry to sound bastardly but I thought of all this after I read yet another article on how our boot camps have become pussyfied.:arrgh!:

Baseball trophies for all are just one more example of the fact that we coddle our children far more than is healthy for them in the long term.

In many different ways we create artificial levels of entitlement and expectation that makes them ill prepared for the rigors of adult life.

BINGO! Thanks for lighting that candle August. Sociologist are terming this generation as an "entitlement society". Perfect tie in my man!:yeah: