No more participation trophies

Wow, one Texas youth football league has decided to take a step in the sane direction for a change.

(ABC) — The Keller Youth Association Football Program in northern Texas will not be handing participation trophies to their players this year. They say it’s because awards should be earned.

“Going forward participation medals or trophies will be going away. KYA Football board feels that giving participation medals or trophies isn’t sending our children the right message,” the association wrote in a Facebook post. “Life does not give you a participation job or medal, life makes you earn everything you get,” the announcement continued.

[…]

Aimee Engle has a son who plays football with the Keller Youth Association, and her husband is an assistant coach.  She thinks the organization’s decision was the right one.

“Real life didn’t give me a trophy, that’s why I think it’s a great decision,” Engle told ABCNews.com.  “We weren’t teaching them they need to earn the right to have a trophy, that it’s something they should strive for.”

I think kids know when they are being condescended to, they know if they are rewarded even though their performance didn’t warrant it.  It’s meaningless and they know it.

Comments

  1. “It’s meaningless and they know it.”

    Yep. That’s the key phrase. The kids know it but the foolish adults don’t.

  2. It’s about time someone got some common sense!

  3. Now if we can just ditch the Common Core and Head Start standards, take away the curriculum power for the teachers unions, stop grading kids with color coded stars, return to the very elegant idea of teaching kids how to critically analyze deductively, we’ll be good to go.

  4. I often wonder why the idea of “local” is so important. Is it the sole purpose of expounding on the idea that the local school board and citizens have their collective say?

    What if the mormon compounds of TX, CO and UT decided to be “activists” and force their “majority” standards on the rest? Would that fly? What if a local school district wanted all of the federal and union teachers “standards”?

    I know I don’t want my kids getting their standards from any religious group, much less the teachers unions, therefore we are home schooling……and no gold stars or mormon gibberish for them at all.

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