What So Bad About Participation Trophies Anyway?
I’m not entirely sure how or when but somewhere along the line participation trophies became a preeminent scapegoat among Conservatives to explain where the younger generation went wrong.
To meme makers on the right, participation trophies are a form of Communism that deceive children into thinking that life will be fair and kind and that they don’t need to actually accomplish anything to receive validation.
This brittle mindset holds that the essence of capitalism is feverish competition and that in order for free market capitalism to flourish there must be losers as well as winners and a way of keeping track of who wins and who loses.
Without that all-important competition, the thinking goes, people will grow lazy and complacent and lack the motivation to innovate or make the world a better place.
It’s the same mindset that leads folks on the right to see living wages, affirmative action, universal healthcare and welfare as society-destroying enemies of competition and consequently deeply unAmerican.
The idea is to keep the masses scared, desperate and so paranoid that they’re afraid to even ask for more out of fear of being considered entitled or Socialist.
The participation trophy debate is on my mind because this morning my eight year old son Declan did a show with his drama, dance and music group and at the end all of the children were given a participation trophy.
You know what? I was grateful as hell. I was really, really happy that Declan didn’t have to sit there, sitting on his hands, while other children received awards and he didn’t.
My son has ADHD and needs approval and validation. You know who else needs approval and validation? LITERALLY everyone. It’s human nature to want the world to be kind and supportive. There’s nothing wrong with it.
Wanting tokens of success and achievement doesn’t make you greedy or spoiled; it makes you human. Declan would have been very disappointed if he had gone home empty-handed and it wouldn’t have served any purpose beyond depressing a neuro-divergent.
I don’t want my son’s drama, dance and music class to be competitive. At all. I want it to be about encouraging children regardless of their skill level.
Kids in capitalist societies like ourselves are conditioned to see life as a fierce competition with clear-cut winners and losers. I hate that. I want him to see happy cooperation as the essence of American life rather than all-out competition.
What’s so bad about participation trophies, really? Or a minimum wage that would allow people to feed their families and provide for the future even if they’re working in fast food? And would it really be so terrible if there was a system in place to ensure that people don’t literally die from being poor because they can’t afford expensive medical procedures without resorting to GoFundMe?
There’s nothing wrong with participation trophies but there is something VERY wrong about people thinking that they’re the disastrous first step to creating a society of complacent zombies who never have to exert any effort when they can suck lazily at the teat of the government and enjoy the luxurious, pampered life of someone on public assistance.
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