Why Do People Support Participation Achievement?

The Reality of Participation Awards Suppose you are seven years old and involved in a sport. You, along with your teammates, worked extremely hard all season and won the championship. At the end of the season, your team, as well as the other teams, are given participation awards for simply being involved with the activity. How would the participation award make you feel? Participation trophies cause a lot of controversy with people. Do participation trophies have a positive impact, or are they detrimental?
Participation trophies have become very common. “Today, participation trophies and prizes are almost a given,” says Ashley Merryman the author of "Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing." There are many reasons why people support participation trophies. One of the reasons is that people believe in valuing effort and participation. Parents …show more content…
Life is hard and competitive and not everyone gets an award. The people who get awards deserve them and have to work for that kind of recognition. Merryman makes a valid statement that kids need to realize at a young age that when they make mistakes, they need to move on; this way, when they are older, they understand not everyone is going to get a trophy (Wallace). Merryman makes a valid statement, “why bother learning problem-solving skills, when there are never obstacles to begin with?” Life isn’t about being fair and making sure everyone’s feelings aren’t hurt. If children are always given participation awards for doing something mediocre or what everyone else does, they will never understand what life is like when they are adults. The perk of competition isn’t winning; it is improving. Merryman believes kids would work harder to improve to get the first place trophy if they didn’t receive an award for participating (Ross). When the kids reach failure it totally discourages them, and they would rather cheat than risk failing again