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Ashley Merryman argues against participation trophies, suggesting they undermine children's motivation and ability to cope with failure. She cites research indicating that constant rewards can lead to underachievement and entitlement, as children may not develop necessary problem-solving skills. Instead, she advocates for recognizing true accomplishments and helping children learn to handle losses as part of their growth.

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6 views1 page

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Ashley Merryman argues against participation trophies, suggesting they undermine children's motivation and ability to cope with failure. She cites research indicating that constant rewards can lead to underachievement and entitlement, as children may not develop necessary problem-solving skills. Instead, she advocates for recognizing true accomplishments and helping children learn to handle losses as part of their growth.

Uploaded by

linh055466
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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8th Grade CommonLit Reading Assessment

Read the passage below. Then, answer the


questions by choosing the BEST responses.

Passage 2 of 3

Losing is good for you

Ashley Merryman
2013

Font Size Medium

Ashley Merryman discusses her concerns with


participation trophies.

[1] As children return to school this fall and sign up for a


new year’s worth of extracurricular activities, parents
should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves
Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers
this: “Which kids get awards?” If the answer is, “Everybody
gets a trophy,” find another program.

Trophies were once rare things — sterling silver loving cups


bought from jewelry stores for truly special occasions. But
in the 1960s, they began to be mass-produced, marketed
in catalogs to teachers and coaches, and sold in sporting-
goods stores.

Today, participation trophies and prizes are almost a


given, as children are constantly assured that they are
winners. One Maryland summer program gives awards
every day — and the “day” is one hour long. In Southern
California, a regional branch of the American Youth Soccer
Organization hands out roughly 3,500 awards each season
— each player gets one, while around a third get two.
Nationally, A.Y.S.O. local branches typically spend as much
as 12 percent of their yearly budgets on trophies.

It adds up: trophy and award sales are now an estimated


$3 billion-a-year industry in the United States and Canada.

[5] Po Bronson and I have spent years reporting on the


effects of praise and rewards on kids. The science is clear.
Awards can be powerful motivators, but nonstop
recognition does not inspire children to succeed. Instead,
it can cause them to underachieve.

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford


University, found that kids respond positively to praise;
they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart, and so on.
But after such praise of their innate 1 abilities, they
collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized
by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing
again.

In recent eye-tracking experiments by the researchers


Bradley Morris and Shannon Zentall, kids were asked to
draw pictures. Those who heard praise suggesting they
had an innate talent were then twice as fixated on mistakes
they’d made in their pictures.

By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies.


They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels
and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it
and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when
they aren’t recognized for their accomplishments. They,
too, may give up.

It turns out that once kids have some proficiency 2 in a


task, the excitement and uncertainty of real competition
may become the activity’s very appeal.

[10] If children know they will automatically get an award,


what is the impetus 3 for improvement? Why bother
learning problem-solving skills, when there are never
obstacles to begin with?

If I were a baseball coach, I would announce at the first


meeting that there would be only three awards: Best
Overall, Most Improved, and Best Sportsmanship. Then I’d
hand the kids a list of things they’d have to do to earn one
of those trophies. They would know from the get-go that
excellence, improvement, character, and persistence were
valued.

It’s accepted that, before punishing children, we must


consider their individual levels of cognitive 4 and
emotional development. Then we monitor them, changing
our approach if there’s a negative outcome. However,
when it comes to rewards, people argue that kids must be
treated identically: everyone must always win. That is
misguided. And there are negative outcomes. Not just for
specific children, but for society as a whole.

In June, an Oklahoma Little League canceled participation


trophies because of a budget shortfall. A furious parent
complained to a local reporter, “My children look forward
to their trophy as much as playing the game.” That’s
exactly the problem, says Jean Twenge, author of
Generation Me.

Having studied recent increases in narcissism 5 and


entitlement among college students, she warns that when
living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part
of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to
show up. In college, those who’ve grown up receiving
endless awards do the requisite 6 work but don’t see the
need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that
attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.

[15] In life, “you’re going to lose more often than you win,
even if you’re good at something,” Ms. Twenge told me.
“You’ve got to get used to that to keep going.”

When children make mistakes, our job should not be to


spin those losses into decorated victories. Instead, our job
is to help kids overcome setbacks, to help them see that
progress over time is more important than a particular win
or loss, and to help them graciously congratulate the child
who succeeded when they failed. To do that, we need to
refuse all the meaningless plastic and tin destined for
landfills. We have to stop letting the Trophy-Industrial
Complex run our children’s lives.

This school year, let’s fight for a kid’s right to lose.

Text: From The New York Times, September 24, 2013 © 2013 The
New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and
protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The
printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content
without express written permission is prohibited.
Image: "Untitled" by Sung Jin Cho is licensed under CC0.

Notes:
1. natural
2. a high degree of skill
3. motivation
4. relating to the mind or mental processes
5. a state of being self-absorbed
6. required

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