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Whats up with kids today?

#201
Mr L said:
If you get a trophy just for showing up, where is the motivation to do your best and win? If you're given handouts from day one just for showing up, what's to say that mentality won't continue as they grow?
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My point is that if a person can't fathom where motivation comes from other than beating someone else in a zero-sum game, he or she is not the kind of person who is very good at solving a lot of modern problems. Of course competition can be healthy, fun, and gives some folks extra motivation, but to frame everything in that term and assume that taking away absolute competition stops people from accomplishing things is a pretty narrow (I'd call it "dumb jock") attitude.

I mean this discussion is going a little way out into the woods, but I think it's important to keep in mind that people think and act differently: what one kid gets out of sports, another might not, the attitude that cultivates productivity in one adult may not do so in another.
 
#202
<----Dumb Jock

Hockey, Baseball, Soccer, Golf, Wrestling, and Ski club in High School

Baseball and Hockey in College.

Masters - Electrical Engineering
PhD. - Modern Philosophy

Own 3 businesses.

Something to be said for being a dumb jockey and having competition instilled from youth.

I don't live for Star Trek, Star Wars, Big Bang Theory, or World of Warcraft. I don't sit in a cubicle, I don't pander to popular opinion and trend, and am very secure in my opnion and am Apathetic about absolutely nothing.

Dumb Jock indeed!
 
#203
^
1) "Dumb jock" doesn't mean athlete. Like many folks, I participated in plenty of high school athletics and occasionally continue to go support others doing the same. I appreciate athleticism and athletes; I don't like jocks. I used the term to describe exactly what I wrote: someone with that specific singular mindset unable to think in other terms.
2) I also didn't say competition isn't useful. I said zero-sum competition isn't the best motivator for everyone and that it's often not the best way to approach a problem. If you own three businesses, you've probably seen how useful it can be to with deal competing businesses this way, but you've probably also seen that rivalries between staff within a business or project often lead to a toxic environment that saps the productivity of everyone around them.
 
#204
dullsilver_mike said:
someone with that specific singular mindset unable to think in other terms.
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It seems that in today's society, I see this more and more.
However.........
That singlemindedness seems to be centered around political correctness and finding things to be offended about.
Banning anything that a person can deem unfair, or potentially harmful.

This world isn't "fair". A person setting a goal and achieving it is the measure of success whether that goal is winning in sports or business.

Being awarded a trophy for participating is no where near the same as getting one for winning.
 
#205
dullsilver_mike said:
My point is that if a person can't fathom where motivation comes from other than beating someone else in a zero-sum game, he or she is not the kind of person who is very good at solving a lot of modern problems. Of course competition can be healthy, fun, and gives some folks extra motivation, but to frame everything in that term and assume that taking away absolute competition stops people from accomplishing things is a pretty narrow (I'd call it "dumb jock") attitude.

I mean this discussion is going a little way out into the woods, but I think it's important to keep in mind that people think and act differently: what one kid gets out of sports, another might not, the attitude that cultivates productivity in one adult may not do so in another.
Click to expand...

When you reward people literally for showing up, and not differentiating between those who do well and those who don't, you're (in my mind) laying the groundwork for apathy in a lot of things further on down the line. Failure, and doing so publicly, can be a great motivator for people, and an invaluable teaching tool as well.
 
#207
nortonrider said:
It seems that in today's society, I see this more and more.
However.........
That singlemindedness seems to be centered around political correctness and finding things to be offended about.
Banning anything that a person can deem unfair, or potentially harmful.

This world isn't "fair". A person setting a goal and achieving it is the measure of success whether that goal is winning in sports or business.

Being awarded a trophy for participating is no where near the same as getting one for winning.
Click to expand...

You must live in one of the more metropolitan parts of CO ;) I live in rural NE and I don't think being 'politically correct' crosses the minds of many people I deal with on a day to day basis. Different lives, different frames of reference--it's a diverse nation we live in.

I still don't think the whole trophy thing indicates a world of entitlement and failure though. Kids know the participation trophy isn't the same (we knew growing up that a 2nd or 3rd place trophy wasn't the same) and they're not going to suddenly become confused about it. These other kinds of rewards simply acknowledge the kids that set their goals up in terms other than beating someone else and that's not a bad thing.

Weightlifting was my favorite sport in high school because I could set specific quantitative goals and track my progress toward them. Sure it felt good when I'd place at a meet, but beating other people wasn't my goal or my motivation to do good work, the highly visible improvement of my personal performance of a task was. Some folks function the same way as me, or in a handful of other ways that don't align a goal with beating someone else. IMO nothing negative is going to come from encouraging those people to make such goals.

-------------EDIT
sloasdaylight said:
When you reward people literally for showing up, and not differentiating between those who do well and those who don't, you're (in my mind) laying the groundwork for apathy in a lot of things further on down the line. Failure, and doing so publicly, can be a great motivator for people, and an invaluable teaching tool as well.
Click to expand...

I agree about the distinction between failure and success and the value of failure. As such, I think a "show up" trophy does differentiate between the people that just showed up and those that get the "first place" trophy. It also encourage kids to learn, come back, and keep playing when they fail instead of just getting discouraged and quitting. I guess we're just looking at the same thing from two different vantages.

I think losing without any support is more likely to encourage apathy than losing with the understanding that your loss wasn't for nothing. Maybe it's more likely that we're both half right--some kids need outside encouragement to continue after a failure and they need to be explicitly taught that one failure doesn't mean they can't succeed. On the other hand, some kids might be so satisfied with a show up trophy that they never do more work than it takes to earn it. I guess it comes back to different children learning in different ways.
 
#209
dullsilver_mike said:
You must live in one of the more metropolitan parts of CO ;) I live in rural NE and I don't think being 'politically correct' crosses the minds of many people I deal with on a day to day basis. Different lives, different frames of reference--it's a diverse nation we live in.

I still don't think the whole trophy thing indicates a world of entitlement and failure though. Kids know the participation trophy isn't the same (we knew growing up that a 2nd or 3rd place trophy wasn't the same) and they're not going to suddenly become confused about it. These other kinds of rewards simply acknowledge the kids that set their goals up in terms other than beating someone else and that's not a bad thing.

Weightlifting was my favorite sport in high school because I could set specific quantitative goals and track my progress toward them. Sure it felt good when I'd place at a meet, but beating other people wasn't my goal or my motivation to do good work, the highly visible improvement of my personal performance of a task was. Some folks function the same way as me, or in a handful of other ways that don't align a goal with beating someone else. IMO nothing negative is going to come from encouraging those people to make such goals.

-------------EDIT


I agree about the distinction between failure and success and the value of failure. As such, I think a "show up" trophy does differentiate between the people that just showed up and those that get the "first place" trophy. It also encourage kids to learn, come back, and keep playing when they fail instead of just getting discouraged and quitting. I guess we're just looking at the same thing from two different vantages.

I think losing without any support is more likely to encourage apathy than losing with the understanding that your loss wasn't for nothing. Maybe it's more likely that we're both half right--some kids need outside encouragement to continue after a failure and they need to be explicitly taught that one failure doesn't mean they can't succeed. On the other hand, some kids might be so satisfied with a show up trophy that they never do more work than it takes to earn it. I guess it comes back to different children learning in different ways.
Click to expand...

I understand both sides of the argument. Since someone mentioned soccer, I played from a young age, and I hated losing. If our team played well, I didn't mind so much, but if we played like crap, it annoyed the hell out of me. I was always a good sport about it, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to win..

As for these "trophies for showing up" - I think that's a good thing for young kids, but I imagine older kids know they mean nothing (they didn't hand out such trophies in my day). I remember losing a final in a Rep side due to a terrible refereeing decision when I was about 14. I threw my runners up trophy in the creek on the way home - not out of impudence, but it had no value to me. We lost, and I didn't need a permanent reminder of the fact.
 
#210
dullsilver_mike said:
On the other hand, some kids might be so satisfied with a show up trophy that they never do more work than it takes to earn it. I guess it comes back to different children learning in different ways.
Click to expand...

There is a lot of truth in that statement.

I remember distinctly playing intramural team sports from 6th. - 8th. grade. (baseball and football)
When we won, there were kids sitting on the bench (who never even played an inning) were proud of saying "we" won!
Even at that early age I would think..... "you didn't win anything, you didn't even contribute".

So... I took up boxing, and later on building and racing my own cars.
Both individual sports that I could do and measure MY abilities and standings against my opponents.
I suppose I could have remained as part of the group and rode on the coatails of others abilities, but I guess that I just wasn't raised that way.

If I didn't succeed in my goal, I didn't get a trophy and was OK with that. Not a whole lot of "entitlement" in the house where I grew up.
 
#212
It was always more about accomplishment for me. I played with a side that won nearly every game and won the league by a mile without really having to work too hard (the club had poached a lot of the best players) - that was fine, but we were expected to win, so there wasn't much glory in it. The year before, I played with a bunch of guys who weren't the best players, but battled their guts out every week against better players. I think we came third, but I have fonder memories of that team. The competition was what I always loved - I couldn't care less about a trophy.
 
#213
A lot of this speaks to why I took up bass. It wasn't something that was systemized or could be measured by trophies. It wasn't something that I was "placed" in for some life lesson or mandated by my parents or a school system. It was mine. At the end of the day, if I had a poor performance, it was solely on me. I set my own goals and was able to achieve them based on how much I put into it. I did this all after high school and trace any success (however small) Ive had in it directly to how much I put into it. Sort of a microcosm of the "American Dream" in a way.

I wasn't much into sports because I was nauseated by the politics that permeated throughout at an early age. It may be different now, but when I was playing sports, certain kids were held up while others that had potential were deprived of the chances to be great. Very little of it had to do with actual, honest achievement. Unfortunately, many of these kids inherited their parents lack of moral compasses and distorted views on entitlement. Music for me was a goal I set that could not be corrupted by the influence of a "system."
 
#215
You guys are all so impressive, wish my childhood was like any of yours.
Oh wait, IT WAS. In fact, you'd be surprised just how normal and common a lot of what all of you are describing is, even for kids today. You know what the problem with kids today is? The same problem as every generation before them - the idiot few ruin people's perception of all of them. I know a few jackasses that would sit on the hood of a stranger's car, but I know many, many more who would never dream of being that disrespectful. I played baseball as a little kid, and I got a little trophy at the end of the season for participating. That stupid little statue didn't make me feel any better about losing, however. I wasn't the best athlete, but I did my best for the team and was proud of our victories and disappointed at our losses. A dumb little trophy at the end of the season couldn't take our wins and losses away from us. We owned those, just as I own my successes and failures now. I'm sure all of you did some dumbass things as kids, so don't pretend that you were ever a shining example of a perfect kid. Nobody is. Most of the time, a spoiled brat is spoiled (or neglected) by their parents. Occasionally, there's a kid who has great parents but just turns out to be a prick regardless. This has always happened, and it happens today.
 
#217
Hobobob said:
You guys are all so impressive, wish my childhood was like any of yours.
Oh wait, IT WAS. In fact, you'd be surprised just how normal and common a lot of what all of you are describing is, even for kids today. You know what the problem with kids today is? The same problem as every generation before them - the idiot few ruin people's perception of all of them. I know a few jackasses that would sit on the hood of a stranger's car, but I know many, many more who would never dream of being that disrespectful. I played baseball as a little kid, and I got a little trophy at the end of the season for participating. That stupid little statue didn't make me feel any better about losing, however. I wasn't the best athlete, but I did my best for the team and was proud of our victories and disappointed at our losses. A dumb little trophy at the end of the season couldn't take our wins and losses away from us. We owned those, just as I own my successes and failures now. I'm sure all of you did some dumbass things as kids, so don't pretend that you were ever a shining example of a perfect kid. Nobody is. Most of the time, a spoiled brat is spoiled (or neglected) by their parents. Occasionally, there's a kid who has great parents but just turns out to be a prick regardless. This has always happened, and it happens today.
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LOL Yeah, very true.
 

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