<p>personally if it’s hard to miss it and should be canceled then we should cancel all sports awards night, it hurts kids feelings too.</p>
<p>Turns out this could actually be hurting a large number of the kids…</p>
<p>[Why</a> Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail - Jessica Lahey - The Atlantic](<a href=“Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail - The Atlantic”>Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>Yes, not getting an award is a type of failure, guess what - it will continue to happen. It’s probably already happened and the kids have survived. Maybe it’s the adults who need a bit of training in how to handle situations with grace and then move on.</p>
<p>Failure is beneficial when it’s true failure. Kids learn when their efforts and behavior produce appropriate, or at least acceptable. results and consequences–including the receipt of awards and recognition, or the non-receipt of the same. When the process is political and/or arbitrary, it’s still instructive. Kids learn that sometimes life isn’t fair and they just have to suck it up and keep doing the right thing whether they are rewarded or not. Unfortunately, they also learn that some teachers and coaches are stupid jerks. That is sometimes a tough thing for them to grasp at age 12 or 13 without losing respect for school authority.</p>
<p>Oy voy. Just another example from the generation that gave all kids a trophy for participating in a sport. Unfortunately in the real world, thry keep score and in many walks of life trying your best will get you fired if its not good enough. We have a generation ready to blame their parents, Wall Street, Republicans, China, priests, Fox News and anyone else you can think of. But god forbid they take a look in the mirror and accept responsibilties for their own actions.</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure an honors night for middle school is all that important in the scheme of things. Yeah, it’s nice to be recognized. But it is middle school, after all, and the lack of an awards ceremony is unlikely to make any difference in the lives of any of the students. I will also admit that I think “graduation” ceremonies for middle schoolers are stupid.</p>
<p>If a school is going to have awards for athletes, they should have awards for the academic stars as well. After all, the primary purpose of the school is academic, not sports. At the high school level, the sports stars have their letter jackets to wear around, announcing their prowess - what do the star students have? They should be recognized, because by doing so, we are acknowledging that we value their academic accomplishments. If we want average students to strive to do better, they need to see that we value that extra effort. That doesn’t mean the awards have to be given out in a school-wide assembly, but that there should be an awareness of them. </p>
<p>As for middle school graduation, I can see it both ways, and for me it depends on the structure of the school system. I see such a ceremony as marking a transition, and it has its place if there really is a transition happening. My older 2 attended a middle school where the majority of their classmates would move on to the same high school - a small subset would go to different high schools. For them, it wasn’t much of a transition, so the “graduation” didn’t mean much. It meant more in 5th grade for our middle D, because they were moving from a neighborhood k-5, to a middle school fed by 4 elementary schools, thus a real transition.</p>
<p>For our youngest, if she stay where she is her 8th grade ceremony (not sure they call it graduation) will be meaningful, because she is in a k-8 magnet school (with kids from many districts). The kids will split up to many different high schools, and they will be completing a program specific to their school. Recognitions at that school are often meaningful,because the youngest kids do get to see what the older kids accomplish (something that I see lacking in our local district which now has k-2 and 3-5 elementaries, middle schools and the high schools. Only at the high school do they stay in one school more than 3 years.</p>
<p>Oy vey*
10char</p>
<p>I agree if there are awards for athletes there should be awards for straight academic achievement - at several levels of accomplishment. Our school no longer ranks, so based on GPA gives a summa, magna and cum laude designation at graduation. However, the invitation only “top academic” awards at the honors night are voted on by the faculty based on subjective criteria, so often the highest GPA students are overlooked in favor of those who are enthusiastic, likeable and try hard. It’s frustrating for me as parent of a very high GPA kid who will not be recognized with a “top” award as my student is good in all areas, but stands out in none. I guess the awards do mimic life and it’s a hard lesson for a teenager. Being good isn’t always good enough.</p>
<p>What’s goofy about this story, as others have already noted, is that the principal will still hand out the awards, but in a setting that will likely be MORE “devastating” for those who don’t get awards.</p>
<p>And this:
Something like this happens at my kids’ school, too–not attendance, but there is an award for GPA above a certain level, and a large number of kids get it. For those who get only that, the awards ceremony can’t be much fun.</p>
<p>As a student, I feel like my peers with perfect GPA’s are idolized in the school system. We are told to strive for all A’s, otherwise we are lesser people than little Lucy and Steven who have a straight 4.0 and have never failed a test.</p>
<p>It just seems to me that in high school, your worth as a human being is determined by how high your grades are. It is always the same students making the same high scores, too. The mediocre, like myself, are told to “be like them” rather than “do the best that YOU can do.” I feel like it is impossible for me to live up to the academically gifted students that public schools hold in such high regard. So, I, and many students like me, cease trying altogether.</p>
<p>What I’m trying to say is that the hype that these awards are given is detrimental and can come off as “Look at this student! She gets an award for her intelligence, so she is better than you at pretty much everything!” </p>
<p>Maybe I’m just projecting my woes onto this article. It never seems to me that the awards do anything to motivate the unmotivated into becoming successful and lucrative students. We tend to get overlooked altogether unless it’s to be berated.</p>
<p>My viewpoint about high school was there were the popular kids and the not popular kids. Rarely did the popular kids fall into the category of the academically gifted kids. It was the jocks who either came from money and were destined to work in the family business or the jocks who din’t come from money and wound up blue collar workers.</p>
<p>“I hated High School, I prayed it would end…The jocks and their girls, it was their world I didn’t fit in” I think Mary Gauthier got it right!</p>
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<p>It does provide a good introduction to what life in the working/professional world is like. </p>
<p>If your personal best doesn’t meet the standards of your employer or client, you could end up being written up for poor performance, lose a client, or sometimes even fired. </p>
<p>Several fresh college grads at various offices I’ve worked in learned that the hard way when they ended up getting terminated within their probationary period(first 3-6 months).</p>
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<p>Not this formerly slacking HS kid. When I saw HS classmates…including several good friends receive academic rewards for Westinghouse, debate, and other academic awards, it was a damning reminder that I fell short of standards. It was a factor in my kicking myself into gear in my last 2 years of HS and during my undergrad years if I don’t want to remain in the bottom half of my college graduating class.</p>
<p>"Several fresh college grads at various offices I’ve worked in learned that the hard way when they ended up getting terminated within their probationary period(first 3-6 months). "</p>
<p>Rude awakening for kids used to getting trophys for just participating. Let’s face it we live in a capitalist society (unless Obama gets another 8 years) and if your best isn’t good enough you will be replaced.</p>
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<p>Unless you have enough friends in high places to bail your company out. Or you get hired by another company after your golden parachute comes in. ;)</p>
<p>^^ The political jab was totally unnecessary.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>I hear you, SopraNOPE. But one thing I’ve learned is that life and academics are like the fable of the turtle and the hare. The hare is flashy and looks terrific at the beginning of the race. But you’ll see that sometimes it’s the turtles who end up winning in the end. Just be patient and keep plodding away!</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing</p>
<p>I find that even though I push and push in school, awards never come my way. I feel undecorated when I’m applying here and there…</p>