Showing up to work, attending class, completing homework and trying my best at sports practice are expected of me, not worthy of an award.
This may be the only concrete example from her life that this author uses.
I call this "anecdotal evidence."
7 Matching Annotations
- Jan 2017
-
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
-
-
If every soccer player receives a trophy for merely showing up to practice and playing in games, the truly exceptional players are slighted.
I think this is reasoning after all.
-
Trophies for all convey an inaccurate and potentially dangerous life message to children: We are all winners.
Even though I have trophies and ribbons, certificates and plaques, all they do for me is remind me of the experiences I had on little league teams.
-
These are the foundations of a long path to potential success, a success that is not guaranteed no matter how much effort I put in.
This is her reasoning.
-
This is a nuanced claim because the author is going to argue that trophies send a dangerous message and she is going to argue what message they send. She has to prove both.
-
We begin to expect awards and praise for just showing up — to class, practice, after-school jobs — leaving us woefully unprepared for reality.
Wrong. I was smart enough to know that when I made JV in basketball as a 8th grader, I probably would never play varsity. The trophies and ribbons didn't confuse me. i wasn't stupid then and I'm not stupid now.
-
Today the dozens of trophies, ribbons and medals sit in a corner of my room, collecting dust. They do not mean much to me because I know that identical awards sit in other children’s rooms all over town and probably in millions of other homes across the country.
I also have 3-5 trophies and ribbons and they don't mean anything to me.
-