As painful memories go, it hardly ranks. But I can vividly remember walking away from my third-grade field day with only a solitary white ribbon pinned to my T-shirt.
Third place in the three-legged race. And I really deserved only half the ribbon. The other half belonged to the other leg. Oh, the shame.
Somehow, as kids, we survived the trauma of playground losses and scraped knees, and eventually we were better for it.
Today, kids walk away from competition with big blue ribbons for participation that are pinned to chests puffed up by little more than a weak sense of accomplishment.
These days, there’s no need to keep score. And there’s surely no need to have winners or losers.
We’re all winners! Hooray!
Except, of course, we’re not. Real life doesn’t work that way, or at least it’s not supposed to.
But in our quest as parents to make sure our kids feel no pain, we’re in danger of raising a generation of overconfident sore losers.And, unfortunately, we’re losing our competitive edge in the process.
The latest example of that “everyone gets a ribbon” mentality came last week, courtesy of the Boulder Valley School District. Worried about hurting the feelings of excellent students who weren’t quite at the head of the class, a committee decided to dump the tradition of having just one valedictorian at each high school graduation.
Instead, they’ll honor students in groups, as colleges do, with a summa, magna and cum laude honors, according to a story in the Boulder Daily Camera by Amy Bounds.
Earlier, the district stopped calculating each student’s class rank. “Getting rid of class rank, district officials said, should reduce the unhealthy competition for a high rank,” Bounds wrote. And without class rankings, the valedictorian system no longer made sense.
As far as I can tell, school officials were trying to remedy two problems: Since courses are weighted differently, meaning an advance placement English class is worth more points toward your grade point average than an elective, some students were bypassing art and gym class for more rigorous courses. Second, because no high schools allowed co-valedictorians, the race for No. 1 was often very competitive and some students missed out by mere hundredths of a point.
Take one gym class, and suddenly you’re sitting with the stooges out in the audience instead of being class valedictorian.
Well, that’s a choice students should be allowed to make. Making tough choices, and living with the consequences, is part of growing up. Learning how to win, and better yet, how to lose, is also an integral part of growing up.
Failure not only breeds success, but it also breeds character.
By eliminating competition, and giving everyone a ribbon (or making 50 kids “valedictorian”), you create a false self-esteem in kids. We have a generation of kids who feel really good about themselves, but could very well lack the motivation and desire needed to succeed in our competition-driven economy and workplace.
Somewhere along the way we lost the idea that it’s OK for kids to feel dejected. And we’re really setting them up for heartbreak when they discover not everyone gets a blue ribbon at work, and raises usually only go to those who deserve them.
As a parent, I want to insulate my children from everything that could hurt them – whether it’s a bully’s harsh words or the sharp edges of our coffee table. But you can’t.
Sometimes, you only get third place at field day. Or nothing at all.
And the next day, you strive for something better. Competition, despite what some schools officials contend, isn’t unhealthy.
Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
