Your argument appears to be: Any child desperately needing recognition must be recognized. Therefore, we’ll make the act of recognition meaningless for all the others.

Wouldn’t it be better if simple kindness from a teacher, and a few words of praise, were enough for such needy children?

So that awards of acheivement actually meant that something unusually significant had been achieved?

When I taught high school math, I was criticized on my official evaluation for not providing enough praise for effort. It made me ashamed. I was not ashamed by the evaluation itself, but rather the realization that this was actually true. I would add that in the North we don’t praise nearly as much as is done here in the South, and I simply had not acculturalized.

But I learned to give praise for good effort, and it appeared, as far as I can tell, to suffice. Must we give AWARDS of excellence as well for simply trying?

Well…that’s a relief! But with the elementary school crowd, you never can tell!

Hmmm. Maybe your made up name was a bit Freudian???

I always understood that an albatross around the neck was a really bad thing…why in heaven’s name would they choose a name like that? “Wow Mom!!! I won the albatross award!”…meaning someone is a dead weight on someone else????

Am I the only one who got whopped between the eyes with that particular award title?

In one school my kids were in, the advanced kids program was called CIGNET. I always thought that was cute - I don’t even remember what the acronym stood for, but in my mind, it stood for cygnet…ugly ducklings…who nevertheless someday would turn into swans!

Surely, bright, normal children can be taught that there is a spark of excellence in the dullest, stupidest, most disruptive child among us and that we can sit quietly by when the teacher honors what he/she can find of a step toward that goal.

As I left the halls of my high school, I overheard the valedictorian say to the salutatorian, between you, me and X, we took everything from here that matters. I am happy to report, that was not so.

These awards may be the only positive reinforcement a given child gets during the entire school year. Some children don’t have parental support. This is not about the best and the brightest, who get praise in small doses every day.

Would it be better to hand out small praises all year long? Yes. “Savvy kids understand that there is nothing award-worthy about the fact that they’ve competently carried out the tasks of ordinary life.” But for some children, it simply doesn’t work that way.

Kindness from both teachers and peers is very human. And how to be human is a good lesson for all children.

People that work hard can either be motivated by external or internal factors. Some people work hard because they know no other way. They don’t slack off because they can’t slack off. Even if they were allowed to slack off or rewarded for doing so, they would refuse to do so because internally, they cannot and will not favor sloth over work.

Those that work hard for external factors, however, will feel satisfied or dissatisfied based upon their expectations of external rewards.

All humans are susceptible to external influence, but some rare individuals are primarily influenced by internal motivations and rewards, Book. When your best reward comes from your sense of self love and your personal standards of achievement, then awards by external factors matter less and less.

If you had sought out a specific award, rather than certain goals that required the work at hand, then you would feel special or accomplished if you had obtained that award. Or if the award had attached to it some kind of social status or benefit, which you wanted, then receiving that award would make you feel victorious.

However, if people have ephemeral or pragmatic intentions towarding doing their work, as in doing work just because it needed to be done or doing work because nobody else will do it or doing a project well because you wanted a good grade, then receiving an additional award on top of your original achievement is not all that special, Book.