• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, July 17, 2009

Reacting to a New York Times story about the bleak prospects for college student employment this summer -- which quoted an author who calls Generation Y "Trophy Kids" -- Torie Bosch, a copy editor at Double X (a Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Web magazine founded by women "but not just for women") wrote:

"I unwillingly played most of the suburban-kid sports ... and over the years gathered quite a collection of these cheap plastic trophies. Every time I looked at them, I felt embarrassed. They were reminders of my ineptitude, because I knew I didn't earn them. No young athlete with any sense of perspective would mistake those trophies for genuine celebrations of accomplishment. My classmates and I joked about them; we rolled our eyes when they were passed out at end-of-season pizza parties... for the most part, these trophies, which trend pieces hold up as the point when my generation went wrong, are one big joke to Generation Y."

As a little league coach (football, basketball and baseball) for the past 10 years or so, I couldn't agree more with Ms Bosch. In fact I have refused to follow local policy and give my teams their trophies - unless they won the league championship. And interestingly, no one has complained or e mailed me and asked, "Why didn't my little Johnny get a trophy?" Other coaches have furtively explained how important the "cheap plastic trophies" are to the self esteem of their players, but I ain't buying it.

Of course the trophies are an icon for indulgent parenting and the failure of politically correct community and school policies that seek to raise the status of under performers so that they are not stigmatized by whatever holds them back: economic disadvantage, race, height, having to wait until 15 for their first cell phone; gender, sexual preference, hand-eye coordination, living in a house that used to be a meth lab, religion, looks, allergies, fanciful parental aspirations, never having seen Seinfeld so you fail to pronounce Newman! correctly, poor hygiene, having a Dodge Caravan as the main family vehicle, or watching your father decamp to a prison farm in North Carolina for the next 150 years.

Somehow it has become a public policy mandate to help underachievers feel better about themselves. Since we can no longer afford to give every kid the individual attention that might have helped (him/her/still-deciding) improve or simply learn to live with faults that truly can't be corrected by medicine or better parenting, we have chosen to "incent" a better sense of self-worth with "cheap plastic trophies", bribes to get better grades or rewards for what should be normal behavior. This in turn has caused chasms to form in the ranks of parenting - with one half hoping to "encourage" better performance by "reinforcing" it with praise -- and the old school "If I hear that come out of your mouth again, I'm gonna smack you into the middle of next week."

Whenever I recite the ground rules for living in my house such as "If you aren't on the honor roll, you don't drive" or "no TV on school nights" other parents are stunned that such policies can be successfully enforced. I am equally stunned that they don't have the backbone to provide some disciplined for own their kids. And I'll bet they've all built shelves in their kid's rooms to show off all those "cheap plastic trophies."