Hard work – Anhle.blog
Everyone getting a “Participation Trophy’ does not understand the concept of ‘hard work ethic”.	
Here’s a story of a “TEACHER FAILS ENTIRE CLASS”
The professor then said, ‘OK, we will have an experiment in this class on this plan’. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
The story above speaks volumes in relation to hard work and work ethic. I’ve seen it many times before in school (elementary up through college) especially in group projects where the students have to work together in order to complete a project by a certain due date.
We all know how this plays out in the group project setting:
One student says they will help but does not at all.
One student does all the work intensive labor behind the project
One student helps a little – but with not much effort – just to “show” that he/she did help in the project.
One student never appears to the group meetings to help out with the project – but still gets credit for the group project at the end.
Ironically enough, it doesn’t stop there within our education system. It continues on through out the work force – even after school (or after attaining a degree). The vicious cycle continues yet again.
One individual who is always the hard worker, possibly carrying the weight of the rest of the team, business, or even whole company.
One individual being present within the work force. They put on the façade that they are busy doing something but not actually doing work. Making everyone believe that they are contributing to help – but in actuality – they are not working at all.
One individual who is always complaining about the work but not doing anything to help get the work done.
One individual who is there not doing anything at all until they are told to do something. Not taking the initiative to actually seek out what and who needs help nor what needs to be done.
Here is where the “Participation Trophy” analogy rests & ties into everything… A participation trophy is a trophy given to children who participate in a sporting event but do not finish in first, second or third place, and so would not normally be eligible for a trophy. These such things, in my honest opinion, has the unintended consequence of “entitlement” to the participants who received a trophy – not being first, second or third place – but just for participating.
The concept of winning and losing will not be in the understanding of these individuals who (in their lifetime) consistently received “participation trophies”. They would not have the concept of working hard to understand what it means to ‘work hard’ and have such ‘work ethic’ to put in the effort to attain such goal. Furthermore, they won’t understand the concept of losing – which usually – drives the individual to put more effort and push more to be that winner.