Awards: Merit based or not.

One of my pet peeves when teaching karate is when parents expect me to give every kid an award. I don't believe in giving awards that are not merit based. For example, when I give a kid a stripe it is because he earned it by learning a certain technique(s) and demonstrating it with skill. I like to give prizes such as Student of the Day to the most well behaved, enthusiastic, hardest working, or most improved kid. I like to award stickers for kids who put forth above average effort or excel in a certain area. I believe that the kids who don't earn the award should try harder next time. An important lesson that kids have to learn is that they cannot win all the time. But some parents would rather keep their kids from ever losing because they see it as a horrible thing. But losing is not a bad thing. People can learn a lot from their failures. Sometimes the kids that benefit the most from competition are the ones that lose. They end up working hard and achieving far more than the kid who wins.

As I told my brother, I don't want to run a communistic dojo where kids get the same award whether they try their best or not. Instead, I want to run a dojo where kids are rewarded for their hard work and diligence.