It is more important to give students prizes or awards for students' efforts than acheivements. |
Prizes or awards have definite purposes on its own: to give happiness to the receipant and encourage the related people. The purpose of bringing happiness is obtained through just endowing a person with a prize. However, The second purpose that a prize should encourage future endeavors should be manipulated so that students can keep their efforts on. In order to do so, we should give awards not only for the achievements, but also for the efforts towards goals.
A distinctive advantage to give prizes or awards for students' efforts over giving them for achievements is that one would not feel fear for possible failures. Usually, a failure is a big punishment for the person who have done a task. He or she may be so embarrassed or frustrated in facing the failure that he or she is discouraged to try again. In this case, if an award is given for the sincere efforts, the person will attribute the reason for the failure to the outside tackles and can try once more. In fact, those who weigh the true efforts much more than the result will be eager to do anything that seems to be difficult.
On top of that, concentrating soley on the outcome sometimes brings harmful habits. That is, it may provoke deceiving methods. To illustrate, a term with intensive exams makes students very stressful. Even if the students started to listen to the class with innocent curiousity, too much emphasis on the exam scores ruins the initial mind. It is highly likely for the students to think that what is important is the scores, and not the deep understanding of subject. The students may even cheat on tests. This is not the desired effect of prizes or awards.
To summarize, the reason to give awards for the efforts rather than achievements is that it is helpful for the students in the long run. Under the efforts-rewarding policy, students can endure failures and maintain the ultimate goal of study to understand subjects. We have to remember the role of the prizes to encourage students. |
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