My children are finishing off their first year at middle school. For various reasons, it is a milestone of sorts. Notwithstanding the fact that during the past eight years they have been at three different District of Columbia public schools, each with their own unique organizational culture, student body, parents, teachers and administrators.
Like many middle-class families living in Washington and the surrounding suburbs, my children are also in a number of after-school activities. They keep my wife and me in permanent chauffeur mode not only after school, but also on weekends.
Each year, in almost ritualistic fashion, aspart of the process of reflecting on the past year and getting ready for the next, we help them put away the materials they?ve accumulated in one of those massive container boxes. Posterity is a big thing around our house and we have more boxes than I care to admit crowding our attic.
One thing about this activity always amazes me. With the advent of computer software programs and advanced and cheap printing technologies has come a slew of completion certificates. “Congratulations” for this and “Good Job” for that. Buried beneath math and English assignments, already dog-eared and fuzzy in memory, these papers exist, as if waiting to assure my kids of their academic greatness. The question that naturally comes to my mind is: Do they really mean anything? Sadly, my guess is that these certificates are interpreted as hollow gestures.
The certificate binge is not restricted to my children. One morning about a year ago, at the end of a semester, carefully slipped under my door was a certificate from one of my undergraduate students congratulating me for being his best professor. I cynically wondered how many other professors received this prize from the student that day. And a couple of weeks ago, after requesting a letter from a conference organizer confirming my attendance as a conference speaker to show my superiors, I instead received … a certificate of appreciation.
True, everyone likes to be appreciated and commended for a job well-done, but the paper equivalents are now at risk of becoming meaningless additions to the never ending stack of paper on the corner of my desk (and floor), begging for a decision on whether to frame, file or discard.
I suspect that my children have the same reaction. If I were a child, I would see these pieces of paper as simply meaningless, akin to the pizza parties and feel-good gold stars that some employers reward their workers with. Better a gift certificate for something that my children might value, a token that they can interpret as a reward for their competence or even excellence, rather than another laser-printed “Hooray!”
Remember the exchange in the Disney-Pixar movie “The Incredibles”? Young Dash, who has superhuman powers, complains to his mother about having to hide his special talents at school. His mother responds:
“Everybody?s special.” To which Dash says, “Which is another way of saying nobody is.”
A job well-done should be its own reward. But if you?re going to recognize it, understand that gussied-up certificates probably don?t hold much currency among the younger set, and that goes for parents as well.
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D. is an associate professor, Division of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Social Policy, University of Baltimore. Ross is the author of the recently published “Poltical Terrorism: An Interdiciplinary Approach” and co-editor of “Native Americans and the Criminal Justice System.” He can be reached at [email protected].
