The four o'clock class of kindergarten/first grade kids was explaining Fun Racing. Fun Racing is when you take a magazine around to grown-ups and ask them to sign. You take the magazine back and get a toy. If a lot of them sign it, you get an electric scooter. There's Fun Racing at school, and Fun Racing at Girl Scouts.
Heaven knows there's Fun Racing at Little League, French club, debate team, marching band (ESPECIALLY marching band), Cub Scouts, and every other activity or organization children are involved in. Serving on the board of a public school parent-teacher organization, I became very skeptical about Fun Racing. The funds raised too often went for happy face sticker and candy "incentives" for teachers to give students. They frequently paid for annual appreciation gifts for the school principal, or the board members (and fundraising chairpersons) of the very same organization.
Fun Racing creates ridiculous competition between students and grade levels, while taking time away from homework and family togetherness. Fun Racing does not create young entrepreneurs or teach poise. Worst, most Fun Racing gives only a tiny percentage of the sales money back to the organization.
Somewhere along the line of having three kids in three schools, and each in a minimum or three sports or enrichment activities, I shorted out. Blue smoke came out of my ears. I started writing a check, one hundred percent of which went directly to the organization, and a note that I declined to give permission for my children to participate in Fun Racing. I admit that sometimes when I was extremely harried as a single parent, I wrote that Fun Racing was against our religion.
I know it's harsh, but the only ways to curtail the endless Fun Racing is to decline to participate as a student/family, and decline to enable as a giftwrap purchaser. When you notice something positive in your school zone or district, send a note and a check. A child may say "thank you", and a worn-out mom may hug you!
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