Rewarding derivatives

In modern child-in-the-center world, there is a fear to reward success, so as to not offend those children that never win in contests. "Everybody wins" is proclaimed to induce equality. However, it can also induce stagnation and remove the desire to improve.  There is merit in the problem that children who are unlucky to be surrounded by more capable children indeed never win, which is very bad for their self-esteem.

I propose a new reward system for competitions that include a numerical grade, e.g. sports events of individuals such as running, jumping, etc. Up until now, the first place went to the person with the best grade, the second place to the one with the second grade and third to the third. I suggest a new system: the first place goes to the one with the best grade, as before, but the second place goes to the one with the best improvement in his grade, and the third place is chosen at random from the other contestants. For example, if several children compete in a running contest, each child should have his own personal record (by record I mean really recorded somewhere, for example from previous contests). The first place goes to the one that arrived first, but the second place goes to the child that improved his personal record the most. The third place goes to another child, chosen randomly.

This system has several advantages:

1.       Even if there is a single most skilled child, the second and third places can go to other children.
2.       It promotes the will to simply improve, so even if one has a lousy score, if he improves by a lot, he wins.
3.       One can never be second place for a long time, since by definition improvements always become smaller and smaller. Hence, many children will win second place.
4.       The third place teaches children that not everything in life is deterministic, and there is always a measure of luck.

As for the third place, someone once asked me: Is life more similar to backgammon or chess? While I wish it was more like chess, life has taught me that backgammon is probably a more appropriate metaphor. Children should be taught that winning is composed of three things: being the best, improving the most and sheer luck!