At the end of every sports season, the athletic department holds an awards night. These are generally not too bad, except sometimes the female coaches of sports like cheer leading and dance struggle with the idea that they have to actually give the MVP trophy to one girl. Either they end up awarding it to two players, or else they ramble on and on incessantly about how hard it is to pick one girl because it’s a team sport and they’re all so good. I think many teachers are philosophically opposed to the idea of singling out the best kid or kids, since they are people people and don’t want to hurt feelings. So when they are asked to do so, they balk and make odd decisions. In our experience, trouble starts when they try to handicap certain students based on their perception of the child’s natural talent, socioeconomic situation, and level of family support. It’s way too complicated to control for those factors unless you’re omniscient and they aren’t, so often they end up making the assumption that if a student is very, very good, then s/he must have had the “unfair” advantage of natural ability. In my kids’ sport, running, the coaches always praise the kid who grunts and groans and practically collapses at the end of the race, thinking that means he’s trying so much harder than the others. That’s pretty silly, and more often than not means he’s been skimping on his practices and is not in as good shape as he should be!