The Judge.

I remember being a little Grade 5 student, standing up in front on the large audience at our local legion, giving my speech on how much I love day dreaming. I looked at that row of judges with fear - the ranking they gave me was the ultimate authority. In my head, the word of the judges was the official decision on my future as a public speaker. I was terrified.

This morning, I was sitting on the other side of that table, wondering if the judges who ranked me felt as unqualified as I do. How in the world can I rank twelve wonderful creative speeches - all of which are so different, have different areas to improve, and different areas that are done really well? The hardest part was seeing the disappointed faces of the students who put in hours of work, delivered amazing speeches, and yet didn't win. I want to tell them, "These medals don't count like you think they do! I'm just a random person - I'm certainly not the ultimate authority on your speaking abilities. Not taking home a medal doesn't mean anything - your speech was still more than excellent: you had me on my toes in suspense; you had me thinking seriously about our dark history; you had me laughing; you downright amazed me with your maturity, skill and effort." But I know that most students won't read the feedback that I scrawled all over the assessment forms. It's those ridiculous gold, silver and bronze medal that means something to many kids, not some flowery "everyone's a winner" comment during the awards ceremony.

I am stuck. I don't know what the solution is. I know that competition did drive me to work harder - my lovely grandma, who truly is the sweetest woman you could ever meet but likes a bit of competition herself, was always waiting and hoping for me to get the gold medal in high school every year when I kept coming in second place. Looking back, I think I put some ridiculous stresses on myself trying to do better and better, but I would never have achieved the marks that got me scholarships to afford university without that pressure of competition. Yet, what about the kids who get 93.6% when the bronze medalist achieved 93.7%? What about the vast majority of kids who never win, but are always just the runner up? Competition and ranking treats these students so harshly. As Abba would say, "the winner takes it all" - even when the winner doesn't necessarily want to take anything away from their peers.

Maybe today's students are smarter than I was. Maybe they will read and actually believe the encouraging feedback I wrote them. Maybe they won't feel like a failure when they see the medals around their friend's necks, but not their own. Maybe they've figured out that a verdict from a random judge like me doesn't mean anything for their future. But those disappointed faces and the unwillingness to look me in eye after the event makes me worry that maybe these kids are just like me.