Achievement Trophies, Academic Awards, Sports Trophies, Entertainment Awards, Music Awards and Scholarships are all forms of recognition. For that matter, stock options, Hawaiian vacations, golf outings, and huge corporate bonuses, especially to CEO types are also forms of recognition. It is a relatively logical fact, that people who excel at a given talent or ability usually appreciate recognition and often seek it out. Just as a beautiful model may use her good looks to gain recognition for an advertiser because she looks so stunning in their clothing designs, a musician may gain fame and recognition by writing a hit song and seeing it go platinum and then be recognized with a Grammy Award. Achievement trophies and awards may recognize any number of types of ability.



Academic awards, for instance, range all the way from that medal that you win for the third-grade spelling bee to a fully paid scholarship that you win for being the academic leader and valedictorian of your class. Sports trophies can recognize individual performance in any given sport. Team trophies may also be given in recognition of the entire team's performance or cumulative record for the season. Baseball, basketball, football, golf, gymnastics, soccer, swimming, tennis, track, volleyball, wrestling, karate and other martial arts, all recognize individual accomplishment and team accomplishments with trophies plaques and other awards. Of course, the drama award equivalent of a Super Bowl ring is good, old golden boy, Oscar. And whether you win for best actor, best actress, best director, best screenplay, or simply best short film adapted from foreign language for a TV commercial, having Oscar sitting on your mantle is a trophy like no other.

Trophies and awards can be given to acknowledge noncompetitive events. Oprah's creation of an all girls school in Africa is worthy of such an award. A movie that dramatizes and focuses attention on geopolitical events such as global warming can catapult an ex-presidential candidate and former Vice President into a Nobel peace prize winner. Awards can sometimes reflect the gratitude of the award giver as much as offer the recognition that is deserved. If the gratitude is acknowledged from a committee that represents a very large group of people the award that is given may actually be a way of showing the appreciation of the larger group for the accomplishment the recipient has achieved.

Finally, an issue that might be worthy of a debating trophy is the issue of whether trophies and awards encourage too much competition in the sports and activities of children. No one wants to debate the idea as to whether recognition is valuable, that is basically a given. But many people feel that the singling out of individuals as the very best, the striving to break the records

of the prior best etc. places too much emphasis on winning and not enough emphasis on simply competing well. Occasionally the trophy or the award that is to be given as such recognition is held up as the culprit, the representation of the achievement of one individual at the expense of making numerous children feel inferior because they cannot compete. While this may be a debate worth having, even one which might be worthy of some sort of award, if one focuses on recognizing achievement at every level and rewards the less able along with most able, the real goal of the use of every type of trophy, award, plaque, or blue ribbon is accomplished, and that is, quite simply, recognition.