[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Pin for participation, the everyone is a winner philosophy cheapens winning.

Giving someone an "I was there" trinket is not cheapening anything. Is winning and losing so important that we forget why this program exists in the first place? Hint: it has nothing to do with building robots or entering them in competition. A participation trinket is a recognition that you got off the couch, dropped the video game controller, and CHOSE to do something amazing -- even if your robot didn't win a trophy. I don't think it has anything to do with "everyone's a winner."

In my own program, I feel the awarding of participation recognition does nothing to lessen the feeling of achievement that the kids in Exothermic Robotics have in successfully building robots and winning 25+ trophies in the last three years. I haven't polled all of them, but I'd bet a nickel that the kids in our program wouldn't even care about the question, let alone the answer.