Abolish Kingdom level awards (long)

[Mike Yoder]

Sarra Graeham writes about awards, and proposes a radical abolition of them. I
will take up her gauntlet and argue the other side. I will present a contrary
essay arguing that awards are a good thing, then answer some of her points,
then state how I think awards should be managed, a related question.

In the following, "awards" is a shorthand for "awards and titles."

My points are:

(1) Awards are inevitable, so do them right rather than do them badly trying to
pretend they can be avoided.

(2) Awards serve as milestones.

(3) Formal recognition is better than informal.

(4) If awards attract people who are only interested in the award, (a) who
cares? we still get the benefit of their work, (b) we attract people who are
interested in the award and can end up with them doing the activity because it
is enjoyable. People aren't static.

Let me elaborate on each of these.

(1) My argument that awards are inevitable is stolen from Richard Feynman (the
physicist), who once argued in favor of letter grades against a professor who
thought grades should be abolished in favor of essays describing student's
individual strengths and weaknesses. The argument is simple: such essays are
much more work than writing grades, and often convey little more information.
If essays were adopted, the first thing that would happen is that the writers
of the essays would make up a shorthand along the following lines: "OK, Fred,
if I want to say the student is really great, knows all the material, and has
no significant weaknesses, I'll just write this capital A. If he's kind of an
average Joe, about as many strong points as weak points, I'll write C." And so
forth... suppose I go to an event and give advice to an archer. Without
awards, for all she knows I just like to hear the sound of my own voice. If
she sees my medallion saying I am a kingdom bowman, she has a much better idea
of how much weight to put on my opinion.

(2) Awards are useful milestones in measuring progress. The more objective the
criteria, the better they serve, but there is some utility even when the
criteria are vague. If you have worked on something for a while and are no
closer to the milestone, it may be a sign that you are misdirecting your
efforts. It might be otherwise; but if the criteria for awards are
well-selected they will reflect skills generally useful for the craft being
pursued.

(3) Formal recognition is often better than informal. First of all, it is
often the case that informal recognition goes utterly unnoticed by the one
being recognized. If this person has low self-esteem, they might even be
unwilling to believe in any kind of recognition other than formal recognition.
In addition, the granting of formal recognition usually instills a sense of
duty in the grantors to be fair and to take the decision seriously, which
automatically raises the utility of the award to all concerned.

(4) Assume that having awards does in fact attract people who are only
interested in the award. Why should we care? In the case of awards to
Pelicans, we are just as well off from their having done the service. If they
are Laurels, their work is just as useful, authentic, or beautiful. If
fighters, they are just as skilled, and watching them is just as enjoyable.
Furthermore, even if doing work "just for the sake of an award" is assumed to
be evil in some uncanny manner, it is entirely possible that having enticed the
person into doing something for the award, they may come to like the activity
for its own sake and reach a higher wisdom. If people can learn, they can also
change their attitudes.

To answer some of Sarra's points:

The argument that the alphabet soup after people's names is not period is, I
think, not applicable, because (as far as I know) this soup only appears in
books like the Liber Carolingiae (effectively a telephone book) which is only
used in mundane contexts. I have never heard a person introduced in court or
at an event as "Lady Oprah, DOO, DAH." That people would rarely have
simultaneously been master brewers and (say) knights in period is a problem,
but it is hard to see how to avoid this given that we do not wish to forbid
fighters from brewing or vice versa.

The probability that having awards will lead to our only doing activities in
order to get them is infinitesimal; and even to the extent that it had this
effect it need not be detrimental. A detrimental effect could come about if
the skills needed to get the award were significantly different from what one
wished to encourage by giving it; this is part of designing the awards
carefully.

Putting a strain on the Royalty is a genuine problem, but I think that this is
simply solved: have the King and Queen award only the very highest awards, have
the Barons etc. award those the Barons are interested in awarding, have the
others awarded by the guilds or whatever. Also, if an award is commonly given,
court time can be saved by having awards given en masse.

I do think that most awards should be given without an accompanying scroll. In
general, if the award comes with an associated medallion or baldric, that
should be all that is awarded.

I agree that AoAs should mean enough that people don't say they have "just an
AoA." I also agree that once-only awards would be a good idea.

Let me close with one final comment. I may be mangling the sense of the
phrase, but I don't just do activities in the SCA for their own sake; I also do
them for the sake of their usefulness to others, or to socialize. There is
nothing wrong with this, because the utility of an activity is based on all of
the effects of that activity taken together. If my only reward for learning
the recorder were being able to play the recorder well, I wouldn't bother. But
if it also lets my barony have more events with live music rather than recorded
music, and lets me meet neat people to boot, it becomes worth it. Again, there
is nothing wrong with this: to everyone else in the barony it means that there
is a semicompetent musician in the jongleurs when there would be none
otherwise. Suppose that I had instead joined because the good jongleurs got to
wear this nifty dangly with a peacock on it, and I just had to have it. How
would this make any difference to the dancers hearing my playing?
--
Franz Joder von Joderhuebel (Michael F. Yoder) [...uunet!sli!mfy]
"We who are as good as you swear to you who are no better than we, to accept
you as our king and sovereign lord, provided you observe all our liberties and
laws; but if not, not." -- subjects' pledge to medieval kings of Aragon