50 years old here; the teaching profession was starting to try that on my generation. All through second grade our teacher held a reading competition. On the last day of school she started handing out ribbons.
At first we genuinely thought the first kid she called to her desk had won something when he got his ribbon. He walked back across the room with a puzzled smile and our admiration; none of us expected him to win anything. Good job!
Then she called another name and another. That confused us. After a while half the class had been called and we started to grumble. This was starting to look like a meaningless waste of everyone's time. Another girl asked me to read off her ribbon. I could sound out the words "honorable mention" but didn't know what they meant.
A while later my name got called.
"Hey, what's that say?" Another kid asked.
It doesn't mean anything I told him.
"No, he insisted. Yours is different."
It wasn't until then that I paid any attention; my ribbon had been green like everyone else's. But the lettering said, "sixth place."
Then everybody sat up and paid attention. We were finally getting to the winners. After a long pointless wait the third, second, and first place kids got their ribbons. Which was nice for about three seconds, until somebody groaned.
We all realized that she had called us up in reverse order. That first boy to get his ribbon, he looked like he wished the ground would open up and swallow him.
By now we were actively complaining. The reading competition was a good idea and having winners was fine, but this was a horrible way of finishing it. The unfortunate kids who had been among the first were humiliated, with a couple of bullies relishing their shame and the rest of us protesting against this system.
Yet the teacher seemed satisfied. She didn't mean badly. She genuinely thought that first moment of wonder was all we were developmentally capable of processing and she had been too busy passing around ribbons to comprehend the rest of our reaction.
I think within about ten minutes most groups of children over the age of three realize the whole exercise is bullshit.