I wonder how much of this 'debate' is actually just people talking about different age groups?

A participation ribbon might well have motivated me at age 6, and frankly I doubt both the morality and common sense of anyone saying a six year old is too happy at a swim class. Keeping kids involved at that age seems like the biggest goal.

On the other hand, I have annoyed memories of getting participation ribbons at 15 for doing terribly in races. They felt downright insulting, because I knew exactly how I'd done and I was basically getting a ribbon for taking a bus to the meet.

A shocking number of educational issues seem to boil down to "6 year olds are not 15 year olds". That, and "offering things is better than enforcing them" - participation ribbons are way better than banning score-keeping, which I also got to see.

Oh this is a BRILLIANT point! We almost never breakdown our perspectives based on age, much less take a moment to reflect on which of our ages is being represented by a thought.

I think the natural bias to put discrete values on things existing on a spectrum is where is all stems from. "We want to keep things simple, so here's this recipe for self-esteem" as opposed to "here's an age-based breakdown of ways to build self-esteem". Even then, the "enlightened" example is missing loads of other conditions, like if the person suffered emotional abuse or has automatic negative thoughts.

Also, banning score-keeping is the naive approach. I think an interesting one would be to add a game score & encourage both teams to collaborate to increase it. I don't know how it'd effect things, but it'd be fun to find out!

Now that you mention it, I do weekly timed runs (http://www.parkrun.org.uk/), and I definitely treasure my "ribbon" (the email I receive confirming my time and position).

I time the runs myself on my phone so the email has little real purpose, but for some reason it's very satisfying to know that my efforts have been logged in a database.

I'm unlikely to ever hit the top 20, so this is very much a participation trophy. Maybe they can be motivating after all?

Participation isn't the same as placement & external motivators can be really useful in establishing habits. The question is will you stop running if the ribbons stop flowing?

This is an external reward to set the stage for internally valuing their fitness & learning how to use their body. Nothing wrong with it, as long as there's a plan for internalization. Ideally, they'll be taught those lessons & won't need the ribbons to get them out on the cold days 10 years from now.

(Take with a grain of salt. My only experiences with raising children involve raising myself & my parents over the past 1.5 years.)

Maybe they just compete with their peers on number of ribbons - which changes it from "participation ribbon" to an actual prize.