Okay, I suppose I'll throw in a personal anecdote while I'm still here...
As some of you may recall,
I lived in a group home. I've never experienced the sort of non-competitive, can't fail coddling that we're discussing here except for the Christmas banquet given for the residence, staff and administrators of the home. There are several cash awards given out for various achievements. Pathetically, I won best student. I was always a poor student so either they were trivially won over by my studious efforts in select subjects (mostly math and physics) or the other kids tragically sucked even worse.
There were also "individual achievement awards." I don't recall if they were called that exactly but it was a little trophy given to everyone for
something. Often it was an inane something, as if they were struggling to find something with which to award you. I didn't realize what they were doing for the first couple of awards but after a short while, I began to notice that there were a lot of these awards. Eventually, it was obvious that we were all getting one. I remember some humour around some of them so they were probably given in good fun but spending the time to give all twenty or so kids an award seems excessive enough that I'm sure that avoiding anyone feeling "left out" was a motive...
I was given the Einstein award for Mathematics. This was before the proliferation of the internet but still... How hard would it have been to look up an actual
mathematician to name the award after!
Gauss would have been my choice but there's no shortage of great mathematicians from which to choose...