The school prize

Source A: an original contemporary non-fiction-style account.

At the school prize-giving, my daughter received a certificate for being helpful. She held it carefully on the way home, pleased that someone had noticed. I was pleased too, until I heard myself asking whether there had also been an academic prize she might win next year. The question arrived wearing the respectable clothes of encouragement. Underneath, it was a comparison. Her satisfaction had been complete until I introduced an imaginary larger version of it.

I apologised. She said she did not mind, then told me about the classmate whose broken wrist had made carrying books difficult. The certificate referred to weeks of small actions I had never seen. Its printed border and gold star suddenly mattered less than the story behind them. I had been ready to treat the award as a position on a ladder. It was also a description of how she had spent part of her time with another person.

I do not oppose prizes for achievement or the wish to improve. But adults should be careful about turning every recognition into a rehearsal for a more impressive one. A child can value mathematics, kindness and persistence without arranging them in a single queue. We put the certificate above her desk. I resisted measuring it against anything else before finding the drawing pin.

Source B: an original letter in a nineteenth-century voice. This is a period-voice simulation, not an archival document.

Dear Father, I write to tell you that I received the history prize at the end of term. You will be glad, I know, and I have been glad myself. The book is handsomely bound, with my name entered inside. Yet I find that possession of it has not settled every feeling connected with the competition. My friend Robert, who lent me his notes during my illness, stood beside me when the results were announced. His pleasure appeared sincere, which made my own triumph less simple to enjoy.

For several weeks I had treated the work as a race against him. When he answered a difficult question, I counted it as a distance I must recover. His help should have made that view impossible, but I accepted the notes while keeping the rivalry. Only when the prize was mine did I notice how much of my preparation had depended upon somebody I had imagined chiefly as an obstacle. A name written in one book cannot contain the whole history of how the book was earned.

I shall continue to work hard and would be dishonest if I pretended not to like distinction. I ask only that, when you congratulate me, you also allow me to tell you about Robert. The prize may record an achievement, but it need not instruct me to forget an obligation. I intend to return his notes with a letter of thanks, though thanks should have been given before success made me generous enough to remember it.

Use the whole of both sources. Compare the writers’ perspectives on prizes and how their methods convey those perspectives. Support your comparison with evidence from both sources.