Culture of Contests

Last night I went to a storytelling event.  Each person told a story, and then they were judged and given a numerical score.  That's how we knew which story was "the winner."  I watch tv, and people cook beautiful dishes and sing beautiful songs or try hard in other ways.  And then they are slowly thanked and dismissed and exiled for not being "the best."  What are we teaching children with these endless and arbitrary evaluations? How will they ever learn to differentiate the subjective from the factual?  How will they learn to make a joyful noise in the world, unto anybody?  This culture of elimination and points to a bad, bad end and makes work cut out for teachers...if only teachers,too, weren't being judged and eliminated for their best.