Yep, I think we agree. "Self-esteem good" and "self-esteem bad" are generally two sides of the same coin - they both treat children's happiness as some nebulous thing unrelated to their actual lives.

I got a bunch of participation ribbons as a kid, but I certainly don't think they were anything more than a symptom of actual problems. There was a weird, pervasive unwillingness among adults to admit that maybe I was good at some things, and at others, and capable of improvement. I might have benefitted a great deal from someone telling me things like "Your art is bad, and you could get better if you tried to. Also, you're best-in-school smart, not best-in-world smart, there's a difference and it's a good reason to work harder."

I did eventually get that from some outside-of-school competitions, but it's weird that school couldn't provide that. It feeds into my 'youth rights' bit, even - we treat kids like they're just little blobs of emotion who can be controlled without needing to help them interact with the real world.