When I was at grade school age, there were no private schools in my town, probably not even in the entire country where I grew up. Back then, you didn’t need to have rich parents to be able to go to decent public schools, and even kids from middle class families could find their way to very good public schools. I was fortunate enough to be one of those kids.

Being public schools, however, meant that they did not have much of extra funding to spend on prizes, and the most common prize that one could receive for making good grades was a handwritten note of praise from our teachers on our exam papers; something like “excellent,” or “well done.” Once in a while, however, and especially in the first or second grade, we were all gathered to witness a prize ceremony. And they were sometimes quite baffling to our little minds. The recipients of those prizes were often not the top students in the class, and in some cases it was clear to all of us that they were not even average in terms of their grades. They all had one thing in common though; they had some of the best looking clothes and bags in the class.

As we grew older and went to higher grades, those prize ceremonies became less frequent and eventually disappeared. But by then we all had figured out what was really happening during those prize ceremonies; that those prizes were bought by their parents and brought to the teachers or school officials, to be given to their kids during a fake prize ceremony. I don’t plan on getting into the discussion about the morality of those ceremonies. The school systems have changed so much since then that there is no point in talking about that practice.

But the recently invented FIFA peace prize reminded me of those good old days. Seeing the happy and excited face of our beloved president when accepting the prestigious prize, intentionally or ignorantly pretending that it was a real prize and that he had done something to have earned it, reminded me of the lit up faces of those classmates of mine in the first or second grade, believing that they were really being honored for something they had done. Actually, I take it back; I think even at that very young age, most of the recipients of those prizes realized that something was not right. And the fact that such ceremonies stopped happening pretty much beyond the third grade, is a good indication that even 9-year-old kids were able to figure out that the prizes were made up, and that they would feel too embarrassed to stand in front of all of their classmates and accept them.