I am sorry your ds had to hear the person from the other school get upset - and I'd probably have explained it to him from the perspective of letting him know that when the other school decided who would go to the county fair they chose to only send kids who attended their school. If he heard her saying things that were obvious that she was upset that he was at the fair with his project, I'd just honestly say "I don't know why she's upset" (because honestly, there could be a number of reasons - unless someone definitively told me that yes, the judging committee at the school purposely played favorites in giving the top spots to their children, I just wouldn't leap to that conclusion).

I'd also like to add a perspective coming from the point of view of someone who's been a judge at our state science fair - I'm a scientist and was a judge for a number of years. It may *look* like some projects are clearly "more worthy" of awards based on how they look in the presentation setup, and some projects are just inherently more interesting and in-depth looking up front. A large part of how we judged projects hinged on our interviews with the kids, as well as whether or not they were following the guidelines we had in place. I was never able to walk into a room full of projects and at casual glance see that project x was clearly more deserving than project y until I'd had a chance to talk with the students who put the projects together. Another science fair phenomena is that projects are basically unlimited in nature - anything that qualifies as science is usually accepted as a topic (as long as it doesn't involve torturing living animals). At our state fairs we always have multiple categories for awards sponsored by groups who have some type of science affiliation with an interest in specific areas. A project that received the highest award from one group might not get recognition at all from a different group - there were always many many great projects. Whether or not a project deserved to have an award is absolutely somewhat subjective, and going to depend on what the person judging is looking for - that doesn't mean one project is inherently better than another, and I think that's something I might want to emphasize with my own child. You mentioned that he could see his project was more worthy than others - I would take that as an opportunity to talk to him about how the other projects have merit too.

I'd also just like to put out there - science fairs can become so political in some parents' eyes but the primary reason there are science fairs is because people who love science want to encourage kids who love science to study science. Science fairs aren't the only place in life where kids are going to run into pushy parents or people who think they deserve more of an award than someone else or where they may feel slighted when an award is given out to someone else. I think it's helpful to put that into perspective - all of that is "noise" - what I'd really want my kids to take away is that they came up with an idea, they worked the project through, they learned something, they participated. Whether or not they one an award isn't the point, and whether or not they were chosen to go on isn't the point. When you focus on that, and then run into a parent who's gone over the cliff for whatever reason, I'd just be up front with my child and point out, that parent seems to be over-reacting.

polarbear