Well, thanks to Jerz’s Literacy Weblog I’ve got plenty to say, about this article by Margaret Talbot at the New Yorker: "Best in Class".
Fortunately, I’m down enough to not feel up to ranting about it, but I’ll make a couple remarks. First of all (this phrase, I am sure, will soon be marked for obsolescence once the liberals figure it out), what’s the sense in even having a grading system if there’s no purpose to striving for the top? Teachers are already complaining about the majority of students who just go for the credit of the course and are content with C-. I wonder what would happen if pass/fail were the criteria instead. Secondly, while I may have wondered why our own valedictorian was going for the enth Associates degree, she was the best and deserved the credit.
The only reason the girl in the article was so upset she lost out was because she hadn’t checked the rules about the tiebreaker being accumulated number of credits, then yelled foul when the real winner had "secretly" taken an extra course. What on earth prevented her from checking out the rules if her dream since she was a little girl was to be valedictorian? Seems to me he was smarter than her and his actions evidenced that. (It ain’t all book-larnin’!) And why would he have to make any kind of announcement of his plans?
Like I said in my comments on Dr. Jerz’s weblog, try taking away the Player of the Year Award in any school and see if that gets by.
I’m really sick to death of panty-waisted crybabies who claim to cheer the right of the individual yet insist on squashing anyone who rises to a certain level by earning either fame or fortune above what they think he should have.
(Note: I also whined a bit about not being recognized at graduation for highest honors–or any honors at all, in fact. I have a 3.93 GPA but without having finished the final science elective, and despite accumulating 73 credits to date, the rule states that the honors will not be recognized at graduation. I can whine, I can get mad, I can place blame where it belongs–on myself, and I have the right to do that. But it would never occur to me to make the school change the rules just so I could feel better.)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
My wife graduated third in her class from Plano high school, which is the site of the latest valedictorian scuffle.
When I was a freshman in high school (at O’Connell HS in Arlington, VA), I think I was ranked about fifth (out of a class of 400 or so). By senior year, I had slipped to about eighth… or maybe I misremember that, and I started out at eight and slid slightly upwards. I really didn’t pay any attention to that… I was satisfied with my good grades and my activity in the Drama Club, which wasn’t a course and didn’t count for anything on one’s transcript.
But see, you remember those numbers, probably because you’re proud of them, and rightly so. That’s quite an achievement. Now that you’ve brought me back to high school, I think I was 6th in a class of 135, and here’s the embarrassing part (because in all this talk of valedictorians, I had truly forgotten the point that in our Derby H.S. class of 1965, there was a valedictorian and a salutorian for each, the Business Course and College Course students. I was the valedictorian for the Business Course and remember only being terrified because I had to make a speech! Maybe it does put a subconscious slant on my thinking, however. But in the end, it’s what you remember and enjoyed or were affected by. In your case, the drama club. In mine, the love of literature and writing inspired by my English teachers.
But to the future, where you stand in line becomes more meaningful–in small companies and especially up to large corporations where employees are evaluated on job performance and assigned a place as to their importance to management. Those at the bottom are always subject to losing their jobs in downsizing. Those at the top are the first due for promotions. It’s a fair system–unless abused by personal opinion by those chopping heads.