I found this story in today's Rocky Mountain News online interesting. The Boulder Valley School District will eliminate valedictorians from high school classes beginning with the class of 2010. At first I thought the story would be about our society's latest attempt to make students feel good about themselves by wiping out the competition, this time the competition for being at the top of one's class. I guess you could see it that way. According to the story students will now be bestowed with honors usually reserved for universities and colleges -- the cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude designations. Those designations don't single out the top individual. Instead, the top 3 percent would be summa cum laude; the top 7 percent magna cum laude, and the top 10 percent cum laude.
Still, I'll bet a lot of students in the school district's most competitive schools will likely graduate with honors. It wouldn't surprise me, given the fact that the average grade is now a B. The students in my college classes complain when they get a C. Hey, a C is an average grade. It means they're performance is in the middle of the pack. It might as well be an F for them. I don't think it's because they're all such high performers either. A few are, but I think most are just used to getting A's on everything. "Hey, I show up to class," they think. "I should get an A."
Don't get me wrong -- I know there are school districts and universities where the competition is fierce. My high school was one of them. We had 11 valedictorians in my class of more than 500. All of those valedictorians got straight A's -- we had to vote on who got to give the speech at graduation. (This was in 1990, before school districts weighted honors classes, pushing the students who excel in those classes above a 4.0 grade-point average.) There were another dozen or two students who had gotten only one or two B's their entire high-school career. In Highlands Ranch, Colo., where I live, the high schools have a good reputation, and many students are your typical over-achievers. In poorer, more urban school districts, the challenge is to get students to graduate. Here, the pressure is great to get the best grades, be involved in all the right activities and get into the best colleges.
It's interesting to me how the pressure diminishes and the achievement holds less meaning for those who get excellent grades in college. I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism with a class of about 200. Only a handful graduated with honors. I was disappointed in high school not to be valedictorian (I was one of those who got one or two B's), but in college I graduated cum laude -- the bottom rung of those three designations of graduating with honors. I was pleased with it, though. I worked my tail off. No employer ever hired me for my college GPA, but I worked hard because I loved to learn and wanted to do my best.
This brings me to another interesting thing: Why is there so much more hoopla associated with graduating from high school than graduating from college? It's never made sense to me why our culture views graduation from high school as the launching pad to the rest of your life, when you really spend the next four to six years still under mom and dad's wings. Why do all the aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins come to the high school graduation, but students (and therefore their families) often skip their college graduation ceremonies, as if it didn't mean anything, when college graduation is actually more meaningful because not everyone achieves it?
Forgive me, I can see I've digressed. I guess this calls for a part II of this blog on another day . . . .
Still, I'll bet a lot of students in the school district's most competitive schools will likely graduate with honors. It wouldn't surprise me, given the fact that the average grade is now a B. The students in my college classes complain when they get a C. Hey, a C is an average grade. It means they're performance is in the middle of the pack. It might as well be an F for them. I don't think it's because they're all such high performers either. A few are, but I think most are just used to getting A's on everything. "Hey, I show up to class," they think. "I should get an A."
Don't get me wrong -- I know there are school districts and universities where the competition is fierce. My high school was one of them. We had 11 valedictorians in my class of more than 500. All of those valedictorians got straight A's -- we had to vote on who got to give the speech at graduation. (This was in 1990, before school districts weighted honors classes, pushing the students who excel in those classes above a 4.0 grade-point average.) There were another dozen or two students who had gotten only one or two B's their entire high-school career. In Highlands Ranch, Colo., where I live, the high schools have a good reputation, and many students are your typical over-achievers. In poorer, more urban school districts, the challenge is to get students to graduate. Here, the pressure is great to get the best grades, be involved in all the right activities and get into the best colleges.
It's interesting to me how the pressure diminishes and the achievement holds less meaning for those who get excellent grades in college. I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism with a class of about 200. Only a handful graduated with honors. I was disappointed in high school not to be valedictorian (I was one of those who got one or two B's), but in college I graduated cum laude -- the bottom rung of those three designations of graduating with honors. I was pleased with it, though. I worked my tail off. No employer ever hired me for my college GPA, but I worked hard because I loved to learn and wanted to do my best.
This brings me to another interesting thing: Why is there so much more hoopla associated with graduating from high school than graduating from college? It's never made sense to me why our culture views graduation from high school as the launching pad to the rest of your life, when you really spend the next four to six years still under mom and dad's wings. Why do all the aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins come to the high school graduation, but students (and therefore their families) often skip their college graduation ceremonies, as if it didn't mean anything, when college graduation is actually more meaningful because not everyone achieves it?
Forgive me, I can see I've digressed. I guess this calls for a part II of this blog on another day . . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment