Attila the Mom over at Cheaper than Therapy hepped me to the fact that there will be No more valedictorians in Boulder Valley School District.
I'll let that sink in for a second.
It seems that a grade-point system that separated top students by mere hundredths of a point led to lots of hurt feelings and upset parents. Therefore, why not do away with the ideer of recognizing a top student altogether?
Reaping the sowing of the counterculture of the hippy-dippy sixties, the article concludes by saying
"Boulder Valley had previously abolished class rankings to reduce "unhealthy competition."
After all, why should there be any incentive to be the best? We should accept the reality of the only realistic options we deserve, and settle for the comfortably attainable range of loserdom-to-mere mediocrity. We shouldn't try to be the best we can be - that's just being mean and greedy. No one likes having or being the best of/at anything, right? We all crave unremarkable, right?
What a load of horse shit.
Anyway, this post was stuffed to overflowing with clever observations that you would all have been quoting for years, but I didn't want to intimidate, so I edited the real brilliance out.
You're welcome.
13 comments:
Hey, it sucks, but at least they didn't make everyone valedictorian, like when they give every member of every sports team a trophy!
yer darned tootin'! All those speeches would take an eternity.
Yes we don't want to hurt the little darlings self worth. Geez. . I worked in an office where a bunch of us worked on this HUGE project that got national recognition. . .it was hours and hours and hours of mostly unpaid extra time and lunch hours and missed leave. But it went well enough we passed an audit over the changes and everyone at the higher levels was very pleased.
We heard that our "employer" had freed up some money for office awards. We figured we'd get SOMETHING.
Do you know who got a large cash award? The secretary - for putting up the artificial Christmas tree in the break room. The manager explained she "never gets awards" (maybe because she spent all frikken day on her cell phone).
We got NOTHING. Not even an atta boy. . and the work was NOT part of our normal job description.
I never volunteered to work on another special project I can tell you that and the first offer I had from another firm with a manager who know how to manage. . I was GONE, as were 75% of the rest of the team.
Does this mean that all the kids can claim they were first in their class on college applications? That means lots of extra money and scolorships.
grrrr---this still pisses me off!
Thanks for the shout!
I am a manager at a technology firm and hire the products of this sort of educational system. One of the things I have noticed is a fairly high expectation among these new hires that they will be rewarded with recognition, bonuses, large pay raises and promotions for simply showing up on time and doing their job.
It seems as if we have nurtured a generation of people who are offended by the notion that hard work, dedication, and talent reaps more reward than simply gracing the workplace with their presence.
It is too bad that Lin didn't get the reward she seems to have earned. I think that once rewards are separated from achievement this sort of inequity inevitably takes place. This is the "unintended consequence" of a world that discourages competion. It is a world in which reward is arbitrary, inequitable, and based on things like gender, ethnicity or personality rather than contribution and acheivement.
I truly appreciate you not intimidating me with your brilliance, LaP. I often feel inadequate in your prescence.
I feel much better now that you've dumbed things down for the rest of us. Of course, it's not nearly as entertaining...but that's the price we must pay, I suppose.
Hawk, Spit!
And people wonder WHY we cannot compete in a global market place!
Our engineers cannot construct coherent sentences and our writers do not know how to balance their checkbooks. But everyone's self esteem is healthy, you bet your sweet ass on that!
What a load of horse shit.
Just can't improve on that observation. Period, full stop.
Who is John Galt? A
Horseshit it is. Since when did excellence become offensive? People have just got to learn to suck it up a little.
Lowest common denominator. Reduce everything to the same featureless sludge. No thanks.
Competition is what made America great. This sort of nonsense is helping drag her down.
I always hated competition when I was a tepid sludge of a Junior Socialist, so this is pandering to the egos of a child too.
Dan - Those hires, I have hired them too and I think the way around it is you have HR just give them some nonsensical "Gold-Star" award on a big shiny piece of paper at a potluck lunch, with cake? That's how we handled it anyhow.
This is truly tragic.
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