I am definitely not forgetting that my high school achievements, such as they were, didn’t really net me anything then. I certainly didn’t get a BJ for every fifty points I scored about the school mean SAT, let me tell you.
Being able to play music I love and read a lot of interesting things, however, has stayed with me for life.
High school achievements didn’t really net me very much afterwards, and they certainly don’t do anything for me today. I can see it fuzzily from yours and Litoris’ points of view, though I did not experience it.
My parents didn’t praise me every time I washed my hands after I picked my nose: they simply expected me to achieve. I was not rewarded in any way for my grades or performance. We all expected my father and mother to discharge their responsibilities to the family, and I was expected to do my part. I think the difference is, they believed that I was capable of it and that I truly would amount to something someday. Believe me, I understand that this difference is critical. It is part of what got me through high school.
Amazingly enough, I was never a “nerd” in high school. I wasn’t timid or shy, I was somewhat conscious of my appearance, and had enough social skills to get by. I didn’t date because I was too immature and self-conscious, but the opportunities were definitely there had I been more sophisticated. Most of my friends did, but in my paranoid desire to be contrarian in everything, I didn’t. I was just a wisecracking kid whom most people thought was ok, if difficult to tolerate in large doses.
But I caught plenty of shit for exactly the kinds of things folks in this thread are suggesting that schools draw even more attention to. Further calling attention to my dubious achievements only made things more difficult. The grade-grubbers would try to get more competitive with me, and the better-adjusted but more mainstream kids would sometimes pretend to befriend me so I would help them with their homework or let them cheat off my exams. I never told anyone how I did on any paper, test, quiz, anything because I really didn’t care for the mishagas. I would have loved to punch everyone who asked me “what didja get?” every single time a test was returned.
They found out what I got when the class ranks were released. There was nothing I could do about that, and it was too late to make a difference. I was as good as gone.
I was also the kid who did not get his yearbook picture taken nor even purchase a yearbook at all.
A I would have liked to have learned how to fit in better with people who were not like me. I would have been much less of a pompous ass, would have had more friends, and presumably a happier youth. Most people get to learn these things when they are pretty young. I think having less Honor Society shit calling attention to all of my little achievements would have really helped.
I went to a smaller high school. We started out with maybe a dozen clarinets in the band in my freshman year. By the end, there was so much attrition at all levels that we ended up with three or four. Most of the time, I played with the orchestra anyway.
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The hell you say. The first of Stravinsky’s Three Pieces For Solo Clarinet is like chalumeau butter. The rest is rough. I never really mastered it, but such is life. This is probably not the best video out there, but I can’t access youtube from work.
You know, that doesn’t mesh with my experiences at all. The ones typically doing all the bitching and screaming and backstabbing and gaming the system were the ones who doing just great without all that shit. The ones who had a 3.96 unweighted GPA while taking all the AP classes, but were upset because someone else with a 3.97 took all the same classes but “had an easier teacher” and now precious little Sweetums wouldn’t get to make a speech at graduation and it just wasn’t FAIR that she wouldn’t get the recognition she deserved.
I went to high school and undergrad with a LOT of these people, and they were tiresome assholes, the lot of them. My husband went to medical school with even more of them, and unsurprisingly enough they were still tiresome assholes. Now that they’re out of school and residency and have little to compete for, maybe they’re less tiresome and assholish. We didn’t keep up with any of them, so I don’t have any idea. But somehow I really doubt it.
That might be the crux of the issue. Starting seventh grade, I was an overwrought nerd of the highest order. Between having band and honors classes/honor society as “safe” places to learn to socialize was a tremendous help–our honor society was deliberately kept large enough to include not only the top tier academics but the upper strata of the middle-range “cool kid” demographic, to encourage the latter academically as they inadvertently role-modeled good social behavior for the geeks and freaks. In this case, expanding the reach of a relatively little bit of attention-to-achievements-calling vastly helped a lot of kids reach their potential.
By the end of high school I had hit three of the four–band section leader type, second in my class, but I was also cool enough to pick up girls and not get picked on for being a nerd. (I didn’t add athletics until college, but that intramural football trophy and “most sacks in the season” certificate are two of my more treasured college memories at this point)
I was in a small high school with a hell of a band program, we only graduated around 90 a year but typically had 40-70 people in the 9-12 grade concert band.
It’s definitely a different kind of difficulty, but I stand by it. Those Cs above the clef are no picnic for us brasswinds.
At this point, I also just have to recognize that I must calibrate very differently. I don’t tend to internalize my achievements very much. I attribute them most of the time to various combinations of luck, favorable environment, or occasionally stretching my modest gifts. The flip side is I do not tend to internalize my many failures and disappointments either.
So I am clearly offbeat in my disregard for achievements and awards. I recognize this and should not be so hasty to prescribe my way for others.
The clarinet has a tremendous range, but damn, man, the Stravinsky goes high. Hittting those Es and Fs so that they don’t sound like extremes at the end of the clarinet’s range ain’t easy, yo.
nods Oh, I know it–I can play very basic just about anything, and you guys have it rough over there on the high end same as we do. Different mouthpiece, same pinpoint control in a very narrow range.
The Barcelona one in particular was vicious because it was a pretty bright fanfare-ish figure ascending to the high C, then sixteenth-note runes down two octaves for another several bars. I don’t mind high notes so much, but the switching of embrochure from “holy crap, top of the range” to “holy crap bottom of the range” in one sweeping cadenza is a beast.
I must be missing something here. I always thought the purpose of “honors” classes was to challenge kids not stimulated by standard classwork, and that the advantage for the student was that Ivy League-quality schools would look closer at you. Which meant that for one season of your life, the fact that you were an honors student was extremely important for one thing, and after that it was … well, little more than bragging rights.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I wasn’t saying ‘I didn’t get my grades weighted so no one else should’, I was saying ‘I didn’t get my grades weighted and that was just fine’. In fact, in the long run I think it’s better.
You keep going on about a culture of mediocrity, but in my eyes the special tassels and fancy fanfare is an integral part of that breeding of mediocrity. You want to encourage kids to work only if the praise level is high enough, to avoid hard tasks that might result in less than perfect results, and to feel that they are Specialy McSpecialpants - that to me is a recipe for mediocre, low-achieving adults who require constant hand holding.
I deal with college freshmen on a regular basis, and the ones who went to this type of high school are quickly recognizable. They are often not especially good students because they are easily discouraged and don’t necessarily have a good work ethic. How many times have I heard the whine “…but I was a straight A student in high school!”. Well, very few freshmen can keep that up and the crushing disappointment is very hard for kids who are accustomed to being a big fish in a small pond.
Look, unless you kid is an absolute genius with no parallel, she will be one of hundreds of similarly intelligent students when she reaches university. I know I was shocked by this myself. If my high school had further put me on a pedestal it would have been even harder.
Y’know, I understand that what we used to call “gifted and talented” classes are something adults came up with in an attempt to make life BETTER for our kids … but sometimes I think no matter what we do, when we fiddle around in teens’ lives, we just make it worse. As if Mother Nature didn’t hand 'em enough to deal with.
Well, having raised two sons to adulthood, my hat is off to the OP and anyone else out there fightin’ for their kids. Believe me, I never heard any 30-year-old say, “I wish my parents had been less interested in my life when I was in high school.” Carry on the good fight!
Warning: Gratuitous daisy-chaining of quotes imminent.
I was similar, but had a lot of opposite experiences to you. I was in the gifted and talented program in elementary school, throughout the entire thing they wanted me to skip anywhere from 2-3 grades at a time, my parents thought that was stupid because would defeat a lot of social opportunities. I could have gone to the advanced middle school but my parents wanted me to be with my friends (all of whom I mostly grew away from in a couple years). This particular middle school was a fine arts magnet so there weren’t many “gifted” classes outside of one Language Arts + and a Humanities class (the curriculum of which changed every year so the gifted kids could take it multiple times and not get bored with the other classes). I eventually took the test to get into the gifted high school, got in easily (I was like 98th percentile or something I think) because I was so goddamned bored with regular classes. So remember most of my education where I was conscious enough to actually form an opinion comes from a similar idea, and I agree everyone should be on the same metric.
There are tons of “we’re so smart” clubs in the grown-up world. MENSA, for example. The problem with awarding intelligence so much though is it leads to a lot of looking down on people and not much getting done. Sure, there are prizes like the Nobel, but a lot (like MENSA) seem to thrive on having “smart people” being smart with each other and… well… not much else really. The problem is, the mediocre workers that were smart kids things comes from “I’m already smart, I’m already recognized, so I don’t have to DO anything.” If anything we need to do away with these “societies” and “awards” except for the very, very top. In my school no one gave a fuck who got the top awards other than a “isn’t that nice, good for you! Really!” The prestigious things were things like “so, do you have a goal or are you just smart for the hell of it?” And “did you get into <uber national recognition society>?” We could care less about internal rewards.
Bah, I went to a special high school and, like Maeglin, got the same thing. Big vocabularies are good for impressing peers in everyday conversation now and then but not much else. Clarity is much more important than vocabulary. I always got ridiculously good word choice scores compared to the kids that went to gifted middle schools and were applauded for using overly specific words in everyday conversation simply because getting mocked now and then helped me learn how to CHOOSE my words, not just use them. Your daughter needs to learn this, what’s the point in knowing words no one else knows? Status and having something to talk about at parties, oh and insulting people to their face without them knowing they’ve been insulted just for kicks.
See, this is why I consider the issues I had in high school to be perverted blessings. I was constantly told I was smart, and I could go far if I just worked at it, my combination of sheer apathy, breezing through middle school, and a few disorders mixed here and there allowed them to tell me “yes, you are smart, we cannot deny that, you ask questions and think of things no one else even could begin to approach that easily, but you need to WORK and actually turn things in to get a good grade and succeed in life.” My depression kind of got me there with a “well, if I’m so smart then why am I not succeeding automatically?”
But somewhere at the start of college, especially going to a stupid, trade schoolish, barely accredited college because I was"sure what I wanted to do" (Game Design) woke me up. I got into good universities (including an ivy) based on essays and recommendations in spite of my less than stellar grades (also, playing at Carnegie seems to help anyone accept you into any level of anything for some reason), I realized I was doing amazing here, because it was easier, yes, but because I liked what I was doing and was interested and therefor applying myself. I left after a little self-absorbed bullshit (see my pit thread) and I’m at the U of A taking some pretty tough classes and doing great because I finally realized that I WAS smart and it really WAS the not applying myself that killed me.
What got me was the disparity between high school and college, I was always told how “I’ll surely succeed” and whatnot in middle school, so I never bothered to apply myself to anything because “I was sure I’d get there regardless of what happens” and I think that’s what really produces so many 250 IQ pencil pushers. They really ARE smart, but they’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s not potential, it’s some mystical quality that will make success fall into their laps any moment now. These are the people bitching about what an absolute imbecile their boss is and how they could do better but when asked why they don’t they complain that no one saw fit to give them the chance. When pressed on the issue the conversation usually devolves into something along the lines of “well… did you do anything to get the position?” “Yes I’m naturally smart and talented, they should see this and promote me!” Now, I’m not saying everyone who got smart-pampered falls into this, some people may move on to cure cancer or become the new Composer of the Century or whatever they want to do, but so many people are recognized so much for being smart they get this idea in their heads that they never need to work towards anything, especially if they were never exposed to gifted programs and slept through their first 12 years of schooling.
Sounds a lot like imposter syndrome which I have a lick of too whenever something good happens to me. I suspect it may be more common than you think.
Heh, yeah. I played in Carnegie Hall my junior year. Among other things, we played the first movement of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8. That never fails to trigger bouts of nostalgia. I make sure never to listen to it while driving.
I tended to pursue my interests in HS more than really doing much work. I had an impossible time convincing myself to do anything if it did not interest me. This is a terrible habit of mind, and I am glad I have somewhat corrected it over the years. I live a much more interesting life as a result.
It still does dog me at work, though. Things I consider dull slip through the cracks sometimes, which can really leave me in the hurt locker.
Absolutely. I really woke up in college. I only studied things that interested me, and I found myself studying about 60 hours per week, easily. I sometimes took semesters with six or seven classees. I went from a slacker to a machine practically overnight, just because I truly loved what I was doing.
Intelligence is also kind of a funny thing. There is a real nonlinearity to it. I think people are raised to believe that the more intelligent you are, the farther you will go in life, y=mx+b. This really is false. In general, I think being somewhat more intelligent than the mean can make your life more difficult without adding too many compensatory benefits. Being smarter than 99% of the population seems like a big deal when you are 16, but really, you are probably not going to amount to much more than average in the long run. Despite my pretentions, I am probably never going to do anything really special with my intellect, such as it is. I will lead a reasonably ordinary life right alongside people who did not experience life as I did. Having some brainpower has its own rewards, sure, but they ain’t all they are cracked up to be.
Being more intelligent than 99 random people is no great shakes. But if your intelligence is so extreme that you are more intelligent than, say, 100k random people or even 1M random people is a different story altogether. Hence the nonlinearity.
Sounds a lot like imposter syndrome which I have a lick of too whenever something good happens to me. I suspect it may be more common than you think.
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I have no real objection to recognition of even minor achievements (though special recognition in the year book and at graduation for the top 10% of the class? Weird, and I went to a highly competitive high school where you actually needed to take an IQ test to get into the AP classes. But I digress).
But these students also need to realize that they’re going to be surrounded by other people just as smart and talented as they are - for the rest of their lives. Got into a Ivy league college? Excellent! You’ll be working like hell to keep up with everyone else, though, since they’re also valadictorians that took all AP courses. That’s not to say that going to that Ivy league college isn’t worth it, but there’s been many a kid there who has been hit hard by the “big fish in a small pond -> small fish in a big pond” syndrome.
And then they graduate from that college with a good GPA, and get an excellent job based on that school and GPA. Congratulations! I bet they’re doing interesting work for a good salary. Unfortunately, they’re now working with people who managed to do the same thing, and the working world cares less about what you can do and more about what you do.
It’s good for the self-esteem to be recognized for your accomplishments, and people who receive no recognition at all usually become discouraged and stop trying. But they also need to be taught that there’s only so far that those rewards will take you, and unless they also gain a genuine sense of self-worth outside of public recognition along the way, they’re going to suffer for it when it really matters.
Have you asked the school about their new policy? Is there a chance that they are putting it in place for another reason? I know that sometimes we do things here where I work for completely different reasons and when the parents don’t take the time to ask, they get themselves all worked up for no good reason. For example, when a lot of the members of the community heard that everyone who tried out for the baseball team made it, there were angry letters in the local paper about us babying them and not allowing anyone to truly succeed. No one bothered to find out that the reason they all made it is that there weren’t even enough kids interested to fill the roster out as much as the coaches would have wanted. Kids would rather go home and play stinking video games.
I am an AP teacher, and I know that I make every effort to make my class as difficult as what it would be at a college. There are some limitations I have, but I try my best. We do weight their grades and I don’t really have a big problem with the way we do it. For example, if the kid earns a B it says “B” on their report card and transcript; but when their GPA is calculated, they get an extra 0.5 thrown in. I actually think taking a C and weighting it all the way up to an A sounds outrageous and really inflated and therefore unfair. The five points is actually not that small; when you consider what five points on an averageat the end of the year represents over the time of an entire course, it is very significant.
Also, the grading scale is anything but standard across the country. Our minimum A here is a 94. Even at some colleges I have been involved with, there were some variations. I actually had a history professor in college who used his own grading scale, because he claimed there was no policy in place by the college that he couldn’t.
As far as credit for college is concerned, as a lot of people here have stated, it totally and completely depends on the exam grade. I have not ever heard of any college giving credit based on the grade they earn in the class. As the teacher, I have zero involvement with the administration and grading of AP tests. I’m not even allowed to be in the room when they take it. That is just the College Board’s policy.
I hear you. I’m in Australia and my kid’s (public) school has decided that they don’t give As any more. They tell us “B is the new A” and incredibly, “no-one gets As”. What’s the point in even handing out a report card?
I’m not bragging when I say she is two years above grade level in Kumon Maths and English and standardised testing (LAN) reveals her to be in the “off the scale, we don’t measure here” range. Nevertheless, she brings home report cards full of straight Bs. We treat school as cheap childcare which is all it’s good for.
If you let your daughter take the easy classes, it seems that the lesson learned is that if you’re not going to get a good grade or be recognized by some external person/organization, then it’s not worth doing. I took many classes in college that offered me no advantage towards my degree or my GPA, but I still enjoyed them very much and learned a lot. If your daughter doesn’t think she is going to learn anything, then she needs to be more proactive in that class by talking with the teacher and trying to come up with assignments that will challenge her.
Holy cow. Ok, you definitely win the nanny state idiocy award on this one. It’s one thing for one teacher to be “I don’t give A’s, that would mean you’re perfect and no one’s perfect” stupid, but a whole friggin school? I’d lose my shit over that one.
I will say that in college, I had one professor who gave me a 99 on a particular assignment. I asked him why the 99, as there was nothing marked as done incorrectly and he gave me that BS about a 100 would mean I am perfect, blah blah blah. I told him that unless he could point me to the thing I did incorrectly, then I expected a 100 on the assignment. The rest of the semester, my assignments were either 100’s or marked with what was incorrect. No one had ever challenged him on the issue before, and I guess he decided it wasn’t worth fight.
And no, not “everyone” knows that [being an MVP] is not any kind of guarantee or special promise or future success (what is “special promise” or “success” anyway?). For one thing, it takes a lot of hard work and motivation to excel in a sport just as it does in academics. I played sports throughout high school, our volleyball team went to the state championships and I received a lot of recognition for my athletic accomplishments. I also did really well on the varsity volleyball team at my Ivy League college (and I also got a graduate degree from the same university). My brother was an All-American football player - plaque in the front hall of the school, all kinds of awards, full scholarship to an SEC school and he’s not digging ditches - he’s actually a very successful businessman. Competition, whether athletically or academically, has a lot of positive value that can serve a person well in a lot of situations. I posit that many achievements lose value as time goes on but that doesn’t mean the achievement wasn’t ever worth getting in the first place. It’s not like I sit around and stare at the newspaper clippings about my high school volleyball career but the lessons I learned from being on that team have helped me become a successful person. I also know a few valedictorians who aren’t exactly curing cancer.
It takes a lot of grit and determination to drive a punch awl through my scrotum, too. The fact that motivation is required and hard work expended does not imply that the activity itself was worthwhile or drives any additional benefit.
Perhaps you didn’t have to take much logic at your ivy league university, but I would call that a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Sports are positive if you enjoy them and if they make you fit. Other than that, the direct causal story that links high school sports to any other sort of educational or personal achievement falls apart completely.
The idea that somehow competitiveness has extrinsic benefit is the kind of ideology that keeps high school coaches employed, but that’s about it.