Parents of stupid children want to ban honor rolls, spelling bees

The BBQ Pit
81

You know, it occurs to me that I may have a sort-of-relevant mirror-image story to tell. One of the most profoundly embarassing stories of my life.

As a youngster I was very awkward–damned near physically retarded by comparison to my peers. That of course didn’t keep my psychotic parents from subjecting me to near constant ridicule by enrolling me in the stupid soccer league twice a year and basketball every winter. At first they could shame me into doing it semi-voluntarily, but after the humiliation started to scrape nerves, it came down to naked coersion.

I played basketball for what… five seasons, second grade through seventh? My statisics are impressive. Career scoring: 4 points. Foul shot percentage: the empty set. Steals: numerous, if you count the times the ball was stolen from me. Court time: one-eigth of the entire hellish time I had to deal with that shit, the minimum allowable by the league rules. Every kid on the roster had to play at least 1/8 of each game, and my coaches all ensured that’s exactly what I did.
Usually my five minutes of fame would come early in the game, so the team could make up for me.

This one particular year the coach had a couple of 8-th grade-ish sons who were classic jock pricks. The first hellish evening of practice one of the bastards caught me looking the wrong way in a passing drill and fed me a Wes Unseld inbound straight to my face as I turned my head. And yes, everyone laughed. It was all downhill from there.

And since I had no choice in the matter I was at every practice, on time, with my folks carefully delivering me straight to the coach so I couldn’t go hide in the bushes like I fuckin 'A would have had I been given half the chance.

The end of the season rolled around and the end-of-the-year party and awards ceremony was scheduled. Several eighteen-inch tall phallic symbols were distributed to the future of the NBA, and then I heard the coach making a chillingly familiar-sounding speech. It went something like this:

We have one final award for someone on this team. He didn’t put many [read: any] points on the board, and he didn’t win any games at the last second like Cochrane did. But he came to every practice, and showed up for every game. He was always there for us. A real team player. That guy is Sofa King.

And there I was, presented with the only trophy I ever won in my life, similar to the other guys’, but smaller in size. Like my penis. And there, inscribed on a little stick of brass is said:

**Sofa King

UNSUNG HERO**

Jesus H. Mary Wollstonecraft, I thought I was going to die. The kids who won the awards were leering at me mockingly. The kids who didn’t win the awards were pissed that I, the shittiest player on the team bar none, got something when they didn’t. The parents all had that, “aww, idn’t dat kyoot,” look, and the coach? He was choking one back, the fucker.

I tell ya–and this is the moral of the story–here is nothing more terrible than being presented with an award for sucking. That award was less than worthless. It was like a singularity that orbited my ten-year old life and stripped away my outer sphere of self esteem.

I kept that pathetic trophy around for years, first because I was required to display it, then because I thought it was kind of funny. Then when I was in college I knocked off the inscription plate.

So I mounted it on the base plate of my bong.

82

Diogenes, it looks like we finally agree about something. This should be due to happen again along about 2006, I think…

83

Sorry…I was giving a mean…not the mode :smiley:

84

Good story, Sofa King.

85

Ah, well that explains it…and I did overlook your ‘sometimes more’ just to make the joke!

And just to make sure this isn’t a hijack, I thought I’d add that I’d find the concept of honor rolls, valedictorians, etc a bit old fashioned, but maybe because in the UK those kind of things are only done in public (read private) schools as a whole. That said, I think the person (too lazy to check who) who said that parents should be concerned about their own kids progress and not worry too much about the others has it about right. And, to be honest, I think schools and kids themselves should expect that to be the case…

86

Damn straight. The way it should be. I attended a Catholic elementary school in Buffalo that, at the time, was ruled over by a very athletic-oriented nun. Honor roll? Merit roll? Anything? Nope … but every few weeks, there was some assembly to honor the most improved male relay runner, or the best female defensive soccer player. The school PTA raised a stink about the lack of academic honors, with little effect.

:rolleyes:

87

After reading through a lot of these messages about the abuse heaped on people during school for various reasons (academic excellence, lack thereof, or other reasons), I am reminded once again of why I am very, very happy I went through school in a ‘small’ school (approx. 100 students in 9-12. Small compared to lots of people I talk to, but fair to middlin’ in South Dakota). I was on the 'A" honor roll every quarter. I also was on the varsity football team from 8th grade through 12th, and lettered 9th to 12th (I am NOT exactly athletic material, but was big, and could count. Offensive Center material all the way). I also was in Band (Marching, pep, concert, it was all the same, just different times during the year). Student council, FFA, National Honor Society…and you know what? This was pretty average for my classmates. Lots of opportunities, even for those who, I sincerely believe, would have dropped out had they attended a larger school.

Of course, a large part of this comes from the support, from teachers who had taught there and knew the students on a personal level, in many cases. Some of them had been around long enough to have taught some of my classmates’ parents. All of them were involved in the community, even if some did the bare minimum their contracts called for (taking tickets at sporting events, things like that). And all of them teachers in South Dakota, one of the states with the lowest teacher wages. And this was all done at a public school.

I fully agree with the OP. Actions like removing academic recognition do little to help those not receiving it, and take away something from those who would recieve it. I can’t help but compare, in my mind, the parents who complained about the honor roll with those parents who, in my school, contributed nothing to the school (besides property taxes), and took almost no interest in how their kid did most of the time, who would then be leading the charge in calling for a coaches head if they had a losing season (often, the coach was a teacher as well, as it was hard to get a job teaching in the area without training as a coach).

88

I went to a high school where there was no class ranking, no honor roll, and no “grading on the curve,” no “AP” classes, and where the valedictorian was elected by the senior class. Granted, people tested to get into the school, but after that, none of these other indicia of the “normal” high school experience were part of my experience, and so I don’t share everyone else’s seemingly passionate advocacy for the maintenance of these institutions.

My concern about honor rolls, etc. is not so much the effect of the self-esteem of the students not selected, but the effect on those who are on the roll and their parents.

Remember the girl who sued because she was being forced to share the valedictorian honor? She came in for a fair amount of scorn and ridicule on this very board for caring so deeply about an essentially meaningless title. But her fixation on the valedictorian goal did not arise in a vacuum- rather, it was a product of a high school academic culture which puts a premium on doing better than everyone else, rather than achievment in an absolute sense. Thus, a 4.78 GPA (on a 4.00 point scale) is not meaningful if there is someone with a 4.79. Honor rolls do their part to perpetuate these values, particularly if they are percentile-based (i.e. the “top 10% of students”) as opposed to performance-based (“anyone with a 3.5 GPA or higher”). If a school is really doing well, really really teaching kids, everyone could potentially have a 3.5 GPA or higher (yes, the same result could come about through grade inflation - a separate issue entirely). But there are parents, with a lot of clout, who would then insist that the bar be set ever higher - in other words, there must be winners and losers (and their kids must be the winners). Someone must be an “honor roll” student and someone must not be. Never mind that most colleges don’t actually care, as shown by the very high number of graduates from my non-honor-roll-having high school who went on to the Ivy League, Stanford, and other top-tier schools.

Many remember being picked on by jocks and other associated high school terrors, and view the honor roll as something that was theirs that they could hold on to and prize in a high school society that seemed to work against them. Fair enough. But among the academically gifted, and, often, their parents, there is a sense that it’s not enough unless someone else loses, and that it’s the ranking and title, not the actual learning, that counts.

So, while I think the reasons given for eliminating the honor roll are hard to support, there is room to question what the honor roll does to the students that are on it.

89

First, a story: when my father was going for his Masters (either his EE or ME, I don’t recall which time it was), he had a 4.0 going into one of his last classes, a class with 2 other people. At the end of the quarter, he got a B and was incensed, having gotten 100% grades on all but one exam, and a 97% on that one. Turns out the other two guys had gotten all 100%s, so the prof gave my father a B instead of an A, and busted his overall GPA to a 3.9 something. He was pissed, and would have loved for it to be otherwise, but he understood it and it made sense- A was for “outstanding” work and B was for “above expected” work. In theory, he could have gotten a D, “below average” :wink:

Having lead with that, my comments:
Now, granted, I went to a private/Catholic school for grade school (2-8) and HS (9-12), so even the “dumb” students were likely the average or better at the public school, but I never saw any teasing of either the smart by the “dumb” or the “dumb” by the smart, and certainly never any actions by the “jocks” again the smart kids, since they were usually one in the same. I think we had 83% going to college with the rest split between military and their parents businesses. Most going to college had scholarships. We had honor rolls throughout, so something must’ve been working right.

Perhaps, having been a better-than-average-but-not-top-of-my-class, cross country runner and rugby but not soccer or football player, varsity letterman, I missed what the persons to either side of my “station” were doing to each other. Maybe the über-jocks did pick on the non-jocks or “band fags”, and maybe the “nerds” got picked on by someone, but it wasn’t because they were smart- more likely it would have been because of poor socialization. Who knows? Thinking back to 1987-'91, I don’t recall seeing it.

I don’t agree that, if they follow through with this, they should get rid of sports, but I do think that varsity teams will have to be disbanded and any and all students wishing to play will have to be allowed. Imagine what these self-same parents will do once that threat is revealed*!

Manny wrote this (somewhere else) today, and it’s quite surprising in it’s timeliness:

And, like many others here, I find myself happily surprised to be agreeing with DtC.
*: not that the non-sports inclined would actually go out for football or the cheerleading squad, the potential for real physical abuse there, masked under sporting “accidents” is too real.

90

There is a solution to this. I simply read in the locker room before games. I caught a lot of good natured kidding, but no one ever tried to beat me up (well, Brian Bosworth tried but he is a psycho and does not count). The point is it was not hard to fit into both crowds. In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that I benefited greatly from my foray into the “jock” world. It definitely made me more balanced in my world-view. Not to mention, I still get my physical exercise paying basketball.

Anyway, I hung out with the nerds and geeks, and never witnessed or heard about any physical or verbal abuse (1976-1983 in JHS and HS). The only group that actually had problems was the “gay” kids, and even they only caught verbal abuse, and only in junior high. Everyone seemed to have outgrown the phase by the time they turned 14-15. This was at a large (2500 student), mioddle class, suburan high school.

Your HS must have sucked. Or maybe, if you are a nerd, it is good to be a 6’8" 240 lb nerd.

91

Culture, you sound like another prime example of what I was talking about in my first post, how an academic achiever can survive without ostracism, but only if they can camouflage it with other talents. If you don’t have other talents, though, you’re just screwed.

92

well while we are at it, lets get rid of all high school sports because some kids aren’t athletically gifted. oh and the school music programs they have to go too, i mean some kids have no talent for playing a musical instrument or have a singing voice. what about the drama club? oh my kid can’t act, gotta get rid of that too.

it has to stop. the education system in the us is pitiful enough with our students lagging behind other nations. we should be encouraging kids. face it, the honor roll is all some of these kids have to build their self esteem.

93

This teacher very probably could never figure out why his coffee tasted funny.

94

This just sets them up for life in the Corporate America. :smiley:

Actually, this has got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of! Allow me to chime in with everyone else who is getting really tre of all this touchy-feely, self esteem crap. Reward the students who deserve it and help the ones who need it. Why is this such a hard fucking concept to grasp?!?!?

Pebs

95

Did you happen to tell all other students that you had won it? Did your ‘basking in happiness’ look like gloating to those around you?

There was a girl who did that kind of thing in my high school, who was widely disliked because she was always ‘sure’ she had won the top prize in every academic area. She knew when she was a freshman that she was the valedictorian, and she let everybody know it. And yes, she got shit on when she lost. Course, I was also in the running for it, and lost, and did not get shit all over because unlike her, I wasn’t sure I had won.

Self-contemptuous but you were absolutely sure you won the award for excellence even before the award was handed out?

Kind of contradictory there.

At my high school, the valedictorian race came down to one thousandth of a point on the 4.0 GPA scale. The student who won had a 3.995 and the student who lost had a 3.994. The second student took the salutatorian honors, and the third place student was off had a 3.987 GPA. None of those were me. My GPA ended up at 3.982, and I was sixth in the class ranking.

Should I have gone and demanded that because I was behind the valedictorian only .013 of a point in the grand ol’ GPA scheme, and that I had taken adittional science and mathematics courses that were not even required of me (Physics II, Chemistry II, Integral Calculus and both Microeconomics and Macroeconomics) whereas the valedictorian filled four out of seven peroids senior year with study halls that it wasn’t fair?

Hell no. The rules of the game where what they were, and I played by them, and so did she, and I lost. BFD. You know what that counts for now? Nothing. Not a damn thing. It doesn’t matter to anyone that I wasn’t valedictorian of Podunk High.

I call that a reason to have academic awards. It’s a competition, and like any other, there is a winner, and there are losers. More people will lose than win, and those people will learn to deal with disappointment, because eventually we all lose at something.

Best to learn to deal with that when it’s over something as trivial as a high school award.

96

Nope. No gloating. No boasting. By junior year I just kept my head down and tried to survive. You see, besides being a top student (and it was the administration, not me, who made such things known), I was homely, unathletic, and overwhelmingly shy. Awkward socially and never asked out on dates. A perfect target, in other words. “Basking in happiness” at that stage of my life meant being able to smile rather than feeling like I just wanted to end my miserable life.

Not at all, if you’d been paying attention to what a number of us have said – that we were social lepers in school, and that the only positive thing we had was the knowledge that we did well academically. It’s quite possible to be highly skilled in one aspect of one’s life and yet to be filled with bitter misery and self-abnegation because of cruelty from one’s peers.

Oh, and I missed being valedictorian by an equally small margin; was salutatorian. Didn’t bother me at all, and the three of us (what the heck is the third rank called? I’ve forgotten) got together and instead of each having his/her own speech, did a round-robin speech we gave together.

So, sorry, but you’re wrong. I wasn’t a flaming egotist who flaunted her superiority and got what she deserved.

97

There had to be someting behind your ‘I cannot have lost.’ attitude that caused you to be unable to deal with the fact that you had, in fact, lost the competition for the excellence award. Some boastful, non-self-contemptuous aspect of your personality caused you to go into the principal’s office and throw a tantrum until you got your way.

There was a difference between your score and the score of the person who won: yours was lower by a tenth of a point. I’m sure the rules stated that the student with the highest GPA would get the award. What made you think the rules should be changed after the fact just so you could ‘win’?

When a swimmer is a thousandth of a second off the third place time in the Olympics, what medal does he get? Life is like that. Winners and losers in competitions are often separated by the tiniest of margins.

Somebody once told me that if you’re ever going to try to win, competing against many other individuals, you better get used to losing, because everybody who strives for victory faces defeat most of the time. Good advice.

98

Sure. Sure there was something behind it. Like being led to believe I was in the lead by authority figures at the school. Yup, that’s obviously a character flaw to have believed what I was told. Oh, right, I guess a kid whose own family did their best to stamp out any shred of self-esteem she might have, who’d been sexually abused by her football hero older brother – yep, no doubt I was just brimming with self-confidence and boastful arrogance, you betcha! Sure, definitely, I just threw tantrums all over the place, every time things didn’t go my way. Right. Whatever you say, you who were so far above such attitudes that you can still recall to the third decimal place all those GPA standings; who can still slam the valedictorian for taking gut courses while you slaved away at your so much harder workload – but you’re not bitter, oh, no.

Whatever you say. :rolleyes:

99

I think one of the biggest problems is constant comparison. One thing I learned in Drama was that I’m not person a and person a is not me. I can do things person a can/can’t do and vice/versa. Some people are very intelligent and yet still fail for reasons ranging from boredom to just not being academically inclined. Doesn’t make them “losers”. To me, a loser is someone who complains about themselves and yet does NOTHING to change.

That said, I’ve been on the Honor Roll before. Hell, I even made the “A” Honor Roll once. I’ve also won awards that I never thought I would win. That’s great for ME. It made ME happy. One of the awards I won, I didn’t even KNOW I won until I picked up my diploma AFTER graduation(I was sick on that awards day and wouldn’t have gone anyway since ceremonies put me to sleep). But, beyond curiosity, the Honor Roll wasn’t a concern for me and I didn’t care about achievments unless it’s a cure for cancer or the Oscars.

If I didn’t win though, I simply didn’t care. I don’t remember who the valedictorian or salutorian was. I remember they were nice, but I don’t remember them beyond that. I sure don’t remember the speeches they gave. I didn’t actively support any activities I wasn’t part of, I didn’t care if a “gifted program” existed or not, unless I was in it(but for some reason, I don’t treat special ed the same way and while I have been in remedial courses, I’ve never been in special ed).

I just learned not to compare myself to others and dismissed comparisons of me to others. I learned to put any meaning to achievements of others unless they were me, my friends or family. I sound so horribly selfish, but I think it’s better than keeping “the idiots” down in favor of the “gifted” and it’s certainly better than eliminating everything, like the Honor Roll and other such programs.

100

“I learned to put any meaning to achievements of others unless they were me, my friends or family.”

That is, I learned NOT to. HEHE!

Course, I’ve always been fairly indifferent, so that’s why I sound the way I do. Heh.