(Valid?)ictorian
High schools across the country are revising and taking away the position of valedictorian; here’s why South should follow.
Number one. It’s a position striven for, dreamt about, and pressured for. Countless hours devoted and poured over for a title. A certificate. A badge of honor.
For decades, becoming the valedictorian of the class has been a mission for many. While it served a well intended purpose in its day, it is time to end the recognition for one student based on academics alone.
The recognition of a valedictorian began in the 19th century, when not many students ended up going to college. It was a way for advocates to show taxpayers why public secondary education was so important. Graduation ceremonies were also very popular for people to attend in a time that lacked radios and televisions. Becoming a valedictorian was also a way to celebrate those who aren’t publicly recognized for their hard work, which at that time centralized around women.
Things have changed a lot since then. With suburban schools growing, it’s becoming typical to have a few thousand kids in a high school at once. This makes the difference between a valedictorian and salutatorian often down to a hundredth of a percent. That small amount has led to millions of dollars in lawsuits, leading to several schools taking away the valedictorian award altogether.
A professor at Boston College, Karen Arnold, started a study in 1995 that tracked 81 valedictorians for 14 years after graduation. She found out that while almost all did well, none were a standout success. 90 percent were professionals and 40 percent reached the highest tier in their fields, but according to Arnold, there weren’t any visionaries.
Academic grades correlate only loosely with intelligence, while standardized testing is closer to measuring your IQ. Grades are good at measuring self-discipline, the ability to comply with the rules, and conscientiousness.
When students go into the workforce, jobs will focus on passion and expertise. Students who approach school this way often get worse grades because they are so focused on their passion and excel in that, that they don’t focus as much on their other subjects.
In school, however, everything is reversed because they want students to focus on general knowledge.
According to Arnold, several valedictorians admitted to not being the smartest kids, just the hardest workers. For them, it was more of giving the teachers what they wanted rather than actually learning the material. Because of getting into this habit, while being successful and well rounded, they often don’t have a single area of passion which is what later doesn’t set them apart from the group.
Research conducted by Shawn Achor from Harvard showed that college grades don’t predict life success. A study of over 700 millionaires in the United States said that the average GPA from college was a 2.9. Hearing a GPA that low would give an aspiring valedictorian nightmares.
The more students in a school, the harder it is to be number one. Since AP classes have been implemented in high schools, aspiring valedictorians have often loaded up their schedule with AP courses, just because of the weighted GPA it gives. They often are involved in sports, or other extra-curricular activities, making juggling all of these priorities for four years hit hard when they end up not crossing the finish line.
Not all the pressure is student placed. It has become a cultural norm for wealthy middle class families to expect their students to rank high in their class, and pursue education in a mores selective, superior university, often thinking it’s more likely to become successful.
This train of thought puts a lot of pressure on students to perform, leading sometimes to academic dishonesty to get where they want to go.
The competition of find one valedictorian out of an entire senior class is outdated and unfair. Several schools with a large student body have instead given the top ten percent of the class a valedictorian equivalent award, and allow one of them to give the speech.
I know how hard the top kids in my class are working to become valedictorian, and I don’t think it’s fair that only one of them gets the recognition they honestly all deserve.
If you want to be number one, then by all means work for it. Get it. However, it shouldn’t be that students have to stay up late every night, taking all these AP classes focusing only on how it will increase your GPA, because even if you aren’t top of the class, you can still be very successful.
