Honor System Leaves A Bit To Be Desired
Posted
Daniel Riordan-driordan@timesuniononline.com
File this under the department of "Careening Aimlessly Toward Mediocrity."
Warsaw Community High School has decided to ditch honoring its top two
students, instead honoring a group of students with high grade point
averages.
This is in no way meant to demean the accomplishments of those kids
that were honored. As a WCHS grad myself, I'm proud of those kids and
my yodeling can't and isn't intended to take anything away from them.
They worked hard and deserve recognition.
But to the kid who finished at the top of the heap, and who I guess
shall remain nameless, you deserved even more recognition.
You deserved better.
There are kids in high schools and colleges everywhere who set being
the valedictorian of their class as one of their goals.
It's that trump card on a college application.
That thing that sets you apart.
Not at WCHS where they herd those kids in like cattle.
What WCHS has done is deincentivized those kids.
Moves like this punish kids for being exceptional.
The knee-jerk liberal school of thought that says, "Everyone is the
same and everyone is special" is a sham. It raises a generation of
kids to believe that, while kids in Mumbai and Beijing are taking all
of the high-end jobs.
One of the best lessons to learn early on in life is that no matter
how hard you try, that sometimes your best just isn't good enough.
That doesn't mean you're a failure or a bad person. That's just the
way it is.
And when that happens, your character is measured by how you respond
to that failure.
But if you have spent your whole life being told by adults, the people
who are supposed to get you ready for the real world, that your best
is good enough and scores and GPAs don't really matter, I'm going to
guess when that time comes you'll be ill-equipped to deal with it.
And it won't stop at honoring a dozen or so students. Once you start
lowering the bar, it never goes back up.
I can see it now. Twenty years down the road in the brand-new Zimmer
Tiger Den, the students are being asked to stand for their
accomplishments.
"And now can we have all those students who can write their name
please stand up."
I think it was Woody Allen who said, "Ninety percent of life is just
showing up."
I guess at some point we'll start handing out ribbons for that.
And, of course, it has to be Warsaw that does this. The arrogance of
the "Home of the Fighting Tigers" knows no bounds. If you're at Valley
or Whitko, I wonder if you feel the same way about WCHS as I feel
about the New York Yankees (I'm a White Sox fan by the way).
Congrats to the 2009 grads of WCHS.
But to you I say, be competitive.
Keep score.
And whether it's in life or designing school logos, remember to always
be original.
