Society's Child

Coddling the American mind: Maryland school board eliminates class rank to fight a 'competitive environment'

The College Fix
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 09:41 UTC

A school board in Maryland has voted to eliminate high school class rank ... which will allow valedictorians and salutatorians to be chosen on factors other than academics.

The Anne Arundel board vote was close - 5 to 4 - in favor of the abolition. The Capital Gazette notes class rank "has been criticized for fostering a competitive environment in high schools," putting "unnecessary" stress on students. This view was shared by board member Melissa Ellis who related a tale of a student who turned down an internship at Johns Hopkins just so she could take another (advanced) course in order to up her grade point average.

Board Vice President Josie Urrea, a high school senior, has even been seeking out students to testify in favor of the change - those who claim class rankings are "detrimental to their mental health." Some students will take advanced classes just to get the weighted GPA, they say.

Others blasted the board's decision.

"Heck, why give grades at all? Why not do away with weighted grades altogether?" asked board member Bob Leib. Leib said "competition is healthy" and students should have the right to choose their courses.

From the story:

Urrea had hoped to represent students in English as a Second Language (ESOL) and special education classes, as well as those in the district's magnet programs, with this change. Those students tend not to take honors and AP classes that enable kids to earn weighted GPAs.

"Because they choose these programs or came into Maryland not speaking the language of English, they are told their education is not valued. Because of that, they are hurt by class rank," Urrea said.

Under the new policy, high schools will continue to honor those who qualify for Latin Honors. But students who receive summa cum laude recognition - a weighted GPA of 4.3 or higher - can apply to be considered for valedictorian and salutatorian after completing seven semesters of high school.

Then, the valedictorian and salutatorian would be selected based on character, leadership, scholarship and service - all pillars of the National Honor Society. If the policy is adopted, the application and selection process will be determined by the superintendent.

Not that those NHS "pillars" are much to brag about.

The class rank changes take effect in two years for incoming ninth graders.

Reader Comments

Rowan Cocoan · 2019-06-24T12:19:34Z

My God! That 'competitive spirit' is what has given the West its heritage.

The effect of destroying that spirit? Obviously the destruction of the Western concept of the rights of Individuals to freedom! A/k/a, the basic tenets of the West, a/k/a, the destruction of the West.

As PCR observed recently, he never would have thought it might occur in his lifetime. Same concerns here.

R.C.

pit12 · 2019-06-24T17:19:05Z

The elite, lizard people in the US government and 1% Wall Street, the ones that rule this country need a docile, easily controlled American populace.

pit12 · 2019-06-24T17:20:06Z

kidding about the lizards

ge0m0 · 2019-06-24T12:35:08Z

What do you think is the likelihood that board members were poor students who resented the success of the smarter peers?

Rowan Cocoan · 2019-06-24T12:41:51Z

ge0m0 Having gone to one of the worst high schools in the US (at least re level of violence), I would say, sure; but also note that the PTB's divide and conquer strategies are what's really behind this.

The link he provides about the NHS (In my senior year, I was president) and how downhill they've gone:

[Link]
R.C.

Highland Fleet Lute · 2019-06-24T13:04:36Z

If I'm on an aeroplane, I want the pilot to have better flying skills than I have. End of.

Eventide · 2019-06-24T14:27:32Z

From my perspective as a teacher:

The absolute worst mistake public education made from its beginning stages in the early 19th century, and continuing to the present day, has been to import business/industrial practices into itself. Education, at its root, is neither a set of definable skills nor a product. Education (Latin roots, 'educare' - to nourish, and 'educere' - to lead out) rightfully leads individuals into connections and capacities with regard to their physical and human environment that enhance their means of self-expression and their ability to contribute to society. Everything about the world of business ethics and competition stands in direct opposition to those goals. How do we all learn? Through mistakes! Mistakes are good things (as I'm endlessly telling my students, who are endlessly hobbled by the threat of being sanctioned for mistakes. The very means of progress - which are mistakes - are being punished through our competitive systems of grades and rankings. And why? So that the business ethics we worship in this society can exist where they don't belong. The students that excel at a particular subject are given to think they are better than everyone else, and the students that struggle are given to think they are worse and then stop trying. How is this beneficial to either?

Competition has NO PLACE in an education worthy of the name. Education desperately needs to be emancipated from that in order to find its proper purpose, which is to 'lead out' every child into a healthy and productive relationship to the world. I applaud the spirit behind the actions of this school board, but it is too little, too late. These youth are well-indoctrinated into education-as-competition, and they and their parents will no doubt demand their prizes for succeeding at their competitive games. If an emancipation from comparative rankings could happen at the beginning of their educational careers, it would make a difference, but that would require a revolution in thinking to steer education away from the poison that was injected into it by the likes of Andrew Carnegie, and other captains of industry, two hundred years ago.

Eventide · 2019-06-24T15:24:43Z

Think about this:

A child learns to walk and to talk due to the intrinsic desire he has for competence. Nobody is providing grades. Nobody is punishing mistakes or handing the child a cookie every time he succeeds. Progress and competence continue to be the only legitimate motivations for learning for the rest of his life. If you think that the imposition of rewards, punishments, and comparative rankings are the means to ensure that this same child will continue efforts to achieve competence, it is just because you have been trained to think this way. One look at the average classroom of jaded and cynical and bored kids, whose teachers are having to prod them along with grades, threats, and 'healthy competition' should tell you two things: 1) Motivation for learning, to be effective, has to be internal, and 2) Kids are offended by adult attempts to coerce them into learning.

Vimes · 2019-06-24T15:32:36Z

All children are competing with each other in one way or another. To take this away will not have the desired effect they are looking for. Just like the way boys are forced to follow the same classes as girls. They become restless and have no clue what to strive for as they lack the experience and exposure to future environments. Boys are more physically active and need a different approach. This was once common knowledge but now it doesn't fit into the gender equality doctrine.

An education should prepare you for your future job, not prepare you for some kind of hobby or holistic experience.

Eventide · 2019-06-24T16:00:00Z

Vimes "An education should prepare you for your future job, not prepare you for some kind of hobby or holistic experience."

I have a big problem with this perspective. My Resource Room was once at the end of the kindergarten hallway. Every day, I had to pass a sign outside one of those kindergarten classrooms that said, "School is your first job." Every day, that sign made me cringe. One of the worst things one can do to education is to reduce it to a means for getting future employment!

Children compete in sports, they compete for social status, they compete to be first in line. There's a lot of situations in which children might compete in order to be able to gain status in the eyes of their peers. Isn't it interesting, though, that adult coercion to demonstrate competence through grades and other means of punishment or reward, tend to shut down natural forms of academic competition? When was the last time you heard of kids competing to demonstrate who has the best handwriting or can answer the most multiplication facts in one minute? Such a child would probably be considered a teacher's pet and be ostracized. By the time a child is in second grade, competition, as initiated by a teacher via grades and other means of comparison, is widely considered coercive. The skill involved is therefore tarred with the same brush and considered unworthy of personal involvement and effort by the child.

Eventide · 2019-06-24T16:04:31Z

lsjarvi "When was the last time you heard of kids competing to demonstrate who has the best handwriting or can answer the most multiplication facts in one minute?"

I meant, of course, independently competing, not in a teacher-created activity.

Vimes · 2019-06-24T16:19:45Z

Well I never meant to push my own point of view here, after all we are all entitled to our own opinions. My children do this, they compete with each other in who has the 'best' handwriting.

My opinion is that children need a challenge. If we make it easy, they will not appreciate what they have fought for. Children (and people) do well not because it was easy, they excell when challenged.

As a side note, I hated school as it was full of nonsense. I do realise that this taints my view of collective education.

Eventide · 2019-06-24T17:02:56Z

Vimes OK - I see what you're saying. How old are your children? Kids will do things with siblings that they would never do in school, especially if they're young and 'playing school'. This is not something that they would normally initiate with peers past first or second grade, in my experience. It simply is not cool.

Kids do need a challenge - but one that is set up by life, not an artificial and coercive one set up by a teacher! If there's something they want to be able to do, and it requires a particular skill set, they'll do it. We human beings are problem-solving creatures. We call kids 'lazy' who don't give a damn about studying in school, but those same kids will spend hours upon hours perfecting video game, skateboarding, guitar or drumming skills, for example. So are they lazy or just resistant to being coerced? I'm thinking about John Lennon, for example. He was a notoriously 'lazy' student, but loved both language and music, and worked harder in his sadly truncated lifetime to drive himself and his compatriots to a pinnacle of musical and poetic skill that is hard to match.

Intrinsic challenge is gold. Extrinsic challenge too often backfires.

Vimes · 2019-06-24T17:32:48Z

From what I am reading, this could be more of a problem of how your society is set up than anything else. My children are nearly ready for high school. (Although we do not live in the US)

Especially having children showed me what appears to be working for us. I have also first hand experience in what definitely doesn't work (no borders, no responsibilities) I wish I knew what the best way is to educate children but I simply don't know.

John Lennon was before my time, I really wouldn't know about that.

Eventide · 2019-06-24T18:36:37Z

Vimes "Two...documents...listing Lennon’s school detentions for “shoving,” “fighting,” “sabotage” and showing “just no interest whatsoever” were sold for about $15,000 each in an online auction in 2013."

Vimes · 2019-06-24T19:10:03Z

My neighbour never finished elementary school. Surprisingly he did not do well working for someone. He may not have had the best educational start one can imagine. Yet he started his own company, making jigsaw puzzles. He was smart and knew that it was more important who you knew than what you knew. He became the best producer in the region and sold everything when he turned 50.

From the stories he told me, his childhood could be described by the very same words!

Eventide · 2019-06-24T17:41:23Z

Responsibilities are another subject entirely. I completely agree that children should be raised with the expectation that they are responsible to contribute to the well-being and functioning of society. That's another problem with the American culture. Kids are often sidelined when it comes to being able to see themselves as contributing members of society, then are expected to magically have motivations and skills they have never had a chance to develop as soon as they are out of school and facing 'the real world.' It's part of their maturation process to have had meaningful opportunities to do this from a young age.

Rowan Cocoan · 2019-06-24T20:38:37Z

lsjarvi A few hours back, I started drafting a reply to your above well-written above post which begins, "From my perspective as a teacher", (wherein I critiqued your position) but I never posted it. (FWIW, I may have let the page 'time out'.) But I'm not going to deal with what I then drafted; rather, I'll do that if/when I post a reply, such as I am doing here, now, about a different matter.

Regarding the GREAT upgrade by SOTT - wherein our 'Pavlovian-Istic-Esque' 'little red bell' pings, and makes our saliva glands run, or such.(( wink, wink ); then, as you know, it tells us either:

A) X commented on the same article you did, or,

B) Y 'replied to you' at...

And so, strangely, I just saw "Isjarvi replied to you at (here - 'Coddling American Mind...) . And, so here I am, but I see no reply to me from you. You didn't post some reply to me elsewhere, did you?

If so, please link me to wherever that was. If not, no worries, and NRN.

R.C.

*This is the first glitch I've seen on that great change for the better. (And when I think about it those words, I realize how very very rarely I ever hear/read myself state or write that about anything new or any new changes, ANYWHERE ABOUT ANYTHING, these days.

So, SOTT, & SCOTT, Thanks again for a great job.

RC

Eventide · 2019-06-24T20:56:32Z

Rowan Cocoan I'll look forward to your thoughts on the topic!

Re: the little red bell - it doesn't bother me that it alerts me whenever there's a new post as well as when I've been replied to. I want to read it in either case. I love the fact that there can actually be an ongoing discussion rather than topics getting buried so quickly by new ones, as in the past.

Play in the dirt you're gonna get dirty. Quit whining and take your well-deserved lumps. LOL

redrock12

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky [Link]

bbrebozo

Ah, the old game of who's dick is bigger. Poth parties came out of the pool, looked down and said, let's do this later.

Chicken Farmer

We all know who controls who.

Chicken Farmer

How is this different from welfare assistance?

ReRan

Society's Child

Coddling the American mind: Maryland school board eliminates class rank to fight a 'competitive environment'

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