I’m all for celebrating academic achievement, but there are only 119 freshmen in the entire school. I doubt even half of them took a semester of art.
Don’t get me started on HS awards night!
High school? Try sitting through the middle school awards night. It was torture - and my child was actually winning some! OMG, the million word readers, the 6 million word readers, the basketball team, the President’s recognition (for which she got a lovely photocopied sheet of paper that Obama had signed many years earlier and her name had been printed on), the band members, the jazz band members, the special flute group. Three hours of this.
In my official capacity as the “Most Improved,” but still by far the worst, junior varsity baseball player at my high school in 1983, I say congratulations to all 19 freshman artists! Sometimes these things can mean a lot to a kid who’s trying. 
How about telling your child that you don’t want to go to the awards night, because it’s so tedious to have to listen to names of kids getting awards for things that are “inconsequential” or “not important” or “dumb” or whatever term you decide adequately conveys your disdain for award winners other than your child?
Yes, I’m being sarcastic. Chill. Let the kids enjoy their 5 seconds of fame.
My child didn’t want to be there! I don’t know if there is a ‘correct’ number of awards, but the kids know when there is a ‘made up’ category and when it is a real award. And there is a difference between calling (I kid you not) 300 kids up one at a time and giving them the ‘million word reader’ award and then calling 100 back for the ‘6 million word reader’ and then calling 25 of those up to get a ‘top reader’ award rather than just calling up each kid once and reading off the awards that child won. One way takes 3+ hours, the other maybe an hour. We get it, the entire class can read. The same 15 kids won every award, and then another group of 30 or so were call up a number of times.
Kiddo begged me not to go to 7th grade awards night (so he could skip it, too). One kid actually got an award for exemplary behavior on the bus to and from school. Someone in the audience shouted, “Way to ride the bus!!!” Last time I ever attended an awards night.
If you didn’t want to be there and your child didn’t want to be there, why on earth did you go? I went to my HS award night because there was only about 10 awards and I happened to have one of them. I wouldn’t have gone if it was 300 people!
Wow at my kid’s school the awards are substantial medals of merit for academics, scholarships, cumulative 4.0 ect and only those who are being awarded are invited. No fluff!
Our high school also has over 4000 kids so no time for fluff.
It is also during the day!
Interesting to see how things vary, especially in small schools where more people actually know each other.
As the OP of a controversial award night thread from a few years back, I so feel your pain! And one of the annoying things from that night was that just one girl won a dozen of those art-related awards while the highly accomplished valedictorian of the class of 630 kids got 1 award: the award for being valedictorian. At the time I questioned how it was possible for him to be the kid with the highest GPA and yet not earn one single academic subject area award or any other scholarly achievement award. Bizarre.
I agree they are often too long (ours is routinely 2 hours). I just try and keep in mind the kid who might be called up for getting on the honor roll the first time, or the parent who never saw their child’s achievements recognized. We don’t know everyone’s story…and so I can be patient for a little while.
I went, of course, because I was invited to see my child receive her awards, just like attending the band concert or school play. Parents have to go, it’s a law. The kids were all there because there was the 8th grade party/dance following the awards ceremony. I had no idea it would last 3+ hours. It was very poorly organized. Just not fun at all and no feeling that my child was receiving honors, just lists of names being read and kids walking across the stage over and over.
For the high school ceremony, it was again very poorly organized. One of my kids was invited, the other wasn’t. Why? I don’t know. The non-invited one had the same merit scholarship as another boy in the class, and he was invited and presented with a certificate. Ironically, he attended the university for about a month and dropped out. My daughter who was invited only was recognized for one award when she’d also been awarded merit. As we were leaving, one mom said “Well, that was interesting”. Do the awards or don’t, but don’t do such a bad job of it.
I attended a HS graduation last year where the program booklet had asterisks annotations next to the students’ names. The number of little stars corresponded to a certain GPA range. The kids with no stars next to their names had less than a 3.0 – how awkward… X_X
I would have appreciated more encouragement for my efforts in art. Instead, the art teacher looked at my rendition of a tree and said “You really don’t have any idea, do you?”.
I remember my HS awards ceremony and how embarassed I was when my name was called for the Betty Crocker Award. I wish I had skipped. If I was as cool then as I am now, I would have had a lot of fun with it. My D’s HS has what is called “Prize Day” which assume means awards, not really sure. It is 1.5 hours, middle of the day with Sr. parents invited.
My kids considered the middle school award ceremonies, which parents weren’t invited to, as a display of political correctness and social engineering. Basically, the high-achieving kids got no awards, since theoretically they are already winners and don’t need them for encouragement… In 8th grade my son had the highest average in all his classes (which were the advanced track ones), had won the school spelling bee and the school geography bee as well as an essay contest sponsored by the local Ivy, and so on, but nevertheless did not receive any academic “best student in” awards. Upset, and feeling as if his teachers had something against him, he sent a letter to all his teachers, asking what he had done wrong such that they did not like him or respect him. He was assured there was no problem of that nature, but that they felt it was easy for him to do well (Says who? Like you’re born knowing obscure geographical information and the spelling of words no one uses, or you’re born knowing geometry or the history of the state), so they wanted to reward kids they felt had to work harder for their grades.
Similarly, while the school most definitely should give awards for art and music, I see no reason why there should be just one math award, one English award, etc. but 19 art awards. I can’t help but think their philosophy is that the academically talented kids will be fine and don’t need awards as much as the average kids or kids whose talents lie in the arts.
Our HS had the same odd balance; awards for art “stained glass”, art “jewelry making”, art “drawing”, etc. etc. and one award for “science”. Sit through it, giggle a little, deal with your academically talented kid not getting his “quota” of awards, and know that a year or two from now, it will matter not a whit. We are past it and delighted with our kids’ accomplishments in college.
^ So at the athletic award night do they give the MVP award to the kid who sits the bench because he/she “tries harder”? No they would never do that ! Only in academics.
Our MS and local HS like to choose one or two kids and load them up with awards. So the other kids with the same (sometime higher) accomplishments can walk out with nothing because no one cares how they feel.
It’s no different than the Olympics. One medal for soccer, and 17 different swimming events covering every possible permutation of stroke & distance you can come up with.
SOCCER
SWIMMING
-100m backstroke
-100m breaststroke
-100m butterfly
-100m freestyle
-1500m freestyle
-200m backstroke
-200m breaststroke
-200m butterfly
-200m freestyle
-200m individual medley
-400m freestyle
-400m individual medley
-4x100m freestyle relay
-4x100m medley relay
-4x200m freestyle relay
-50m freestyle
Our high school has a perfect solution for such concerns. No awards for anybody for anything, ever. My S is headed to Princeton in the fall and has never received any type of acknowledgement from school.