<p>
Well, being below-average is generally seen as more detrimental to one’s future than being above-average. </p>
<p>I guess everyone needs some kind of validation, but I don’t think high school award ceremonies do much for anyone and I don’t think that’s the kind of attention we should focus on giving smart kids. I mean, smart kids need academic opportunities and challenges…they don’t need a bunch of meaningless praise from people who don’t really care. </p>
<p>@halcyonheather I don’t dispute that being below-average is generally seen as more detrimental to one’s future than being above-average, but that leads to less attention being given to those that could benefit from more academic challenges. Not being recognized, albeit as petty and trivial as the awards are, leads to less public awareness for academic initiatives. The best schools in our state make it clear to everyone else that they are the best in the state by making sure that everyone knows about their accomplishments. In turn, their school districts promote more academic opportunities for their gifted students. This creates a cycle of acheievement and opportunities. </p>
<p>@Digitalking, I think there is a big difference between PR from schools and what actually goes on in the schools. Our school system is constantly putting out PR about how great things are, while remaining willfully ignorant of how far they are behind in many areas. Sometimes the PR is based on reality–they do do some things right. Sometimes I’ve seen a complete disconnect between what they are saying and what actually goes on–touting something in grand and vague terms while not providing some of the most basic opportunities in that area when they could easily do so. And sometimes, the PR people from the district completely ignore some of the best student achievements. I don’t see any connection at all between the publicity that goes out and opportunities provided for students.</p>
<p>@mathyone What I’ve noticed from personal experience is that the better the school is, the more that their legitimate achievements (e.g. USAMO, ISEF) are recognized. Our school has had a 2-year ISEF qualifier that I found out about less than a month ago. She was never mentioned anywhere special, so I never knew about her. However, our neighboring school (top 10 in the state by US News) had a first time ISEF qualifier that was highlighted in a lengthy newspaper article. I can cite many other examples where the other school gets more recognition, which leads to more smart people moving to that school region (stupid open enrollment, stealing people from our school!), leading to more accomplishments.<br>
But yes, a lot of their PR is bogus and irrelevant to the school’s real achievements and/or struggles. </p>
<p>At my school there’s a breakfast for kids who get all A’s at the end of the quarter. Dry bagels and salad :D</p>
<p>" She was never mentioned anywhere special, so I never knew about her." Perhaps she preferred it that way? Not everyone wants publicity.</p>
<p>I must say, CC has opened me up to this world of academic competition like I have never seen before. At my school, no one cares how you rank in the class unless you are in the top 3 really, and we are a pretty much full academic focus school. Does anyone else think that this competitive environment is bad? It seems people start caring more about their rank than what they learn. College admissions certainly plays a hand, but I am just amazed at how competitive it seems at some high schools. I have no idea how I rank in my high school nor do I care, but that doesn’t seem to be very common here…</p>
<p>
Competition inspires some people—you can’t assume everyone would care about learning if they weren’t worried about their class rank. In my time on this website I’ve seen a lot of people who probably wouldn’t bother at all if it weren’t for the competition and the idea that they’re winning something.</p>
<p>I always feel like I have to worry about my grades before I’m allowed to think about whether I’m learning or not. I feel awful when I get bad grades (or at least I used to before I got senioritis) because they make me feel like my brain doesn’t work, like there’s no point in thinking anymore because all my thoughts will be wrong. Being smart can improve the quality of your life—there are a lot of fun things my dog doesn’t understand because it’s not smart enough—and getting bad grades makes me worry that I’m too innately dumb to ever gain access to whatever intellectual pleasures smart people experience. Good grades make me happy, and when I’m happy I want to learn things.</p>
<p>Someone at my school medaled at the ICHO( international chemistry olympiad) and got a footnote on a page. While some football players got entire articles every week.</p>
<p>@mathyone Well, I found out about that because she was bragging about it, so…
It’s not necessarily about rank per se. It’s just the fact that society as a whole doesn’t value educational achievements as much as sporting achievements, at least where I’m from. When I went to the State Math Tournament, many of my “friends” made fun of the fact that there’s a state math tournament. Being the first one from my school to qualify for it in OVER 10 YEARS, I wouldn’t expect scorn from my acquaintances. Not that it really affects me, but it shows how (at least at my school) that what is valued needs to change. </p>
<p>@DigitalKing, why don’t you meet with your school principal and discuss this? Explain the ways you feel it would be beneficial to the school to showcase student academic achievements, to inspire other students and show the community what the students are doing. Maybe they can set up a section to list academic achievements in the school newsletter or on the school website. </p>
<p>@mathyone Our newspaper actually does have a section called the “Academic Notebook” where they highlight “achievements” from each school. However, each school is required to submit their achievements to this section. Our school’s section is always just two or three sentences that mention activities going on next week. Very rarely are achievements published, and the ones that are are typically not that prestigious anyways.
I’m 90% sure that the principal will just say “oh, the coaches of each individual activity are required to submit the achievements, so don’t ask me!”. </p>
<p>Not sure what you can really do then, if you already have a forum for this and people don’t seem interested enough to use it. If the coaches aren’t submitting the info, if the kids themselves aren’t going to submit the info, then it’s not going to be published. Maybe the kids in each activity should remind the coach if they win something, to submit it.</p>
<p>My school has valedictorian and salutatorian and that’s it. And even that they don’t stress because of the sheer number of brilliant people competing over that decimal place.
Actually, at SOME POINT they’re probably going to announce that my friend and I are National Merit Finalists… the problem is that I don’t go to a school in my county so it won’t get in the paper. That part is annoying- they wait to announce a lot of accomplishments until the end of the semester and even those they don’t explain and all group together.
Based on the type of school mine is (a very specific type of religious Jewish school that prides itself on its academics) I’m honestly shocked that they don’t profile people with academic achievements as much as they could. I’d mention that it might be a feather in their caps at open house if they could mention that two of their students were the only three students from our type of school in the state who were NMFs, except I’m one of them, so…</p>