<p>Right. I care nothing if my kids “make a splash” in their high school. I only want them to make a splash insofar as they get whatever recs, etc. are needed to get into the college(s) of their choice. If that winds up getting them xyz awards, then so be it, but that’s not the point. Widespread accolades are nice, but not the point. Really, I want them to expand their horizons, spread their wings, and not really give another thought to hs once they leave.</p>
<p>I guess high school awards programs are bad everywhere after reading this thread.</p>
<p>At our small private high school there are always a couple of teachers’ kids in the class and they always get awards and it’s always absurd. Not sure why but the kids of many fine teachers are not that good of students in our school. Anyway, the school gives these kids “honor” scholarships, writing awards, junior year book awards, etc. And it’s always annoying but the interesting thing is that all the high school awards in the world never seem to boost these kids into selective colleges. Without the transcripts and test scores and APs and meaningful AP’s a Princeton Book award is not going to put you at Princeton.</p>
<p>Also, I remember when older kid was filling out his common app. Those awards all get scrunched into a teeny tiny space. Seeing that put it all into perspective.</p>
<p>High school awards are next to meaningless for college admissions. NMSF, National AP, RSI, TASP, Intel . . . . those matter, not the school awards which essentially are about politics.</p>
<p>Son did get the Harvard Book award, which we were told signified that he was first in his unranked class. But seriously doubt it was even noted by harried admissions folks.</p>
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I think that because the standards of giving such awards are variable from one school to another - and a college ad com has no way of knowing if there even are “standards” (as opposed to an award merely signifying a teacher’s favorite) – they are going to be ignored on college apps. If there is a standard that corresponds to rank – than the same information could and should be noted in the g.c.'s report to the college. An award for having the best GPA obviously is superfluous to the GPA itself.</p>
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I’m not saying that every child should get an award – I am saying that there is little point in giving awards to students who already are achieving recognition as a direct result of their accomplishments – and maybe we ought to redefine the TYPES of awards we give. I don’t think its a bad thing for a school to give out an award for “best attendance” or “most helpful library assistant” precisely because those are the areas where kids seldom get acknowledged and recognized.</p>
<p>The class val and sal don’t need an extra award to tell everyone how smart they are. The graduation honors are more than enough. </p>
<p>Most school activities provide a clear avenue for attention for the kids who are the “best”. School athletes often earn letter jackets which they proudly wear in the school halls; the talented actors and singers have featured positions and top billing in school performances. </p>
<p>To me, another award is simply ego-stroking for the individuals who least need the extra strokes. It’s like awarding a monetary prize to people who earn the most money. Sure – in the real world, companies often follow that practice – the highest paid executives get the biggest bonuses – but I would prefer to see such awards go to the people who need them most. </p>
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<p>That’s great, but my sense on this thread – and others on CC, as it comes up every year – is that there are plenty of parents of high achievers who are extremely resentful when some award that they feel their own child “deserves” goes to some other kid. It may be that the other kid is objectively less deserving – but I personally believe that we all tend to have a subjective view of things – and may not always see what others see when it comes to assessing our own contributions against those of others. </p>
<p>I mean – you could do a simple experiment and go around to each member of your household or workplace and ask them, privately, “who does most of the work around here?” I guarantee you that each and every person perceives themselves to be contributing to a greater degree than they actually are, and are oblivious many of the contributions of others. This is a central source of conflict in homes and workplaces.</p>
<p>When you translate this into the “awards” context – there are a lot of parents who simply do not have the ability to see the whole picture objectively. It is easy to assume that there is politics involved when a teacher’s kid gets an award – and there may well be – but a parent cannot know how much one kid contributes in class vs. another. The kid with the best grade may not be the kid who the teacher perceives as the most helpful or engaged in the classroom. </p>
<p>What we perceive as “favoritism” may simply be the flip side of the inability of human beings to be fully objective. That is, the teacher’s kid might get the award not because everyone is trying to to favor that kid – but rather because everyone on the awards committee knows the kid’s name and has taken notice of the kid all along because she is so-and-so’s daughter. </p>
<p>I do know that very often individuals who are the “best” at something have other personality flaws that make them unlikeable. This is by no means universal – I have also known many high achievers who are gracious and supportive of others around them and even humble about their own accomplishments. But there are some who make a lot of enemies along the way because of their perceived attitude, such as kids who are thought of as arrogant or selfish. So often there is a very good reason why the individual did not get the anticipated award – and my problem is that I see those same qualities of arrogance or selfishness whenever some parent whose kid has gotten a whole slew of honors gets angered when their kid doesn’t get whatever award they think they deserve. </p>
<p>I mean, to my eyes if the criteria are totally objective, like calculating the highest GPA – then we don’t need an “award” – and if the criteria are subjective, then by definition different people will have different points of view. I would like to believe that my own high- achieving offspring have always been unerringly considerate and respectful and uniformly beloved by all, but I know for a fact that this is not the case, and my guess is that others may have viewed them in a light much more harsh than my own. So I really can accept that some other kid got the such-and-such book award because the teacher liked that kid better, and that it is o.k. if some people on this planet happen to like somebody else’s children better than they like mine.</p>
<p>But really, from a student’s perspective, what do these awards matter? It’s a minor moment of disappointment with nothing in the greater scope of anything. One of my good friends received an award at the graduation ceremony today for being the most accomplished boy or something like that in the class, and another girl received the counterpart award for females, and though the description of the award was very vague and did not mention sports at all, it was fairly apparent to me and likely many others in the class that the award had been given on the basis of commendable academic merit (but by a significant margin not the best) and superior athletic ability. I felt a little disappointed, but honestly, nothing my school could award me would give me any significant amount of pride. It’s honestly just a piece of paper, given for a myriad of reasons not worth speculating over. It doesn’t mean anything, and it doesn’t commend any truly notable accomplishment. I would be much happier if all the awards were given to kids who would have no other time to shine, as opposed to kids who “truly deserved” the awards.</p>
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<p>Brava.<br>
And I would never have thought that an award in French, Spanish, what-have-you was predicated strictly on the grades achieved in that class.</p>
<p>Went to my niece’s graduation (college) today. The dean of one of the colleges had a graduating senior. He got at least 5 awards. I can only hope he’s truely brilliant and it isn’t a repeat of the favoritism we saw in HS</p>
<p>In S1’s class there was a girl who, starting in middle school, always won all the awards. Finally, at the music award presentations senior year, one of the other parents asked a group of boys, including S1, “Does it bother you that she always wins everything?”. One of the boys said , “no, because she works harder then the rest of us, she wants it more then all the rest of us, and it matters more to her. She needs it more, so let her have them all.” And then another one of the kids said, “Yeah, I always think it as her reward for having to live with her parents.” And all the kids laughed. Demanding, manipulative mother and a womanizing, drinking father. That really put it in perspective.</p>
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The pressure of everyone’s expectations for the kid could be a factor as well. One of the kids in a (physics) course I was TA for this spring turned in one of his mid-terms, I looked at, saw the name, and had the following conversation: </p>
<p>ME: “Oh, are you related to Dr. Fabulous (in the math department)?” </p>
<p>STUDENT: “yeah, he’s my dad”</p>
<p>ME: “Smart guy.”</p>
<p>This whole thread kind of reminds me of a quote I read on another forum (credit to the author, not me):</p>
<p>“You will be getting passed over for things won by less-deserving individuals for the rest of your life. Except when, on occasion, you are the less-deserving individual that someone else is [complaining] about.”</p>
<p>Well, I came back to reread this thread for comfort today after finding out that the kids that are winning awards have received their letters and my D wasn’t one of them. It’s not that i expected her to, but I will admit it made me feel badly for a while today. She is the kind of kid that has always sort of flown under the radar. It is doubly hard since most of her friends are high achieving, smart and accomplished and are often recognized.</p>
<p>I’m glad I found out while she was out for the day so that I can be sure to get over any disappointment before I see her. </p>
<p>I am truly happy for the kids that will be recognized. Many of them are kids I love. </p>
<p>My new mantra is “in a few years or even sooner, none of this will matter”.</p>
<p>Oooooh! On the upside, I don’t have to sit through that debacle! I think I might be okay with this. :)</p>
<p>EPTR - sorry that the awards people didn’t make the effort to get to know your D. My second D is like that, also, so I know what it’s like watching the extroverts take center stage all the time (even though D would hate the spotlight). Enjoy your evening free from the folding chairs!</p>
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<p>In recognizing that this does indeed occur quite often many schools in our area have started awarding a “most outstanding member of the Senior class” award to one or two students each year in addition to val/sal… and this is considered the “highest” honor for the class, not val. </p>
<p>Those selected for these awards tend to be perhaps 3, 4 or 5 in the class but have far more impressive CVs overall while the val might have had a few extra GPA “bonus” points from a random extra AP course but basically had no life whatsoever outside academics. That’s obviously a generalization but more often than not that’s how it plays out.</p>
<p>bunch of helicopter parents in this thread!</p>
<p>I, and hopefully the other adults, understand that awards are very rarely objective. For instance, one of DD’s classmates won the English award- he is a bit of an ass kisser- and didn’t graduate with academic honors. How is this possible? It certainly doesn’t matter at all, it’s just one of those momentst that make you go ‘hmmm’.</p>
<p>Helicopter parents would have been complaining to the school. We’re just venting here. :)</p>
<p>mimimomx3 – it is quite possible that the kid who won the English award is a talented and creative poet … who can’t muster better than a C in his math classes. I honestly have to say that my own daughter’s very high GPA is due in part to generous curves in her high school math classes – at another school she might not have fared as well.</p>
<p>I like very much like the idea of giving academic awards each year. Otherwise, it absolutely can be a “what have you done for me lately” kind of thing. So if for some reason the months of April and May of senior year are tough for you, you’re out of luck. This would also help eliminate the problem that the most advanced kids can get overlooked for some of the awards because they may have taken that level class a year or two earlier than the majority of students.</p>
<p>For example, this was another issue I noticed at the awards ceremony, but which I didn’t mention in the OP. When transitioning from middle school to our high school, a handful of students are placed into level 3 of their foreign language instead of level 2. Thus they complete AP French or Spanish in junior year, while the other kids take it senior year. Due to budget cuts, the AP literature classes are no longer offered at the high school, so these students finish language study a year before everyone else or move on to take a course outside the high school. By definition, the small group of kids who skipped a year were more proficient in language study than their peers, but are often overlooked because they aren’t taking the language class senior year. I don’t know about French, but the student who won the Spanish award this year was not among the group of 3 or 4 more advanced students. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s mean-spirited to want to see a fair and objective system. These rants don’t necessarily mean any of us are petty and jealous–we’d just like to see a logical rationale for the decision-making going into these ceremonies. Even a mean and envious parent can’t argue with facts. If the kid is presented as having the highest GPA in the subject and as having been the most involved with the subject outside of class as demonstrated but x,y,z activities, then the vast majority of parents will have no problem with the award even if it doesn’t go to their own “deserving” child. </p>
<p>And even those mean and jealous parents are not going to have a problem with awards they view as bogus so long as they are properly labeled. If you want to honor the student who helped in the office as in the example earlier and you actually call it the “Office Helper” award, then that’s fine. Or if you want to honor a student who has been diligent in the face of disability, illness or difficult family cirumstances, then call it the “Rising to the Challenge” Award or the “Overcoming Adversity Award.” Don’t call it the “Academic Excellence” award and proceed tell the audience how the kid took one AP class while the Val stands up there with no academic award at all.</p>
<p>TheGFG. That happened to one of my kids in a foreign language. She skipped a year and completed her APs ahead of schedule. She was the only kid allowed to skip a year because she was the most proficient. But, when senior awards came, she was not given the language award. First she was told it was because she was not taking the language senior year. Then she was told it was because she is a “native speaker.” LOL! She has 2 grandparents who are native speakers but live hundreds of miles away. She learned the language in school. Oh yeah, then they gave the other language award to a kid who <em>is</em> a native speaker (both parents from that country and I believe student was born there).</p>