Let me get this straight. You’re saying testing and classroom performance are irrelevant to evaluate?
So, grades don’t matter? A 2.0 performance and a 4.0 performance are the same in predicting someone’s aptitude, work ethic, and desire to meet goals?
It sounds as if you have an issue with grading entirely.
In jobs, why do we do performance evaluations?
Everyone is the same? Doing the best they can without being scored or motivated?
Competition is natural and beneficial. The constant drive to be the best at what you choose to do. The drive to work for it. The drive to make a difference. Self-drive to motivate oneself.
For many of these high school kids, school is the main job at that point in life—learning how to balance it with athletics, side jobs, personal life. Performance opens paths to the next level of learning. A means to a career.
There isn’t a perfect system for measuring some of these items, and sure, standardized testing has serious issues as it doesn’t factor in most of the picture.
However, performance matters. Classroom performance. Work performance.
Remove competition and no one is ever pushed.
The idea of getting down to a singular individual is flawed—the concept of a valedictorian. As
@Out of the Rafters at the Q suggests, that can be dependent on the ease of coursework and be determined by AP classes—of scaling above a 4.0 on a 4.0 scale.
As a former valedictorian, I didn’t care much that I received that distinction in high school—other than that I shared the honor with my best friend which made it memorable. It just happened naturally while trying to learn and perform. It happened while still enjoying athletics and having a personal life. I was a kid. I also cared about getting into college, getting scholarships, moving away—figuring out what I wanted to do in life.
However, all of those things are also competition. Getting into colleges. Scholarships. Applying to majors. Graduate schooling. Medical schooling. Residency programs. Job opportunities. There are never enough seats at the bar for everyone to sit down.
Performance is always going to matter. In education, in careers, in life.
That said, competition isn’t always about beating other people. Sometimes it’s against yourself and against your own expectations and goals. Pushing yourself to be the best you can be is as much channeling a competitive spirit as anything.
So yes, there are plenty of flaws with the current system. However, there must be some form of system. You can’t remove it entirely. There has to be a method for distinguishing the top and the bottom based on performance
Eliminating these items is dangerous. Doing away with valedictorian and salutatorian is one reasonable thing. Latin Honors is a fine system—GPA based and scoring.
We just have to be careful of the slippery slope. Removing competition can have unfortunate consequences.
I fear that we live in a society that is often too afraid to give negative feedback. We don’t want to hurt feelings. The proverbial “kick in the ass” is disappearing. That doesn’t mean we don’t all need it every now and then—just like we like that positive feedback when we’re going above and beyond.
We are also nearing a point in society where we are fearful of too much positive reinforcement as it makes those who didn’t receive it feel worse about themselves. There shouldn’t be a “participation trophy” in the game of life, and it’s perfectly reasonable to acknowledge differences in performance between individuals.
