Week 2.3 - Best in Class

Consider a group of people, each of them striving for first place, hostly attempting to get there by any means. This is what rushing to get valedictorian is like.  That is why it must be done away with.  High schools should get rid or valedictorian because it puts too much pressure on kids and it is not that important or relevant in the first place.

Students obsessed with being number one will be too caught up in achieving their goal that they will not be able to be as happy as the people around them.  This is because there is a lot of pressure riding on being number one.  Only one person can be the best.  With this in mind, it can be difficult to stop working, as a competitor could be working at that very moment.  Whoever gets the most time in has a better chance of being better.  This is what runs many students in to the ground.  At this point, school is no longer about learning, it is only about competing and be the greatest.  What really matters is who gets the best learning experience rather than who can achieve the highest grades and take the most classes.

Valedictorian really is not all that impressive anyway.  Valedictorian means that you made the best grades in your high school.  That status is relative to the other students in the school.  If no one else tried, you win.  If colleges are looking at valedictorian to find the smartest students, chances are they will not actually find it there.  Valedictorian means that they worked hard not that they are smart.  A majority of brilliant students are usually lazy and make A’s and B’s. While they are smart enough to make the best grades, they are also aware that they could if they wanted. Therefore they have nothing to prove.  The intelligent students know that they can achieve well enough without straining too much effort.  They do this because they can and can get away with it.  Just as this happens, it is also common that an average student who works himself to the bone can achieve all A’s and make valedictorian.  This is useless because todays society requires innovators.  We need to push technology forward and that will require brilliant minds.  Effort will only take you so far, you must have the intelligence to back it up.  

Understand that the title “valedictorian” does not really hold any valid importance.  If it stays, it will only continue to distort the vision of what intelligence really is.  Aside from that, it will run the most competitive kids in to the ground.  It would make students lives easier and less pointless if valedictorian were be abolished.