My own high school was sports obsessed. you couldn’t even buy a school jacket in the official color (which was an unusual color you couldn’t get elsewhere) unless you were on a varsity athletic team. Even the marching band were not qualified to own “the jacket”. I was more of the NM type, in fact some of my friends and I were finalists. Very little recognition but a sense of satisfaction now in middle age after all these years at the much lower number of knee and back surgeries needed compared to those celebrated athletes.
In my kids’ high school they brought the entire senior class to a 1.5 hour assembly to celebrate a hockey player that made it into the Player of the week in the newspaper. The assembly was required and absences were punishable with detention. No other single student was so honored, not even the West Point student and our area is also military focused.
Our school,has showcases in the front hall that held sports trophies, etc. turns out the athletic parents association had purchased those showcases, not the school.
Our music parents association raised money for a showcase for the arts…which was also placed in the front hall. It was a win-win…because it got all of the music awards out of the teacher work areas in the music and art rooms.
Drama followed, and has a great showcase they use.
Out of curiosity, did they have a special section of the HS commencement exercises set aside for graduates admitted to the FSAs?
At my HS commencement, they set aside a special section of graduation in which they named all the FSA admits and a representative from each of the services gave a speech honoring them. Not even the Ivy/peer elite admits got a special section of the graduation set aside for them.
I don’t know what type of achievements (sports, music, academic, etc.) are noted in my kid’s public HS’s daily announcements, but I just checked the latest monthly electronic newsletter, which included at least a paragraph (and often a photo) on: winner of the Dash for Diabetes t-shirt logo contest; finalist for the national Prudential Spirit of Community award; state DECA winners moving on to nationals; local Exchange Club award winner; winners of District award for service and academics; programming team; math competition winners; Academic Team members.
Not a sport in sight, which I have to say surprised me. However, there is a local website that covers every sporting event in our league (about 16 schools) in great detail on a daily basis, plus most of the teams have a Twitter feed (maintained by parents), so I guess people can get their fix there.
“The day after HS graduation, no one will care about any awards received in HS.”
This is true. It’s also true that high school cultures communicate value systems to their students all along the way, and it can be hard to swim against the stream. We are all, in part, products of our environment, and for that reason it’s important to me to encourage high schools to develop cultures where athletics aren’t the only achievements that count.
@Hanna you’re absolutely right; in my opinion you have expressed the most valid reason to complain about uneven celebration of achievements. However I’ve detected more of a “it’s not fair” mentality here which I think is really kind of silly.
Story that has been told here before. My DD was 8th on her class of 190 students…top 10 student who had been in that range since middle school. In middle school, she received tons of annual awards. Big deal.
However, in HS, she was the ONLY top 10 student who NEVER got an academic award at the annual awards ceremony. Well…until her senior year when she was recognized as a top 10 student and presidential scholar. But 9th, 10th and 11th…nothing. In the meantime, every other top ten student was recognized for multiple achievements every single year.
Our school awards program was by invitation only. younnever knew the actual award until the night of the event. Every year, she thought she would get acknowledged for her academic achievements…well…one of them. But she was annually recognized as a top musician in their wind ensemble, and an all state festival participant.
Her feelings were annually hurt…but she moved on.
And you know what? She still got acceoted to the college of her choice. The lack of HS awards at her school didn’t matter one bit. And really…after the senior awards assembly…no one cared about her class awards…at all.
Fo the record, after her graduation, I spoke to the HS administration. They agreed something was wrong. A policy was initiated that said students could receive no more than 3 awards annually for academics…on other words…share the wealth if there are other worthy recipients.
Speaking only for myself, where does all the hating on high school sports come from? As I have said before, I have one sports kid and one arts/music kid. I have never once heard anything derogatory directed at the bandos or the arts kids by sports parents. I constantly hear parents of band and drama kids ripping on the jocks.
Sports, particularly at that level, teach a ton of values that are of great benefit in the “real” world. The ability to work towards a goal, to know what it is like to both shoulder responsibility and rely on others, to strive and fail, or to succeed. I do not understand when and why those lessons became passé.
As far as the subject of this thread, of course it is silly to remove the pictures. But it is too me equally silly to bemoan the fact that a larger percentage of the high school community would enjoy going to a basketball game rather than watching a concert given by the jazz band, or going to the taping of academic challenge.
These sorts of threads pop up now and again on CC. and they never fail to annoy me.
Some schools laud their athletic stars. Some schools laud their academic stars, Some schools laud their artistic stars. Some do more than one of these.
And no matter what, some group is going to feel slighted because a student that did X didn’t get made a big deal of. (Well, unless it’s a school where none of them are made a big deal of—my preference, actually, but enrolling one’s kids at schools with that sort of philosophy tends to be a bit self-selecting.)
In fact, I would further suggest that those of us who have academic superstar but not athletic or artistic or whatever superstar children (and, given its nature, CC is going to have an overrepresentation of parents of academic stars) are going to be more likely to notice such slights toward the academic side of the house, simply because we’re more aware of the academic achievements that are out there—so there’s a strong potential for observation bias here.
Also, if there are more students participating at a high level in, say, sports than academics, one really should expect more honors to the athletic side, simply because there are more honors to mention.
Seriously, though, even if you’re right that academics is shortchanged, so what? Is a reliance on third-party validation (no, wait—in this case, fourth-party validation) really such a good thing to encourage?
I don’t think anyone hates HS sports, @Ohiodad51 . It’s just that at some schools, it’s the ONLY type of achievement that is recognized and that seems unfair.
Sports parents might might direct derogatory comments to band and drama kids if their awards filled the hallways and sports were never acknowledged.
After observing with three kids, I think that in general the high school awards tend to be unfair. Too much politics and who you know, too much personal bias on the part of the teachers and other staff toward the activities or traits they personally value, too much nonsense like “John always laughs at my jokes” as a rationale for why John gets the English award. D was one of the most successful athletes in school history, got recruited to a top 10 Div. 1 program, was well-known in the region due to having won state titles, and yet received no recognition for her athletic accomplishments at the senior awards. Others with lesser accomplishments were honored, however.
In large schools there are just too many kids doing too many things for recognitions to be complete. Sarah could be hands down the best writer in the school, but if she had Mrs. Jones for English senior year and Emily (who is good too, but not as good as Sarah) has the department head for senior English, Emily gets chosen. Similarly, if Coach Jones is the fair-haired boy or coaches the favorites sport at the high school, then his player is going to get the top award over the superior athlete coached by someone or from a team lower down the totem pole.
And they would be wrong to do so. In my opinion, no adult should be derogatory towards a group of kids in general. The fact that your own kid’s extra curricular activity may be more or less popular than that chosen by the group being denigrated shouldn’t be a factor.
Your arts/music kid is very lucky to not have been in some mainstream high school environments many Oberlin classmates had experienced. In such environments, being an arts/music kid…especially at a high level did not only result in “being ripped” by the socially dominant jocks, their parents, and peer/adult hanger-ons in and out of HS. It also resulted in serious bullying including violent beatings.
One of the reasons why they chose to attend our college other than its strong music/arts offerings was the fact practically none of the bullying jocks or their hanger ons would consider applying/attending due to factors such as lack of Div I sports/spirit and the absence of fraternities/sororities on-campus.
Lost count of how many college classmates recounted such experiences when conversations turned to our HS experiences.
Their experiences mirrored mine in middle school and to some extent, elementary school…especially considering arts/music kids…especially high level ones were regarded as “nerds” alongside kids who were passionate about academics whether one was a math whiz or passionate about literature.
Fortunately, my high school experience was very atypical as being a public magnet where academics was highly prized, it was actually the sports/jock kids who were relegated to the very bottom rung of the social hierarchy usually allocated for the high academic achieving nerds in many mainstream US high schools whereas the nerds…especially those on the math/debate teams or Westinghouse finalists/semi-finalists were the most admired/popular kids.
Our high school sometimes purchased art from their graduating seniors for display in the main hallway. In my daughter’s case they wanted to purchase a piece that she had won an award for in a city art museum competition. Alas, it was a nude self-portrait. So the school demurred.
Thumper - D had a similar experience as the kid in the top 5 in the class who walked out of the academic award assemblies empty handed year after year.
She also went to the college she wanted to go to (the one the career center woman said “no one got into”) graduated in 3.5 years with a double major, a professional certificate, several internships - with honors.Seven years after HS, she works in a career that she loves. At her recent annual review her boss complimented her work and the fact that everyone likes her personally and respects her professionally.
So no…it doesn’t matter in the long run. But it’s still annoying at the time.
@OhioMom2, we were discussing parents, not kids. I generally believe that behavior exhibit by a seventeen year old is maybe more excusable than that same behavior exhibited by a forty seven year old.
Some people think that standardized tests are a poor method to determine which students should be recognized as meritorious. Maybe that was the basis of the complaint.
There are 66,000 vals and sals in the US. Leads in local theater are a dime a dozen. There are only 15,000 National Merit Finalists nationwide. The majority get some form of scholarship. Worthy, IMO. As to making others feel bad posting the accomplishments—this is not grade school soccer. Everyone can’t win.
@mackinaw LOL!!! @cobrat I was not at that graduation. I do not believe there is a set aside for any type of post grad accomplishment at graduation, BUT there was a story in the local paper. The kid was also a state champion in a sport. definitely newsworthy. @thumper1… when you said “Drama followed” the double meaning there tickled my funny bone.
thanks for the fun, CC posters!