<p>In most cases, the people making the awards decisions are good people who are trying to do something nice for kids. However, what I’d like to challenge are some underlying assumptions or biases I’ve noted that seem to govern the awarding of honors in school.</p>
<p>One of these biases is that the obviously hard-working kid is more deserving than the kid that achieves the same or better result in a manner that appears to require less effort. Teacher really appreciate diligence, and rightly so. But I’d like to suggest that one reason some of you have noticed that girls tend to get more awards than boys is that girls tend to do a better job of looking like sweet, hard-working kids. One reason is that they don’t lose social capital by being sweet and asking for help. Boys are socialized differently, as evidenced by men’s reluctance to ask for directions, lol!</p>
<p>No teacher is omniscient, and as such has no right to assume anything based on outward appearances. There are kids who work very hard but don’t excel, but in a rigorous school system no one excels unless s/he works very hard. A student who reads ahead in the textbook, studies his class notes every night, begins preparing for exams well in advance of the date, and is generally extremely diligent can make it look like it comes easy for him or her. My youngest is a special education student who has been recently mainstreamed. In preparation for a big unit test this week, she began studying last week and over the long weekend. Therefore, when the class did a review game on Tuesday, she knew a lot of the answers that smarter kids didn’t. Unlike her, they are able to study the night before and still ace the test. If you concluded that remembering historical facts comes easier to my daughter, you’d be completely wrong. So if, despite the fact that she achieved the highest grade in the class, you awarded a prize to the kids who never knew the answers at first but then must have studied really hard and pulled slightly lower A’s anyway, you’d be making a mistake.</p>
<p>Teachers LOVE when kids come early to school or stay after to ask questions and seek help. I understand that, but if Cayla has to babysit her sister before and after school, she won’t be doing that. It doesn’t mean she’s not as interested or isn’t trying as hard. In D’s high school, the AP calculus teacher is not a great educator. Some kids have figured out that if you want help in AP Calc., the person to go to is the AP Physics teacher. So imagine how unfair it would be if the calc teacher had two top students, but gave the award to the one who appeared to care more about the subject as evidenced by the fact that she came after school for his help. Meanwhile, the other student cared just as much and was also seeking help–just not from him.</p>
<p>Finally, even if a student actually does have higher achievments with less effort, how is that his fault and why should he be penalized? If he can earn a 100% on a test by studying a half an hour and without going for help, why should he study for 3 hours and stay after school to see the teacher? Seems to me that would be a waste of everyone’s time.</p>
<p>Secondly, I’d like to challenge the preference for the supposedly unrewarded underdog. Many on this board are more indignant over the thought that the kid just below the top achiever might go unrecognized, than you are thinking about a top achiever going unrecognized. Why? It seems that you all assume that the kid one notch below is trying just as hard or more so, but is obscured by the star’s shadow. How do you know that’s a true representation of the situation? Speaking of D’s sports team, I can tell you that some talented girls don’t achieve as much as they could because when cute boys are in the trainer’s office, they fake a pain so they can skip their workout and go in there too and flirt. When they’re supposed to be on a long run, they stop in at a friend’s home near the high school and play Guitar Hero for a while instead of running. In general, they don’t achieve as much because they don’t work as hard or sacrifice as much. What the coach doesn’t know when he overlooks the top achiever to reward the underdog, is that the underdog often came to Saturday meets tired because she stayed out late at Friday night drinking parties. The underdog has her priorities and makes decisions based on them. Some on here want to paint it as if the top achiever already got rewarded by doing well, but the poor, just as hard-working underdog didn’t win those medals or titles and so we need to give her a prize at awards night or she’ll be unfairly unrewarded. I’d like to say that in actuality, just like the top achiever, the underdog already got rewarded too. She got rewarded by being able to find a boyfriend and prom date, by having a lot of fun, and by maintaining popularity and a feeling of belonging in a large circle of friends–all by not priroitizing the sport.</p>
<p>My neighbor’s son is a bright kid and top student at the middle school. He often gets the second highest grade in the class on tests. He’s also a super talented gamer and gets paid to play in tournaments (even though he’s young, they obtained special permission). So some nights, he spends more time gaming than studying. Now, the middle school gives quarterly academic awards. Suppose that this fourth quarter, after having earned the second highest GPA for the past three quarters, the teacher decides that the neighbor’s kid should get the top student award, even though technically another student had the highest average. In an attempt to spread the wealth and be fair, the teacher actually made things less egalitarian. So now the gamer gets both the top student award and the win in the video game tournament!</p>
<p>Also, as missypie pointed out, people are wired differently and are motivated by different things. The kid who consistently earns the highest grades definitely cares about getting the highest grades. Maybe he’ll be beaten at home if he doesn’t (that happens around here within a certain ethnic group), or maybe he’s the type to strongly need external validation and will feel awful about himself if he doesn’t excel in ways that are rewarded. Let’s suppose the teacher decides to overlook that kid in favor of someone else, thinking he’s doing the right thing. Can you see how the teacher may be giving neither kid what they need? The kid with the top GPA doesn’t get the reward he really wanted and worked for, and the kid who did get it, could really care less about getting it, because what he’s most interested in is winning video games or hanging out with his friends.</p>
<p>The school needs to set objective criteria as much as is possible, and stick to those criteria as much as is possible. How the kids got to where they got is too much of a black box to make value judgments about it.</p>
You don’t. Fine. Good for you. If people cannot come here and vent, where can they do it?</p>