<p>The same can be said about the parent sitting at the awards banquet. </p>
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<p>Would you say the same thing is true of universities in awarding admissions – they should set objective criteria for admissions (GPA, SAT, etc.) as much as possible? Because one could certainly charge that it’s “unfair” that certain students get into colleges based on athletic ability – shouldn’t the criteria for college entry be academics?</p>
<p>Does handing out these awards confer any benefit on the student body that could not be achieved through some other method?</p>
<p>For example, if students work harder and learn more in order to get the “history prize,” I’d view that as a benefit. But students are already motivated (or not) to work hard for the A+, to please the teacher, for love of the subject, to get into college, etc. Does this make any difference that outweighs all the headaches?</p>
<p>I would have no problem with an award for overcoming adversity so long as there is sensitivity to the person being so honored. Many people with disabilities strive to be viewed as no different than anyone else, so an award of that type could embarrass or hurt–even if it’s a disability everyone knows about. Also, I suppose that those with invisible disabilities would get overlooked for such an award. And that is part of the point I was making in my last long post. It’s really hard to give awards for things that aren’t quantifiable:such as highest GPA, top goal scorer, most hours of community service, etc. Even those can be quite problematic, as we all know from discussions of class rank calculations. But you get into even more trouble when you start evaluating intangibles like effort, and overcoming adversity is an effort-based award.</p>
<p>As for athletics, frankly that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. A school is an educational institution and so I’m not sure why anything other than academic qualfications should matter for admission. You would think that except for very unusual skills, in a study body of 1000 students or more, you’d manage to admit enough of what you need as far as newspaper editors, club presidents, soccer players, musicians, etc. While I can see financial and publicity advantages for a school that would make them interested in having a top football or men’s basketball team, why fielding a good team in the other sports would concern them is a mystery to me.</p>
<p>However, if the school says you can play on our team if you have x,y, and z qualifications, and then people with those qualifications are who they take, well then at least it’s clear what’s going on. Similarly, I’d like to see colleges say “Students with SAT scores below this number need not apply,” if in fact they NEVER take anyone with scores below that number.</p>
<p>I think that’s an excellent question. At our school, kids definitely work hard toward the goal of Val, Sal, Top 20 Students and Top 10 Percent. I think the kid who is killing himself to get a 100 in APUSH is doing it for the weighted points it adds to his GPA, not so he can walk across the stage and get a certificate for the highest grade in APUSH.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, you keep implying that I and those who may sympathize with me are nosy parents butting into Jimmy and Timmy’s business. What you fail to realize is that people blab–they blab their/their kid’s GPA and SAT scores. They mention that Timmy got two B’s in English so far this year. They brag about getting busted for smoking pot. Teachers blab too. They announce after every test what the highest score was, and so if you’re the one with that number, then you know you got the highest score. Some teachers post running talllies of all grades for the class on the bulletin board–listed by student ID #. So a student can KNOW if he does or does not have the highest average without resorting to unseemly snooping. And as far as athletic awards for a specific team, one only has to be a spectator and see a few results or stats to know what is what. Many coaches keep performance and records lists online for the team, so it’s pretty clear who scored the most points, made the most saves, threw the farthest, qualfied for state finals, etc.</p>
<p>Where do I begin with the problems with this.</p>
<p>GPA -They already give awards for the highest GPA, and people still manage to complain about that. Either they don’t like how it is computed, or they don’t like how the grades are awarded.</p>
<p>Most goals - Oh, wouldn’t this be a coach’s delight. Just give an award to the person with the most goals. Nobody will pass, or worry about defense, or the other intangibles that contribute to a team. There is already big time disagreement in pro sports on who is the MVP. Why do you think they have linemans awards in football, and why do you think most players would far rather win a championship than any individual honor.</p>
<p>Most hours of community service- Community service should be done to serve the community. That’s all we need, kids tallying up senseless hours of community service to get some plaque or other. You cannot evaluate the contribution of a volunteer merely based on the number of hours they put in. Again, this is bound to be intangible and subjective.</p>
<p>Son was in a scout troup that made the trek toward Eagle very difficult. He finally made Eagle at the end of Junior year. At that point he was done recording community service hours for life. </p>
<p>As senior year drew to a close, the sweet NHS sponsor emailed me and said that Son would not receive his NHS stole to wear at graduation unless he turned in 25 community service hours. Turned out he had over 40 for the year which I forced him to pull together and email to the NHS sponsor that very day!</p>
When I did my Eagle project, at least we had a Board of Review that evaluated the significance of my project, not just the hours. I’m sure they probably did that for your son too.</p>
<p>My point is that there is no miraculous dream objective criteria that is going to fall from the sky and make everyone happy. Every parent complaining here should realize that somewhere there is probably another parent complaining about the award your child won.</p>
<p>^ Exactly, bovertine. I agree, and as I did say, those supposedly objective things are fraught with enough problems without trying to give awards for things like trying hard or being a nice person. Why give these school awards at all, especially to seniors? The honors won’t help them get into college since they come too late, and they’re not needed to motivate kids to do well in high school because they’re already done with school by that point.</p>
<p>At the same time, though, schools DO give these awards. Given a very flawed system, we’re discussing how they might make it as fair as possible. By the way, all the coaches in our school do tend to give a variety of awards for different skills and contributions. I’m not a fan, but if you’re going to have an award for most assists, then it better go to the kid with the most assists–not your friend’s son or the daughter of the BOE president, or the nicest kid on the team.</p>
<p>Hanna, people do lie. That’s why I also suggested some oversight of the awards by a less involved / more objective party. That could be the AD, a counselor, or an asst. principal. For example, we have a coach at our school who actually stood up at one of the varsity nights and claimed several of her kids got all-state nominations. It was a bold-faced lie. Some people knew it was a lie, and some didn’t. The same coach in a different season, nominated a student for an award for which the qualifications were being top 10 in your class. The girl wasn’t top ten and not even close, but the coach signed off on it anyway. Any application which asks for GPA should require a transcript or a counselor’s signature.</p>
<p>Exactly. He did a great project that benefitted others. He continued to do community service, just didn’t feel the need to turn in the little cards and I didn’t feel like making him. It wasn’t until the NHS thing that I thought, “He has earned the stole, he might as well receive it.”</p>
Give them, and live with some possible inequities, realizing it doesn’t matter that much.</p>
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Because there is absolutely no way you can develop a system that will please everyone. I’m sure if you dvelop the GFG system there will plenty of people complaining about the inequity of that. I’ve seen enough complaints on here about “grade grubbers” going after high GPAs. Your idea of fair will not be everyone else’s.</p>
<p>Give an award for assists, they will demand an award for triple doubles, or triple doubles in winning games. THere will be endless complaints about playing time. It can go on forever.</p>
<p>Judging by my fans on this thread, I’m quite sure the GFG system would be exceedingly unpopular! The crux of the matter is that if there is a clear system which has been spelled out in as objective terms as possible, then right away you’re going to greatly diminish the chance of hurting a kid. Even if there are inherent inequities in that system, if it was applied the same way to everyone, then it would be a rare parent or student who’s going to feel PERSONALLY hurt by it. If Jimmy has best met the criteria under that system, then that’s that. Jimmy wins and no one is going to feel too upset. It wasn’t that someone didn’t like Ginny or Ginny’s parents, or that Ginny’s mother didn’t volunteer enough, or that the teacher assumed Ginny wasn’t trying as hard as Jimmy, or that the teacher likes boys better than girls. Those are the things that wound.</p>
<p>^^^
GFG, It’s probably since none of us know your daughter it’s hard for us to put ourselves in her shoes in this situation. Especially in light of her Stanford acceptance, something I’m sure many of those award recipients would gladly turn over their entire stack of awards for. </p>
<p>If it were me, this would just pi$$ me off, and motivate me. It certainly wouldn’t hurt me. But I’m not particularly sensitive (as may be apparent) ;)</p>
<p>GFG- I promise you that if your D’s feelings were hurt by this banquet that there will be yet another slight out there in the real world that will hurt her feelings as well. The Rhodes doesn’t always go to the most qualified students; she may or may not get departmental honors in her field depending on whether someone’s administrative assistant filled out a form on time or not; she may not get into the grad program she “should” have gotten into because some professor p$%&'ed off an administrator at NASA who decided to pull the plug on a research grant out of malice so once the funding goes, there goes the grad program and the fate and future of the PhD applicants.</p>
<p>This is life. Someone on the other side of the table is always in a position to take objective criteria and make a mess of them. The timekeeper is drunk. The guy who runs law school admissions is late for his train and leaves your D’s application on his kitchen table and is too lazy to go back for it so your D gets rejected instead of accepted even though she’s fully qualified.</p>
<p>Why do you not get this? And why are so focused on making things “Fair” instead of cultivating an attitude that will help your D get past this? And again- who done you wrong in your own life that you are still agitated after 29 pages???</p>
<p>Your idea sets up for all sorts of lawsuits, from privacy laws, and on:
GFG: I think you’ve got the right idea, but you’re heading into troublesome detail if you’re only thinking these awards are a result of ONE class, or ONE year, or ONE teacher. In that case, that student’s grades should be enough of an award.
But intangibles can and are awarded if departments use four years of effort, and even compare where that student started vs where that student ended his/her HS career.</p>
<p>Usually, these awards are given out by a committee and start with a survey to teachers and coaches for their input. It would be terribly unfair and misplaced if these awards weren’t a collection of many viewpoints, collected over many years. The only pure data-based awards are to valedictorian/salutatorian, determined by highest gpa ONLY. And while you can say that’s based on opinion, not fact, it’s still gpa is still based on four years of HS.
<p>blossom, as you point out, there are a huge number of instances where life is unfair, and one does have to get used to it. However, based on unfairness of the general situation in life, I conclude that I would like to be as fair as possible, whenever I can. High school communities tend to be small enough (with exceptions, of course) that it might be possible to be approximately fair, in a very rough sense. </p>
<p>Some of my colleagues use the fact that “Life is unfair,” as a justification for making no attempt at all to be fair, themselves. I think this is wrong.</p>
<p>When it comes to unfairness, the most colossal “unfairness” I can think of all derives from the fact that I was born an American. In a lot of ways, it’s like winning the cosmic lottery. (I know things are not fair here, and that some Americans are greatly disadvantaged relative to others; still, when I put things in perspective . . . )</p>
<p>who’s doing more of an “injustice” to the student? the awards assembly coordinators, or parents who commiserate with their child after the awards ceremony is over (beyond a 5-min. pity party if one must be held at all)? if–in the car on the way home-- u are agonizing over the “injustice” (!) of your child not receiving an award (while at the same time denigrating or otherwise hating on those CHILDREN who did receive them), then u are doing your child a far greater disservice than the school administrators ever could. far greater.</p>
The whole point is, who decides what is fair? I’m certain if we were to poll the school administrators, or the parents of the children who did win awards, they would all think the current system is fair.</p>
<p>And like I said, somebody will find fault with any system you develop.</p>