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Jewish World Review March 2, 2011 / 3 Adar II, 5771 Honor rolls with no meaning By Betsy Hart
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Then my high-school freshman's "I'm Proud of My Honor Roll Student" bumper sticker arrived a few weeks ago, I told her, "There is no way I'm putting this on our car." She knows me. She wasn't expecting me to.
In general, of course, I don't like bumper stickers. The same goes for slogans on T-shirts and, for that matter, smiley faces in e-mails, but such is a different column.
These bumper stickers are on what seems like most cars in my community. At our high school, a GPA of just 3.125 out of 4.0 lands a student on the honor roll. Nor is the difficulty of the classes taken into account. In fact, 60 percent of kids typically make the honor roll there, which to me suggests there's not a whole lot of unique "honor" to it. Certainly none worth boasting about on a bumper sticker.
This isn't about my local high school, by the way, which is actually pretty typical in this regard and which I'm generally happy with. It's about a weird culture that wants to brag of mediocrity, largely so we can make our kids and our own egos feel good. But it all comes at a cost of incredible, well, smallness.
Now, before I go further and really tick people off, I will remind that I'm the one who always says, "I'm more concerned about whether my children go to heaven than to Harvard." And I'm open about the fact that there's not a lot of evidence any of my children are headed for the latter. Moreover, that's just fine with me. When they do their best in school — whatever the end game of grades — that is what I consider significant.
But not only do I still believe there is such a thing as excellence in this world, I think it ought to be valued, appreciated and elevated. Not for the smallness of ego or primarily even for the self-esteem of the child (or parents!) involved. But because it is right to honor who and what is supremely good, and, rightly done, it lifts up and ennobles those who contemplate such excellence. That's true whether in academics, art, business, music, certainly in character and more.
Look, Mozart and, yes, the Beatles will be appreciated centuries after Lady Gaga is forgotten, thank goodness.
Excellence transcends mediocrity, and meditating on that is a blessing and a credit to the human spirit wherever we are on that continuum ourselves.
Lumping kids who barely get above a "B" average taking easy classes with those who score over a 4.0 — yes, that's possible — in all honors work? (Again, let's be clear that no ox of mine is being gored here.) Such isn't ennobling for anyone.
Yes, yes, I know, there are other truly elite awards that rightly honor certain students, and it's only bumper stickers to make kids feel good and on it goes. But I see glaring from the back ends of cars all around me "look what I did" when it's typically not that big a deal — so that's my focus here.
Interestingly, at the same time I see honor-roll bumper stickers plastered on every vehicle for high-school kids, my junior high this year has done away altogether with "honor-roll assemblies" — even for the truly excellent students — in part because administrators don't want to hurt the self-esteem of those not being honored.
Really.
I think that makes the point well: In today's culture, it seems, we don't want to honor real excellence for the sake of looking up to, learning from, being inspired by and celebrating such excellence. Instead, we too often want to lower the bar and then boast about what is mediocrity for the sake of something as small as personal ego.
What a shame. It seems to me there just isn't honor in that for anyone.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be reached by clicking here.
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