A GROWING PROBLEM
From The Seattle Times [thanks for sending it along, JW]:
ONE HIGH SCHOOL - 44 VALEDICTORIANS
This year's 406-member graduating class at Garfield High School features 44 valedictorians. Forty-four students with perfect 4.0 grade-point averages who, over seven semesters of mostly honors and Advanced Placement classes, have never earned less than an A.
Even for a school with a reputation as an academic powerhouse, it's a record number: Last year Garfield had 30 valedictorians; the year before, 27.
Skeptics say that so many students with perfect 4.0 GPAs is evidence of grade inflation; admirers say it's the product of smart, hard-working students at a school that encourages academic success.
Either way, the multiple valedictorians at Garfield are reflective of a national trend of rewarding a number of high-achieving students at graduation rather than singling out one.
And nationally, Garfield may be just mid-range. Bullard High School in Fresno, Calif., is graduating 58 valedictorians this year.
"I don't think we're giving away the grades," said Carolyn Barge, Garfield's senior counselor. "These kids are taking every AP and honors class they can get their hands on. They take six classes every semester. They're just amazing kids."
Traditionally the highest-performing student, the valedictorian gives the final address at graduation. But the increasing number of straight-A students has led some schools to abandon the award altogether.
At Bellevue High School, seven graduating seniors earned straight A's, but the school decided this year not to name valedictorians. Instead, each will be given a medal, said Principal Mike Bacigalupi.
Auburn High School had nine 4.0 students but will honor a range of accomplishments at graduation and also will not name any valedictorians, said Terri Herren, assistant principal.
One of the unforeseen consequences of grade inflation in the United States has been an increasing radicalization of high school valedictorians across the country. These are students who for all of their lives have been told that if they earn a 4.0 at the end of their high school years, they will be named class valedictorian. Now suddenly things have changed, and they are being denied this honor.
Some of them are seriously upset - upset enough to have begun organizing.
For a few years now, large cohorts of restive valedictorians from around the nation have been building email networks and websites to air their grievances among themselves. And starting with this graduation season, some of these organizers have gone one step further, storming their high school graduation ceremonies en masse, seizing the stage, and singing what has become known as “The Valedaise.”
Based loosely on the revolutionary French anthem, “The Marseillaise,” “The Valedaise” demands the reinstatement of high school valedictorians, with fifteen minute speeches allotted to each valedictorian, regardless of the number of valedictorians. Here is “The Valedaise” (Note: “A.P.” refers to “Advanced Placement.”)
Allons enfants de la A.P.ie!
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
Le grade sheet sanglant est levé!
Le grade sheet sanglant est leve!
Entendez-vous dans les ecoles
Mugir ces féroces etudiants ?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos profs et vos compagnes !
Aux armes, les parents!
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
[Roughly, this translates into the following]:
Arise children of the Advanced Placement courses!
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny's
Bloody grade point standard is raised.
Listen to the sound in the schools,
The howling of these fearsome students!
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your lecturers and assistants!
To arms, families!
Form your battalions!
March, march!
Let impure blood
Water our furrows!
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UPDATE:
A French reader writes to remind UD that, until it changed its own rules of selection, France during the eighteenth century suffered a similar surfeit of valedictorians, all of whom had the right to give twenty minute speeches at their graduation event. Apparently the Marquis de Sade sat through more than his share of these marathons, for shortly after writing Les 120 Jours de Sodom (1787), he published Les 44 Jours des Valedictoriens (1788). The intensity of the novel’s sadism kept it banned even in France until the late 1960s.
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