Valedictorian Honor Diminished By Sheer Numbers

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to hear that my brother’s Lake City High School Class of 1999 had 10, count ‘em, 10 valedictorians.

It seems the original meaning of the honor has been lost. Webster’s defines a valedictorian as “the student highest in scholastic rank in the graduating class, who delivers the valedictory.”

Now, some mid-size high schools such as Lake City have enough valedictorians to field a baseball team, and the once honorable valedictory speech has deteriorated into a spectacle of 10 separate, two-minute, “breezy” devotionals.

The award used to stand for something. And so did the speech. For the administration, giving the award was an opportunity to define and uphold exceedingly high standards for its best and brightest students. For the students, it was an opportunity to push themselves to their intellectual limits in hopes of winning a truly honorable award, and the chance to deliver an address to thousands of graduationgoers on a June evening.

And the speeches had to be good. You had to work with a speech instructor to hone the delivery and refine your message. It was a serious academic exercise.

But now it seems some schools, Lake City included, are operating under the assumption that the more valedictorians they can cram on stage, the better. Probably because more parents and students are happy for the recognition, more teachers can pat themselves on the back for a job well done (not to mention avoiding the discomfort of being the teacher who gives the four-pointer his or her first “B”), and administrators avoid having to take any kind of stand that might upset families in town with children contending for the award.

This approach has several significant flaws. First, any school with 10 valedictorians, particularly of Lake City’s size, is without question suffering from a serious case of grade inflation. Am I to believe that none of the 10 were ever seriously tested academically? All 10 completely mastered every subject?

I would expect then that each of the 10 did quite well on their college boards, but I see only one student from Lake City, salutatorian Anna Moseley, qualified as a National Merit Finalist. Is it possible that some valedictorians are skirting the difficult classes in favor of “doozies” like Life Sports and Music Appreciation to pad their GPA, and administrators are allowing them to do it?

Valedictorian was never meant to be an inclusive award. We had other honors for that, such as “gold cord,” the Departmental Scholarships, or the Senior Scholar Breakfast (does this still exist?) reserved for seniors graduating in the top 10 percent of their class.

When I won the award, in 1992, my Coeur d’Alene High graduating class had four valedictorians out of a class of more than 300, and some, including myself, thought that was too much. I understand my brother’s class was approximately 263 students, which means about 4 percent of the class was bestowed this supposedly high honor.

I have a few suggestions. Why not allow students graduating first or second in their class, by virtue of their GPA, to apply for the award. Then, from this pool, narrow the field against a set of rigorous criteria, which could include grade-point average, performance in honors classes, academic awards won (National Merit, passing an Advanced Placement Test, etc.), and perhaps extracurricular activities of an academic nature (is the candidate a nationally ranked debater? A state champion in speech?).

I would rather have an extremely rigorous, although somewhat subjective, set of criteria than the flimsy benchmarks used now.

A school administration cannot fault its students for failing to achieve high academic standards if the administration fails to define and then uphold them. Even when students feelings get hurt. Even when college scholarships are at stake.

Some rewards must remain extremely exclusive as a symbol of the extremely exclusive levels of achievement that will require maximum effort by the best and brightest students to even attempt to attain them.

Even then, most will fail, but will be much better off for having set their sights so high. Otherwise, the higher echelons of academic achievement lose a little of their meaning, and good students go on to college thinking they are great students.