Valedictorian

[glatt]

Arlington’s Washington-Lee High School this year, there were 117 valedictorians out of a class of 457

That's our school, and I know a couple of the 117 valedictorians. They are both smart kids. (I'd know more, but they are two years older than my kid. I expect I'll know a bunch the year she graduates.)

As long as they have this system, I'm hoping/expecting my kids will both be valedictorians, but the competition here is pretty surreal. Arlington, last I checked, was the most educated county in the country. Virtually every parent here was near the top of their class growing up in some podunk town, and every parent expects their kid to be at the top of the class here. It's very different from my experience growing up in Maine, where a sizable portion of my fellow students really celebrated graduating from Junior High School because they didn't plan to graduate from High School.

It's a ridiculous system though. What does it say about the kids who don't make valedictorian? I think it adds to the pressure.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Julia Jaynes, 17, who shared the valedictorian title with 29 others, said that if her school chose only one, it would destroy collegiality among her classmates. “If everyone wants to be the best, I feel like there’d be less collaboration,” she said. “It makes it so you’re only out for yourself.”

I can see those competing for the spot would be gathering their own entourage of groupies, hall gangs clashing, shouting wrong test answers at each other.