It was nice. It felt...comfortable. But of course that maybe because things went as expected and as they usually do: a phenomenal percentage of honors and high honors graduates.
Sure, there floated the occasional beach ball until confiscated by the aisle monitors. There were several bold souls that "shook their stuff" on the stage before accepting their diploma case. But could anyone help but notice the inverted triangle of high honor grads?
Last year 1 in 4 students graduated with high honors. This second verse very nearly mirrored the first. By our unofficial tally, 109 students graduated with "high honors" (cumulative GPA greater than 3.50, or between a B+ and an A-). We don't have a final tally on the number of graduated, but with we use 440, the number of 12 graders in SPHS, the percentage is 24.9%. If we total all 12th graders (including PPA and virtual schoolers, the number of kids is just under 500 and 109 represents about 22%).
By contrast, the number of students graduation with "Honors" (cumulative GPA of 3.20 to 3.499) was only 63! How could we possibly have more kids achieving High Honors, than plain old Honors? It makes no sense...right? As with everything, GPA should follow a pyramidical scheme....starting with a large foundation, and then as we move up, the proportions get smaller.
The baseball analogy
Hey, it's baseball season. Once again, Rob Hamilton has coached a bunch of kids well into the state tournament. So let's look at major league baseball (MLB) batting averages. A pretty good hitter has a batting average of about 0.275, or gets a hit somewhere between every 3 or 4 at bats. Really good hitters have a batting average of 0.300 (3 hits per 10 at bats; generally at least 1 hit per game). Exceptional hitters cross the 0.350 batting average line. These are often your leadoff batters because the probability of them getting on base each at bat is high. Annually, the MLB batting champs have an average of about 0.325-0.350. Given that, how unearthly was Teddy Williams when his season batting average was over 0.400?GPAs should be like baseball averages...the higher the average (GPA) the fewer achieve it. Not so in Sun Prairie! It's called grade inflation, people. We can ignore it and be oh so proud of our scholarly cherubs, but we're deluding ourselves...and our kids. And the kids are the ones that will come smashing back down to earth.
In MLB today, 105 players with at least 175 at bats are hitting 0.275 or less. Only 26 players are hitting better than 0.300. This is reality folks.
The snowman analogy
Don't like baseball? Heat making you think about winter? Let's talk snowmen. Who among us doesn't know that a properly proportioned snowman has a mid-body section about 1/2 the diameter of the base, and a head about 1/4 the diameter of the base.If we look at Sun Prairie's Honors grads as the mid-body segment, and High Honors grads as the head, we see that our snowman looks a little wack.
Something's not right here, and it's time someone looked into it. We need to stop mollycoddling our kids and start preparing the for reality. This Dr. Feelgood crap will only serve to have them wind up on some therapist's couch down the road. Can't we be both loving and honest? Wasn't honesty supposed to be the best policy? Where has honesty gone? And over-inflating anything is a formula for disaster.
You are not special.
If you didn't catch wind of the 2012 commencement address given by Mr. David McCullough, faculty member at Wellesley (MA) high school, you should. He blew Dr. FeelGood out of the water.
Some excerpts are provided below.
Graduates....you passed an awesome milestone. A round of applause is certainly in order for earning your diploma. But let's not get overly caught up in class rank or what type of honors you graduated with. The slate is wiped clean. College acceptance is competitive and you are now among peers with the same GPA/ACT scores. We wish you the very best. Just do not be surprised if things are more difficult than expected, based on your GPA. Do not get disillusioned. Just do your best and you will persevere. You may or may not get "high honors"from here on out. And if you are off to work, be all that you can be. The old adage "work hard and you will be rewarded still plays in some businesses".
But most of all...do not be afraid to fail. Because if you're not failing at something, you're not trying. None of you will be the best at everything. A cumulative GPA of 4.0 in life is absolutely unattainable. But you can get "A"s in some things. Strive for "A"s in the things you enjoy, and be happy with average marks on the rest of life.
You are not special. You are not exceptional. Contrary to what your U9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.
But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.
Across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000 high schools. That’s 37,000 valedictorians… 37,000 class presidents… 92,000 harmonizing altos… 340,000 swaggering jocks… 2,185,967 pairs of Uggs.
You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.
---Faculty member David McCullough at Wellesley (MA) High School 2012 Commencement
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