High Schools Making Everyone Valedictorians Now
The Times today explores the trend of high schools naming more than one person—as many as ten!—their Valedictorian. Some people are worried that this might dilute the honor of being named high school valedictorian, which is akin to worrying that water might dilute the bottle of urine someone is forcing you to drink.
The only reason anyone cares about being valedictorian is because it will help them get into a fancy Ivy League school. But now that all high schoolers these days leave with GPAs in the mid-to-high thousands, these same Ivy League schools admit that being valedictorian doesn't factor much in their admissions decisions. We are at the point where extraordinarily accomplished students are routinely passed up in favor of the cartoonishly accomplished. College admissions officers will not even look at your application unless it describes how many pieces of fiction you've published in the New Yorker, or that time you resolved a mechanical crisis on the International Space Station by working out complicated physics on the back of a cafeteria napkin and tweeting the solution to NASA officials.
So, who gives a shit if there are 10 valedictorians or 20, or 100? Name the whole damn class valedictorians. Name people who aren't even graduating valedictorians. But, please, still make them all give those lame commencement speeches. At the exact same time. Lined up in a row, while performing synchronized chorus line kicks.