Not everyone can be at the top, and teaching students the opposite will make their lives a lot harder when they graduate.
We live in a society in which people who excel are rewarded and recognized. We keep score, whether that be in sports, work, contributions to the community, and yes, school. And those who think otherwise should pull their head out of the sand.
In October, staff at St. Basil Elementary and Junior High School in Calgary decided to get rid of the honour roll, reportedly in order to protect the pride of students who weren’t making the cut.
Honour roll gives students a bar to strive for. It makes them study that extra hour for a test or work that little bit harder in class. For academic students, this is their competition and these awards are their motivation.
Growing up, like many other Canadian children, I played hockey. At a young age, many hockey parents on my teams had similar ideas to the parents at St. Basil.
They thought it was more important that we learned to love the game rather than be encouraged or discouraged by winning, losing, and keeping score.
However, every time we came off the ice, we knew who won and lost, we knew how many goals we scored, and we knew how we compared to the rest of our team. We always kept score.
We need to realize that anything that can be used as a way to improve a person’s self-esteem and pride can also have the opposite effect. But that doesn’t justify removing incentives that drive so many to succeed.
Like in hockey, winning, losing, and keeping score are part of life. The issue here is that some parents think “protecting” their children’s feelings is more important for child development than teaching them how to deal with adversity in their lives. And while this idea may work in a perfect world, it simply isn’t the best in practice.
Students need to be taught that they will face challenges in their life. That is inevitable. What sets a person apart is having the skills to overcome adversity and grow.
If we have nothing academic students can strive for, how are we supposed to encourage them to do their best? External motivation such as honour roll and other awards are needed to push some to their full potential.
Without them, there would be no publicly accepted bar to strive for and while achieving personal goals is nice, it doesn’t come with the same reward of being recognized for your work. Personal goals and self-satisfaction are not always strong enough incentives.
While some argue that honour roll does not take into account the personal goals that students have, schools see that and have adapted. Many schools give out “Plus 5 Awards” to students who improve by 5 per cent from one reporting period to another.
No one wants to believe we are dumbing down our education system, but taking away the honour roll and student awards at St. Basil in Calgary does just that.
Incentives are needed. And the honour roll is an important one.
