Wednesday, June 23, 2010

middle school awards and the cynical middle-aged

One of my favorite commenters here teaches middle school on the East Coast. At her school, the faculty give out a modest number of awards at the end of the school year, awards which are intended to reward students who really were outstanding. This year they were made to give an award to a severely handicapped student, and our heroine had mixed feelings.

Over at our school, I recently went to the end-of-year assembly for the upper school for the first time, and I was bemused to see that a number of awards are given out for greatness of human spirit, but not a one for academic excellence. Silly me, I had no idea we'd enrolled our children in an academy of the human spirit. If I'd been looking for one, I might have placed the children at an ashram instead.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol, from joyce

J9 said...

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I suppose based on your posts on the school and the parents, it was probably less conflicting to have these awards than the academic ones.

Missy said...

At our elementary school the biggest emphasis was on perfect attendance. One year the principal told every student to not feel badly but try harder next year for perfect attendance.

"awards for the human spirit" sounds like a bad commercial.