Are the National Merit Awards Still Valuable?
By: WSJ
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Robbing Students of Their Achievements Is Not Equity
When I was in high school, winning a National Merit award opened so many new doors for me. Beyond the $2,500 award itself, I received a full-tuition scholarship offer to Fordham and a $30,000 annual scholarship offer to Northeastern specifically as a result of my National Merit Scholar status. I have no doubt that the award—among the most prestigious that a high-school student can receive—helped me gain admission to highly selective universities including Princeton, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.
As a graduate of a public high school in Loudoun County, Va., I am all too familiar with the demanding and high-achieving environments that characterize the schools under scrutiny. High schools—like all educational institutions—have a responsibility to support all their students, including those who are struggling academically. But seeking to conceal high-performing students’ achievements to create the illusion of equity is wrong and represents an embarrassing contradiction of a school’s mandate to equip its students with the tools they need to attain their post-graduation goals. By robbing students of hard-earned achievements such as National Merit awards in the name of inclusion, these schools have inflicted a grave injustice that could cause financial and academic deprivations for the very individuals they exist to support.
—Matthew Wilson, Princeton University, politics
Grade Inflation Is Not Equity
Equality of opportunity necessarily leads to inequality of outcomes. We are not born equal, and we use our individual liberty in different ways. Some students may decide to work hard to win National Merit awards, while others would rather engage in sports or invest in their social lives. These decisions lead to different outcomes.
At my college the opposite has been true compared with high schools, where instead of withholding merit from talented students, grade inflation aims to reward mediocre students by boosting their grades to create grade equity. These anti-meritocracy initiatives will potentially greatly affect my future academic decisions. I hope to apply to law school in the U.S., and the attempt to scrap the use of the LSAT in favor of subjective diversity-and-inclusion criteria will likely play a major role in my decision.
—Nathanael Kennedy-Leroi, King’s College London, international relations
Accepting Defeat Is Success
There will always be competition in academia. Such competition will naturally produce feelings of inferiority among some. But rather than taking distinctions away from deserving students—like those who received the National Merit Scholar distinction—to preserve the feelings of others, students must learn to accept defeat.
Feelings of inferiority and disappointment are a part of life, and everyone should learn to overcome those difficulties. It isn’t beneficial to take away something that brings success to someone just because others couldn’t bear defeat. Learning to deal with inferiority is essential to leading a successful life.
—Ceyda Koksoy, Bryn Mawr College, English and political science
My Participation Award
In third grade I received a participation trophy for track and field. Even at 9 years old I knew that my performance on the track deserved no award. Still, everybody on my team got the same distinction. While children do need encouragement, handing out achievement awards to avoid hurting students’ feelings is harmful.
In the case of the withheld National Merit distinctions, the opposite is true: While I can feel a touch of envy when I read about my classmates’ achievements, the answer is not to silence their successes. Instead, their accolades fuel my own drive for success.
—Grant Dutro, Wheaton College (Illinois), media studies and economics
We Must Fail
This year people will have to deal with shocking suicide rates and worries of mass shootings in schools. These tragedies can be tied to the despair people feel when unequipped to deal with their problems.
Those in despair don’t only feel unequipped—they are unequipped. Why are we telling our children that they won when they lost? Why are we fabricating a world that is deceptive and ignorantly pleasant, only to thrust them into merciless reality? Withholding National Merit awards is an irrational attempt to twist reality. Children must learn to fall. It is our job to teach them how to get up.
Who is online
126 visitors