Your Feelings Don't Matter - A Response to "Best in Class"

          For the past several years, there has been a heavy push for new procedures in society meant to ensure people's feelings won't get hurt. One place where these rules are being heavily pushed is in schools. From participation trophies to removing sports try-outs, these changes seem to be becoming more and more common. In "Best in Class" by Margaret Talbot, I was made aware of another issue that has already started being removed from schools: valedictorians.
          Beginning with the content, I actually really liked reading this piece. It proved to be a very fair and credible piece of investigative journalism that relied on interviews, historical facts, statistics, and real-life examples to thoroughly explain an issue that I had not known about from multiple points of view. I really enjoyed how this piece had little to no bias. Talbot never tells the reader what to think, instead, she created a piece that makes you think about the issue and encourages you to form your own opinions on it. Not sure if it was just me, but in a time of great skepticism in the news and media, I found it very refreshing to read a piece that was thought-provoking and unbiased. 
          I also really liked how Talbot included a brief history of high schools and valedictorians. It is always useful to look to the past to fix the future and it's important to understand and respect tradition. Removing such traditions can lead to damaging consequences, so it is always wise to look to why they were created in the first place.

          This piece also reminded me how much I don't like the "participation trophy" mentality. This is the idea of giving everyone a reward for participating, despite whether or not a person wins or put in enough effort. Like some of the people interviewed by Talbot, I am a firm believer in competition and rewarding those who win and ignoring those who lose. Our society has started to wrongfully glorify losing, simply because losing hurts people's feelings. Well, that's the whole point! Losing isn't meant to feel good. And guess what, if you don't want your feelings hurt, don't lose! Many people no longer care about whether they win simply because losing no longer has the same effect that it used to. Losing used to be motivational. No one wanted to be the loser, so people put in the extra effort to try and come out on top. This created motivating-competition between those most likely to win, and encouraging those below them to try harder. When we glorify losing, winning begins to lose its meaning and we end up creating a generation that no longer strives for victory and can't handle losing.
          That all being said, I would like to say what I think about the whole "Denny Davies" issue from the article. I believe that Denny Davies had done nothing wrong when he found the valedictorian rules and took extra classes to obtain more credits. This information was available to anyone who wished to find it, but Davies was the only students who went out of his way to learn how to win and take the proper steps to ensure that win. What he did was not a loop-hole, any students willing to put in the extra work were able to do exactly what he did. The other students competing against Davies in the race for valedictorian weren't cheated, they were outplayed. 

          I also found it ridiculous how some of the students reacted when they didn't win the title of valedictorian. For example, Stephanie Klotz wined when she didn't win valedictorian. Turns out the reason she didn't win wasn't that the system was rigged or the odds were stacked against her, she lost because she didn't take enough A.P. classes. Sorry, but if you want to be recognized as the top performing student in your class, you aren't going to get there putting in less effort because you think you're smarter than everyone else. At the end of the day, the award isn't given to the person who thinks they are the top student, it's given to the person who proves that they are the top student. 
          Reading "Best in Class" has served as a reminder for me that the era of participation trophies must come to an end. It has created a mentality that encourages losing and makes winning lose it's meaning. When people lose, they now look to blame others who put in great amounts of time and effort to win, instead of looking at themselves and how they made themselves lose. Not everyone can be a winner, but that doesn't mean that everyone should be a loser.