All Quotes By Tag: Nonfiction
“From kindergarten to the valedictory address, schools grade, rank, and label their best performers. The top high school student wins the first major life contest, a competition in which most members of society participate. Following high school, victors enter subsequent contests at an advantage. The race is never restarted.”
“To be number one is to be publicly labeled a winner in the system that counts – a system of advancement through personal merit and effort in rugged competition. Labels of success – Rhodes scholar, Nobel laureate, Heisman Trophy winner – follow a person through life and define him or her to the public. One such label, valedictorian, marks academic winners. Schools in the United States have at least one common belief: high academic achievement is a good thing.”
“Male valedictorians attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford. Only one woman chose an Ivy League university-Cornell.”
“Women—and only women—lowered their intellectual self-esteem between high school graduation and sophomore year of college.”
“Outstanding students of color arrived on campus without the web of white middle-class family and school structures that provided Anglo students with practical knowledge in such areas as college choice strategies and career planning.”
“For minority students, as for women and working-class white valedictorians, superior college grades did not lead smoothly to high-level satisfying work.”
“One of the problems with having time to read all that you want is that your interests become so eclectic it’s hard to focus.”
“As valedictorians matured from high school they began to change their views of success from stereotypical ideals such as material wealth or emulating their parents’ lifestyle to an idea created on their own. They now sought balance between money, career and family as opposed to, say, only wealth. Academically and careerwise most of them were traditionally successful.”
“Are valedictorians successful a decade and a half after high school? Yes is the simple answer to this straightforward question…Yet the answer becomes infinitely less simple when we examine what society and the valedictorians themselves mean by “success.”
“Higher education, in contrast, did not always keep its promise to develop the talents of even its best students. Left with classroom achievement alone, many students never found a negotiable path to a clearly envisioned career corresponding to their deepest interests and values.”
“For all students, a network of career exploration opportunities, sponsors, and mentors is a critical accompaniment to coursework.”
“Are schools rewarding the right people as the highest achievers? If the goal is hard-working, productive, adaptable adults, then U.S. high schools are recognizing precisely the correct group.”
“Just as the stereotypes of the one-sided academic grind or the obsessed genius are myths for high school valedictorians, also false is the conception of academic achievers as troubled individuals effective only in school.”
“Valedictorians were highly motivated to excel academically because of early family and school experiences.”
“As a group, valedictorians have always led well-rounded, socially integrated, ‘normal’ lives.”