To the Editor:

The controversy over whether or not Guilderland High School should rank its students is a springboard to a broader problem — the “everyone gets a trophy” culture.

When my young daughter and her teammates lost all four matches at a soccer tournament, each was given a trophy. A month later, they won all four matches in a tourney and each got a trophy. Just who do we think we are kidding? Certainly, not our youth.

Is giving everyone a trophy really what’s best for them? Is inflating their grades helpful?

Nearly half of Guilderland High students have “A” averages. Nearly half. Are we really recognizing excellence, or are we handing it out like candy? We’ve allowed competition to be treated as something harmful.

The whole point of a grading system is to highlight achievement and identify the need for improvement. We cannot do that with blinders on.

Guilderland dropped naming a valedictorian in 1994 because the differences in grades among the top finishers were, according to the district, statistically insignificant. What a shame for all the valedictorians since then who have been denied this well-earned recognition. If the Dutch beat Shen 81-80 in basketball, should we call it a tie due to the “statistically insignificant” difference?

I understand some students take harder courses than others and that affects grades. Some weighted average, which is fully transparent, may be appropriate. But no grading system is perfect, and that’s true in employment, too. Every sporting event has bad calls by refs yet no one suggests banning scoreboards.

We want to tell children how great they are regardless of performance to avoid hurt feelings. But I do not think that builds self-esteem. Doesn’t self-esteem come from resiliency — failing at first, accepting setbacks, learning from them, and finding the resolve to come back and succeed? That kind of achievement builds confidence and fortitude.

The best way to produce excellence is to celebrate it when it really occurs. This pursuit of excellence is how potential is met.

Every parent feels his or her child is special, a gift from God to be cherished. And each child has a special light within to be celebrated. But that is something different from pretending all performances are the same. They are not and that lesson will be tougher to learn when they are ultimately faced with the real world.

Mark Grimm

Albany County Legislator

representing Guilderland

Editor’s note: When grades from students are closely clustered, going out too many decimal places to determine the top student, becomes meaningless since the original assigned grades are whole integers.