Merit, Diversity, and a Modest Proposal For Graduation
Griffin Harris
For most high school seniors, graduation can not come quickly enough.
But once inside that crowded, hot auditorium, it does not pass quickly enough. The sheer length of graduation is inevitable—almost 850 students must cross the stage—but there is one problem that is in the school’s power to address.
The student speakers at graduation—the valedictorian and the salutatorian—are not the best ones for the job. To finish at the top of their class is an impressive achievement, and it requires a lot of hard work and intellect. But the two who finish there are not representative of the graduating class they address. Instead, they represent a perverse system that claims to reward behavior over good fortune while actually ensuring that society’s richest and most educated remain at the top.
There are many admirable qualities in the T.C. student body, and the valedictorian and salutatorian tend to display only a few.
Before I go further, I should say this: I have had the privilege of knowing well the valedictorians and salutatorians of the last few years, and they are wonderful people. A couple of them gave good speeches at graduation, too. I know well the prospective valedictorians and salutatorians of my class, and I like them all. I am not out to bash the nerds here or to attack anyone in particular.
What I am saying is that there are many admirable qualities in the T.C. student body, and the valedictorian and salutatorian tend to display only a few. (For concision, let’s call the duo V/S.) No one person could possibly embody all of these values, which is precisely why variation in the speakers is needed.
Meet Your V/S
The V/S can almost always be described as follows. They are white students, from a small handful of elementary schools—usually George Mason. They have not taken, or even considered taking, fewer than five AP courses in junior or senior year. They are very narrowly separated from the others in the top ten of the class; the difference is often as small as getting an A- for the year in a course instead of a full A, or taking that one non-AP class junior year, or getting a B in a freshman year class.
Finally, the V/S, for all the discipline and intelligence and admirable work ethic, owe their high rank more than anything to sheer luck. What is in place now is a meritocracy—a term coined satirically, and for good reason. The meritocracy claims to reward hard work, dedication, smartness, and ambition, and in a way it does this. More than values, though, meritocracy loves one thing: achievement. Ostensibly, achievement is the result of the right values; adhere to them strictly enough, meritocrats say, and you can stand at the graduation podium.
Why are nearly all the valedictorian and salutatorian speakers from affluent, white familes? Could it be some grand coincidence?
It sounds good, and that is why is most Americans support the idea. The reality, though, is not as neat. If one has watched meritocracy become the calling cry of anti-affirmative action politicians and Chief Executive Officers all over America for the last half-century, then one knows that “merit” is a sort of con invoked to protect the already powerful and successful. This principle applies at T.C., too. Why are nearly all the valedictorian and salutatorian speakers from affluent, white families? Could it be some grand coincidence?
How to Win the Race
It is because achievement is not just the result of having and implementing good values. Achievement owes a lot more to certain characteristics that are either innate or given to someone at a very early age. These sorts of characteristics are the exact opposite of meritorious—they are uncontrollable. It has been proven again and again that: (i) children from families with high levels of education are more likely to succeed in school, (ii) that children from families with high incomes are more likely to succeed in school, and (iii) that because of centuries of direct and indirect racial discrimination in America, white people tend to have higher levels of education and income than most other ethnic or racial groups. (There are of course exceptions. There are many children from poor or relatively uneducated parents who do well and vice versa, and there are many people from black, Hispanic, or other minority backgrounds who are well-educated and financially successful. What I’m talking about are statistical averages. Et cetera.)
Those students from wealthy, educated backgrounds will likely live in better neighborhoods and attend better elementary schools. They probably will have their parents at home more often and will hear more words in their first few years, a hugely important factor in intellectual development. The children of college-educated, six-digit earning parents will have greater access to resources like tutors, college counselors, computers, books, and all the other things that are very helpful for doing well in school. And yet, none of these gifts came from hard work; students were given this competitive edge because of the arbitrary fact that they were born into better financial circumstances.
So, when a white, wealthy student approaches the microphone in EagleBank arena this summer, it should be recognized that the winner of the meritocratic race had a massive advantage. To continue this already overused analogy: imagine there are about 900 students, the 2019 graduating class size, in a 100 meter race. Those who come from well-educated parents are given a 10-meter head start. Those from parents without a college degree are given ankle weights. And so forth with income and neighborhoods and elementary schools, until the poorest students with the lowest levels of family education are weighed down to a slow jog, and the richest students with the most educated parents are only 20 meters from the finish line. The winner of this race really only had to compete with those 50 or so students who had the same innate advantages as he or she did, among which probably at least half were not very serious competition. You may have heard this all before, but it remains worth asking: What are we clapping for?
The Right Speaker
I submit again, though, that the valedictorian and the salutatorian are not the wrong people to deliver speeches, but merely not the best. Americans love merit, it is clear, because it is the foundation of their namesake dream. Work hard and get ahead, no matter what your skin color, country of origin, sex, etc. And while the love for merit may be misplaced, the ideals that are reflected in the American dream are honorable ones. The best examples of those ideals and that American dream, though, are the people who have actually been disadvantaged and who have actually had to climb society’s ladder by their merit.
The V/S, for all the discipline and intelligence and admirable work ethic, owe their high rank more than anything to sheer luck.
A couple years ago in this newspaper, now-seniors Evan Paez and Luke Remy wrote an article about a 19-year old junior in T.C.’s International Academy who came to the United States at 15 from El Salvador. Inigo Chavez, a pseudonym, escaped the gang violence of his home country to study here. He was caught by border police swimming into the country, but managed to stay after collecting nearly $4000 in legal fees. Chavez worked nine hours after school most days in a restaurant—the only way he could manage to pay for his one bedroom apartment—and earned about $20,000 a year, a figure barely above Virginia’s poverty line.
Chavez managed to keep himself on track to graduation. He did not take seven AP classes and earn straight As—his English was weak—but his story is interesting and compelling. It is emblematic of what is best in both T.C. and America: our diversity and our commitment to equal opportunity. His story is much more meritocratic than any valedictorian’s. Surely, Chavez worked as hard, if not harder, than the V/S, even if Chavez’s academic achievements are not as impressive at face value. So, why should he not be rewarded with meritocratic prizes like the chance to speak at graduation? There are hundred of students at T.C with stories similar to Chavez’s. There are people who have immigrated to the U.S. in their lifetime, people who have faced severe poverty or systemic racism, people who are hoping to become the first in their family to attend college, and people who have persisted in classes despite not fully understanding the language of instruction. These people are the ones that could break the streak of boring, nearly identical, cliched graduation speakers and speeches.
A Constitutional Proposal
This might work better in theory than in practice. Speakers with these sorts of inspiring stories do not just appear. So how, then, to decide them? One idea is to mimic the Constitution’s plan for the legislative branch. For each house of Congress, there will be a graduation speaker. One will be, for the purposes of this metaphor, the House of Representatives—that is, elected directly by the people. The other will be the Senate—chosen by a select group (assuming a pre-17th Amendment Constitution). Instead of state legislatures picking the Senator, though, there will be a committee of teachers—spread evenly across all subjects and levels of courses—who will pick a student to speak.
The V/S lack diversity and, often, originality. It is hard to believe, then, that if put together on some sort of committee to choose a speaker teachers would repeatedly select the un-diverse, unoriginal white, wealthy kid.
I can hear the counter-arguments now. In fact, I’ve been hearing them for the past two weeks as I’ve been informally polling people about their opinions on such a plan. The objections come down to two main ones:
(1) The popular election of a speaker will be a messy and chaotic plurality in which only a small portion of the student body will vote.
(2) The students selected by the teacher committee will have the same diversity problems that the speakers now have.
These are reasonable concerns, to be sure, but there are some steps that can be taken to limit these problems from reaching their extremes. For (1), the requirement for being on the ballot of potential speakers should be submitting a petition with, say, 50 signatures from classmates endorsing a student. This is required to run for Congress, too. Candidates for the House of Representatives need 1,000 signatures from their potential constituents to be put on the ballot. The petition introduces a barrier to running for the speakership that will put only the most ambitious and serious students on the ballot. Without such a restriction, the number of candidates would soar into the dozens, and it would indeed devolve into a messy battle for a thin plurality.
Furthermore, a petition will encourage people to vote. Signing a petition invests people in a candidate’s campaign, and this investment will draw the signer to the ballots. Once someone has done the work of signing a petition for a candidate, he or she has little reason to not do the small extra step of voting for that candidate. There are other ways to increase voter turnout, too. For example, at the end of the school every senior year must complete a survey reflecting on their time at T.C. Failure to submit the survey means not getting to walk the stage at graduation—so nearly every senior takes it. Adding the ballot for student speakership at graduation to this survey would guarantee votes.
And for (2). I spoke to several teachers about the question of graduation speakers while writing this article. Nearly every one expressed concerns similar to the ones I do: that the V/S lack diversity and, often, originality. It is hard to believe, then, that if put together on some sort of committee to choose a speaker the teachers would repeatedly select the un-diverse, unoriginal white, wealthy kid. As a check on this, though, rules can be put in place for the composition of such a committee. It should have even numbers of teachers from all subject areas—including career and technological education classes—and from all levels of difficulty. This would mean teachers of Advanced Placement classes, but also teachers of standard courses and from the International Academy. Diversity within the committee will ensure diversity of the committee’s choices.
This Constitution-based proposal is just that—a proposal. There are certainly other ideas for how to choose speakers, which may very well be better than this one. The central argument here is not for this particular plan but for the abolishment of the old format. I went to George Mason Elementary School and both of my parents have college degrees, though. I’ve probably said enough on merit and diversity. Theogony and I want to know what you, the reader, think about this issue. Send an email with your ideas to tctheogony@gmail.com, bring a written response to our classroom, A202, or vote below.
