The superintendent of an Ohio high school has defended the district’s decision to eliminate valedictorian and salutatorian honors in an attempt to improve the mental well-being of their students.
Jonathan Cooper said during an appearance on “America’s Newsroom” on [Fox News] Monday that a spike in suicides at Mason City high school forced the district to consider the level of unhealthy competition among students and find ways to ease their stress.
“As our community looked at some unhealthy patterns the rise in anxiety and depression and suicide,” he said. “It’s the second leading cause of death in youth today across America, so we started to look at what we can do as school leaders to make a change.”
Good grief. How SICK.
You don’t prevent anxiety, depression and suicide by outlawing achievement. You don’t inspire the unhappy by saying, “There’s no such thing as the best”. If anything, you make life worse for the happy and the miserable. The world becomes a place of dreary, phony pseudo-equality where nothing really matters, so why should you try anyway?
I am so sick of this. It’s more than political correctness. It’s not innocent ignorance. It’s malevolent.
I’m willing to bet any experienced teacher or school official knows every word I’m saying is true. And yet they feel compelled to act on the opposite assumptions. Why? Presumably because it looks good. “It makes me look compassionate, like I’m DOING SOMETHING about the problem.” But they know full well that they’re not. They’re only making it worse!
And then there’s the injustice of it all. Why should hard-working, high-achieving students be punished for the mental instability or unhappiness of others? How sick and evil is this?
You don’t show compassion for the suffering by making your own life miserable. I never thought I’d see a school system use this rationalization as a way to outlaw achievement. We are a sick society, and growing sicker every day.
When are the well going to rise up, call this madness what it is, and start doing something about it?
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