“With honors …”
First of all, congratulations to all high school and college graduates. Spring is a time of academic celebration for these students and their families. Most have worked very hard and put in long hours. Some have even graduated with academic honors (cum laude = with honors / magna cum laude = with great honors / summa cum laude = with highest honors). I recently attended a graduation at a large public high school and saw in the commencement brochure that many students were graduating "with honors". Many. Very many. So many that I decided to count. It seems that 22% of the graduating seniors had achieved the highest honors, and an additional 26% had earned either honors or great honors. That’s a large percentage (48%) of very smart students. Congratulations to all of them.
But I couldn't help but think back to the Pixar movie, The Incredibles, when the evil Syndrome says, "And when everyone's super, no one will be". Which is about where we are now. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal from 2018 entitled "You Graduated Cum Laude? So Did Everyone Else", more than half of the seniors from Johns Hopkins and Harvard graduated with honors, and at many colleges, it's beyond 40%. I take nothing away from the students who have been awarded these distinctions, but it's just hard to get excited about these accolades when half of the graduating class has earned them. Some colleges have gone out of their way to remedy this by limiting the number of students who can earn honors: only the top 30% are awarded some academic honors (maybe top 5% summa, next 10% magna, and next 15% cum laude). That seems more reasonable and indicates something of an accomplishment. Basing the distinctions on students’ ever-inflating GPA does little to make them meaningful.
Sadly, the grading policies during the past 15 months with Covid have done nothing but increase students' GPAs and make everyone appear, on paper, smarter than they actually are. However, changes might be coming. We heard from two families that during the last week of classes, students at a particular high school were told things would be different next year, that students got off easy this year and next year would be more challenging. More in-class learning, less remote test-taking and remote cheating. Perhaps a more even spread of grades. We will see.
To everyone who graduated with honors, again, I congratulate you. You should be proud you earned this distinction, and you and your peers should shout it from the rooftops. You're part of the top 50%!