Originally Posted by Dandy
Originally Posted by ColinsMum
Do you realise how bizarre this sounds from outside the US? [...] it's more that I've been looking for an opportunity to attack the US teacher-given-grades-led system for a while... Following it to its logical conclusion, if only 10% of any class can count as high achieving, no wonder so many people see school as stressful and even counterproductive. And then the system is even reinforced with this valedictorian thing...
[...]
The UK system [...] has its own problems, but at least it is not set up so that you can only succeed if enough of your classmates fail.
WTH? Wow! This ought to be an interesting tangential adventure.

I'm suspecting a bad bottle of Irn-Bru or something?
I'm completely serious - are you thinking I'm not? Whenever students and their parents care about achieving something for which the system is set up so that only a limited number of classmates can achieve it - whether it's straight As or being valedictorian - you have a situation in which someone can only succeed if enough of their classmates fail, for that particular definition of success. I think that's a bad situation.

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