‘Self-Esteem’ Run Amok

It’s good to recognize and reward different types of talent, and to teach children early that each person has an important role to play in life. But when the valedictorian is asked to stand and 27 students rise, we have to wonder.

A recent Times story reported that’s exactly what will occur at a local high school this week. The school is only one of many in the Los Angeles area and elsewhere that have decided to give the top academic honor to more than one student; one Southern California school has 35 valedictorians. And some schools have gone in the opposite direction, awarding the honor to no one.

The rationale: Some educators believe that spreading the glory, or denying it entirely, spares the self-esteem of other bright students and reduces hardball academic competition. That may be. But it also sends a false message--that life rewards equally.

Choosing multiple valedictorians, or none, wrongly suggests there cannot and should not be any attempt to single out one especially excellent student, who, after all, is a representative of the whole class. To choose many or none, it seems to us, is a textbook example of what author Charles Sykes calls “egalitarianism run amok.”