No Honor in Needham

When we were looking for a house in the Boston area last year, we looked at some houses in Needham. It’s a typical suburban town west of Boston with a train going through the middle of town square and lots of smaller, seriously overpriced Levittown-style houses, many of which are being bulldozed for McMansions as yuppies move in to take advantage of the close access to Boston and good school system. Lord knows it’s not the most exciting place to live and the town doesn’t have much identity, but it’s a perfectly respectable town to middle- and upper-middle-class families.

But now Needham has an identity: The town that discourages academic achievement.

For decades the town’s weekly newspaper, The Needham Times, has published the names of high school students who have made the honor roll. No longer. Stung by four student suicides in the last three years, Needham High School Principal Paul Richards has decided to take the kill-the-mosquito-with-a-bazooka approach and will no longer submit student honor roll names for publication. His reasoning is that publishing the names has created an overly competitive culture, causing stress and presenting “an unhealthy focus on grades.”

Ergo, by this logic, if the school does not publicize academic achievements, then all student stress will magically disappear. Then the school can focus on publicizing its equally important athletic achievements, which will still be covered by the local papers. Of course, publishing the names of the kids who scored touchdowns might upset and cause stress to those who didn’t make the team, or even the kids who decided studying might be more important than football, but that’s another bridge to cross.

Well, how does one choose to respond? Are we happy that underachievers and slackers now won’t be stigmatized because they won’t feel inferior to kids who work hard and get good grades? Was a thorough study taken to verify that it was the newspaper that was sending all these kids and their hypermotivated parents over the edge? Did anyone bother to ask the students who had earned the right to see their names in the paper for reasons other than delinquency and athletics whether they minded being omitted to appease the handful of parents who had suggested the idea to the principal in the first place.

There is a certainly a problem with stress and growing teenagers that need to live up to high parental expectations in better-off communities like Needham. But this overkill and ill-advised remedy is not the answer, and gives more ammunition to the perception of a PC-saturated world that seeks to remove all vestiges of competition and achievement in the well-intentioned but ill-advised idea of placing everyone on a level playing field. However noble that idea is, it doesn’t match up to reality where the bulk of Needham’s high school graduates will be entering a competitive and capitalistic world where achievement and hard work are the way to success.

Here’s my personal note to some disappointed Needham overachievers: I am disappointed for you, but at least you are aware of the importance of success in a world where standards count. And you are much smarter than your principal.