Kevin O’Neal: Honor the best

Regarding the May 18 news article “Wake board votes to drop naming valedictorians”: The Wake County school board made national news with its decision to end recognizing the valedictorian and salutatorian in high schools. How ironic.

For decades I have read how board members want to bus students so that they will be “competitive” in a global economy. Now, they are pulling back and saying that recognizing the top students is causing “unhealthy” competition.

Imagine telling professional athletes there will be no Super Bowl or no NBA Finals. It’s just not healthy – only the two top teams play. Or, imagine that there are no more winners at the Olympics in Brazil this summer – no gold, silver and bronze medalists. Let’s give all of the participating athletes a trophy and skip the games altogether.

I think expanding recognition using the Latin honors system (cum laude, etc.), is fine, but this new policy disregarding our top achievers is ill-conceived and a disservice to our hardest-working students and should be reversed.

This story was originally published June 11, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Kevin O’Neal: Honor the best."