As I sat down to have my yearbook photo taken I smoothed my hair over my shoulders. The person behind the camera asked if I wanted to move my hair to display the few pins I have on my blazer. Perplexed, I shrugged and said, no, it didn’t really matter to me.
At this school, there is a big focus on achievement, especially in grades and athletics. But is the impact taken away when nearly half of each grade gets ‘honoured?’ It sounds like many people, teachers and students, have qualms about the concept of pins.
In education, the idea is to build good life-long learners, those who have the skills and drive to continue learning and improving throughout their whole life. Awards, however, seem like the carrot at the end of the stick, the bribe for doing well. Later in life, when the students grow up and awards like these are no longer given, the incentive to do well is gone.
As brought up by Mr Rob, our school prides itself on the value of the process rather than the product, but these pins only measure the end result. Giving out pins, simply for high grades in not an accurate measure of success, and often rewards the wrong people. Does it make sense that those who are naturally smart and don’t need to work hard get a prize, over people who work very hard, maybe just to attain average marks?
As well, it seems as though most of the students have marks high enough to receive a pin. It has almost gotten to the point where people who haven’t gotten a pin are being singled out. The fact that the majority of students get pins seems to take away all of the value, to the point that pins are trivial, says Emily Ma. In “real life” she says, meaning once we all graduate, “a little piece of metal” has no real significance, so why should it now?
Of course, no one is saying that we shouldn’t be encouraging students. We should be praising the strengths, and acknowledging the weaknesses of individual students, whether or not it is reflected in their grade average. Ms Hoang’s problem with prizegiving, is the assembly. She feels that although it is nice to be recognized, the pins ceremony is unauthentic. Everybody has something that is worth being rewarded and pins only show a narrow segment of achievements.
Effort awards sound like a better idea. These are chosen personally by teachers, such as Mr Rob, who are involved daily with the students. Mr Rob says in choosing effort awards for his classes, he looks at the students who have been consistently at their best. This outlook is potentially a way to make awards more meaningful.
Many people are not satisfied with the pins assembly, and prizegiving in general, and we may see a change in that eventually. Whether the format of the pins assembly is changed, or if it is removed altogether, this is still a topic for discussion, between students and teachers alike.
