Blogs > Cliopatria > Noted Here and There ...

Jun 18, 2005

Noted Here and There ...


by Cliopatria


Commencement Addresses: After the deconstruction of Bryan Le Beau's Commencement Address at UMKC, it's nice to see recommendations of Steve Jobs' Commencement Address at Stanford by Glenn Reynolds, Margaret Soltan, and Eugene Volokh.

Grade Inflation: Both Erin O'Connor and Margaret Soltan comment on the fact that a Seattle, Washington, high school has 44 and a Fresno, California, high school has 58 valedictorians this year. What's wrong with the notion that a graduating class has one top graduate and one runner-up, the salutatorian?

Historical Knowledge: David Gelernter,"We Are Our History – Don't Forget It," Los Angeles Times, 17 June. Much as I like Gelernter's opening lines --"Not knowing history is worse than ignorance of math, literature or almost anything else. Ignorance of history is undermining Western society's ability to talk straight and think straight." – his essay turns out to be a conservative's attack on teachers and professors of history. Gelernter seems to think that learning history is a matter of learning correct facts, not a critical engagement with facts at conflict.

LeBeau Update: At The Real Paul Jones,"an anonymous UMKC employee" posts what purports to be a memo of 17 June from UMKC's interim Chancellor, Stephen W. Lehmkuhle, to the Faculty and Staff of the College of Arts and Sciences. It immediately places Bryan LeBeau on administrative leave, with status and salary commensurate with a tenured full professor of the history department. An interim dean will be named in the next week and regular leadership of the College of Arts and Sciences will be determined by a new Chancellor after 31 December. There is further direct confirmation from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Thanks to Eric Muller and Sally Greene for the tips.

Militant Moderates: John C. Danforth,"Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers," New York Times, 17 June. Former Senator and former Ambassador Danforth speaks for me on the relationship between the emergence of the Christian Right and the increased polarization of American politics.

Nagasaki Reports: George Weller, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, was the first reporter to file stories from Nagasaki after it was devastated by an atomic bomb on 9 August 1945. When General Douglas MacArthur's censorship office killed the stories, it was thought that they were lost altogether. Two years ago, after Weller's death, his son discovered old carbon copies of the reports. Now, some of them have been published in Japan's Mainichi Shimbun and the son, novelist Anthony Weller, hopes to publish them with photographs taken by his father in a book. Thanks to Anne Zook at Peevish ... and Kevin Drum at Political Animal for the tip.

Photography Review: Holland Carter,"America in Its Photo Innocense," New York Times, 17 June. Carter reviews a traveling exhibit of 19th century American photography. Alan Trachtenberg did the catalogue –"a glorious book" – for the exhibit.


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Ralph E. Luker - 6/23/2005

In most cases, wouldn't that problem be fairly simply solved by requiring a numerical grade for the final grade in the course? An alphabetical grade could, of course, be based on the numerical grade, but the latter is less likely to yield multiple perfect GPAs.

Lisa Casanova - 6/23/2005

My high school had 10 valedictorians (they ALL gave speeches at graduation. It was hell). The rule was, everyone with a perfect GPA (no grade weighting) got to be one. The problem schools have is that if you have several students with perfect GPAs, how do you pick one over the others to be valedictorian? I think some schools have tried to use a selection process involving extracurricular activities, etc, but any such process ends up being subjective. I'm sure nowadays any school contemplating such a thing would be afraid of litigation from students claiming that they were unfairly passed over for valedictorian. I thought this had happened somewhere, although I cannot find a reference to it.

Jeff Vanke - 6/18/2005

My high school had a number of valedictorians, but less than ten (of 400). That was because a number of people made straight A's, and because no grade weighting was assigned to AP classes and the like -- 4.0 was as high as it went.

That was the story presented to colleges, based on a 4-point-scale GPA.

However, my school also kept internal records on the 100-point-scale. Every semester, every student learned his or her rank on both scales. On the latter scale, we had a singular valedictorian. The former scale was for college applications.

You would be seeing a lot more of this if many high schools -- at colleges' urging -- had not not added points for harder courses. That explains both the 5.0+ GPAs, and the decline of arts electives (which lack the bonus points) in high schools.

Jonathan Dresner - 6/18/2005

in a class of nine. Didn't make the top ten percent....