Tuesday, August 7, 2007

When Perfect is No Longer enough

Nadia. The name itself implies a senior moment. Nadia Comianci, as you who remember here would know, was a Romanian waif, a delightfully charming china-doll, who won our hearts in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal by posting the first ever 10 in Olympic history in gymnastics, not just once but several times. Those who watched and wondered saw history in the making, but not for the reason you would think. That unique experience made front page headlines all across the world. Perfect as it was once defined was the unachievable, always just beyond the possible. Only my old roommate Freak could ever claim to be perfect telling me, “ I thought I made a mistake once but I was wrong.”

But how times have changed. Nowadays, gymnasts routinely get 10s, so much so it does not even make the news in the local sports page. And perfect has changed in other events as well. I remember the once lauded academic achievement of “Straight As” was an honor that almost guaranteed an IVY league full—paid ride. Not one person had ever received a “Perfect 4.0” at my high school in the 100 years of its being in existence. That is, no one had before me (and certainly not me as I scored numerous Bs in gym and typing), but sometime about the early eighties it changed. Since that time, that once unimaginable honor has been given not a few times but many and often numerous times within the same class. It is hard to believe that today’s kids are much smarter than those in my day. If this is not the case, what happened?

Grade inflation. Score inflation. Inflation in general. A recent honors ceremony I attended provided some clues. Academic honors were given out for achievement in several basic classes: Math, English, Social Studies. As the names were called and students went up to get their awards, I noticed that almost every child received one. The reason, as I found out later, was “it helps their self esteem to get an award,” and “we don’t want any students to be left out.” (similar to what is happening in organized sports when every participant now gets an award regardless of performance.) Then the top ten were announced. As the principal read off the names and the ten students came up, he indicated, “The tenth place academically required a GPA of 11.319, that is, more than a straight A average.” Then it hit me. What once was an extraordinary achievement, one so high that no one had in the history of a school reached that level, was now so commonplace that doing so does not even guarantee a top ten ranking (My son received a Straight A on his final report with the footnote that he was now ranked 19th in his class).

When everyone is perfect, perfect has no meaning. How then can you rank and identify the top achievers. Why by creating an A+ grade, of course. This too has its limits as the award ceremony showed. When too many students start getting A+s, then the definition of perfect must change again. What then will be created? A++? When C was once representative of an “Average” Grade, it now for all practical matters represents failure and B has become the baseline average. When judges are scoring everyone as 10s (to not to hurt their feelings and hinder their self esteem no doubt), how can they then differentiate the outstanding from the just average. Are we trying to be a Lake Wobegon suburb where everyone scores above average?

Perfect once meant something. Almost perfect showed excellence and capability. But in a world where everyone scores almost perfect and many score perfect, what then does perfect really mean?

Is it time to return to the old days when perfect stood for something?

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