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An academic pat on the back

Honor societies serve to polarize students

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Honor societies don’t recognize students who have to work harder for grades.

Congrats: you were one of the few in the top 20 percent of your class. This means you have probably been praised with scholarships, honor society inductions and prizes to reward you for managing to do well on every test and piece of homework. If we’re being honest, you also probably managed to successfully suck up to the teacher and get exactly what you wanted to do well in class.

Well, I for one have never been a part of the top portion of a class. I’ve never been a member of an honor society, either in high school or at NDSU and I was never a teacher’s favorite. This is not to say that I was a bad student, I was just never given the help or opportunities that I needed to actually be successful. 

As an example, my math teacher in high school was so awful that the principal allowed me to drop the class even though it was a requirement for graduation. When teachers do not give students the building blocks to learn, they will always be one step behind. I always did what I could to give myself the best chance to get into NDSU, and I still got denied in my first attempt.

I despise honor societies and the praise they give so loudly to those ‘perfect’ students. I worked hard every day in high school and was frowned upon by many adults because I had to put more effort into getting the same result a ‘perfect’ student just knew automatically. When the answers didn’t come easy, there was no desire to help. The bottom half of the class stay at the bottom because of the attitudes and lack of acknowledgment coming from teachers who only serve to keep them in that position. We never get praised for finally grasping a skill like those who seemingly do everything right.

Us in the bottom 80 percent never get recognition; therefore making it harder to be successful in a world that doesn’t care. It is not just grades that matter in our lives as students, but it is the situations we put ourselves into and the good we bring to our communities and the people around us. When all individuals notice our grades, they fail to see all the good those who struggle academically do on a daily basis. The impact of being chronically behind is much larger than most realize. It is the quiet students struggling in class who needs the most attention and not those receiving awards and prizes regularly.

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