In our contemporary participation trophy society, graduating from high school doesn’t mean what it used to.

In Los Angeles, the school district (LAUSD) found themselves with a bit of a problem: 22,000 students in the class of 2017 ran the risk of not meeting the minimum requirements to graduate. What’s a district to do? Give the students extra help? Get them back on track? Nope. Instead, the LAUSD voted unanimously to lower their graduation requirements. The district used to require a C average in college preparatory classes, but that requirement has been dropped to a D.

Of course, a society in which people aren’t allowed to fail is a society in which people are not allowed to succeed greatly. That has been the experience of students at the other end of the academic spectrum, and that is why there’s now a trend of high schools recognizing multiple valedictorians.

In a recent piece by a current college sophomore Dalton Miller, he says that being one of 72 valedictorians is not a product of the “everyone gets a trophy” era. He argued that this system eliminates that thing that appears to be so terrifying to the hothouse flowers of today: competition.

Recognizing multiple valedictorians eliminates the unhealthy competition created by a system that awards just one winner. Instead, it emphasizes student learning over student rank, rewarding us for taking academically rigorous courses without pitting us against each other. During my senior year, I took four AP and IB courses in hopes of getting my GPA high enough to earn valedictorian status. For me, the distinction was especially important because my high school allows all valedictorians to apply to be the graduation speaker, and I really enjoy public speaking.

I wonder what Miller thinks is inherently unhealthy about competition. He says that his valedictorian group included state champion athletes and top musicians, and he mentions the college admissions process. These are all competitive. Somebody had to lose the state championship for his colleague to win. Somebody has to be second chair violin, and not everyone will get into his or her top choice of college. After one’s education is complete, not everyone can have the promotion, get the girl, or buy the best house on the market. Somebody will come out on top. Most people win some and lose some, and working hard can help to ensure more outcomes end up in the former column.

Miller later makes an assertion that goes to prove my point:

There are many academic honors that recognize multiple students: honor rolls, National Honor Society, and dean’s lists, to name a few. Academia knows that recognizing excellence in many doesn’t diminish the achievements of one.

These students will all have been recognized. They will have been on the honor roll, been invited into NHS, or named to the dean’s list. Having a student named as valedictorian doesn’t mean that other students aren’t recognized for their hard work. As for recognizing that “excellence in many doesn’t diminish the achievements of one,” the reverse is also true. One student being named valedictorian will not mean that colleges will overlook the other exceptional students. Those students will have other distinctions on their transcript to show what they’ve accomplished.

So, as graduation season comes to a close, we find that students on both ends of the academic spectrum are being done a disservice. Students who are struggling are not encouraged to do better, but having the standards lowered to meet their performance. On the other hand, the student who has worked hard and achieved more than any of his or her peers is told that they have to be one of many to avoid the harsh reality that, in any given situation, some will do better than others.

It’s a disservice to students because it teaches and reinforces the idea that the world is other than it is. It teaches low-performing students that they can’t do any better and that nobody expects better of them. It teaches those students that it doesn’t matter, anyway, because they will be allowed to succeed even if their performance doesn’t merit success. For the students who have worked hard but not made it to the top, they’re being taught that they deserve all of the accolades of those who performed better. For the one student who should have come out on top, he or she has now been told that it doesn’t really matter. The feelings of those who didn’t quite measure up are more important.

The confused and confusing lessons hardly prepare these students for the years ahead. Shielding students from the world doesn’t prepare them for the world, and that’s what school is for. Failing students in this is failing them utterly.