my child is an honor student at __________

[Fox in Socks]

whoever the fuck came up with bumpstickers should be drawn and quartered. now everyone and their ass thinks and brags that their child is "different". theyre an "honor student". In a culture where red marks on papers are being outlawed due to the impact on self esteem, bumper stickers hold very validity to the gifted nature of your child. [post100] [post100]

[frangipanigrrl]

Whoever came up with those "Baby on Board" and "Child on Board" stickers should be tortured along with them.

Why the fuck would anyone care the age of persons traveling in a vehicle? I'm not more or less likely to drive carefully based on something like that. It's as if someone should feel worse if they drive recklessly and smash into a car harming or killing a kid than doing the same thing to an adult. Sorry, but I'd feel guilty as hell whether the person was an infant, a 10 year-old or an 80 year-old.

I just don't get why any driver would have one of those jackass signs. Just because you have kids doesn't mean you have to become the stupidest person ever.[pan]

[jeth]

I think the original point of baby on board signs was to warn emergency workers that a small child might be wedged under the front seat of the car at an accident scene, but then everyone got them because they wanted to be trendy dumbasses and the whole point of it went out the window.

My mom even got one. I kept taking it down when she wasn't looking because I wasn't exactly thrilled with everyone knowing I had a sibling at that point.

[Froglover]

In our area (Bay Area, CA) there seems to be a suspiciously large number of cars with yellow "My Child Is An Honor Student" stickers. We see them all the time, usually on SUVs. Surely there can't be that many honor students? [post18]

[katz]

^ sure there can. my grad class of 540 had at least 400 on the honour roll.. and you only need to make it once to get the stupid bumper sticker *L*

[Froglover]

^ I didn't know that. Sorry, I'm an immigrant! :f

[katz]

no worries. :)

[Rinky vs.4.0]

What the hell is an honour student?

[Fox in Socks]

What the hell is an honour student?
one who gets good grades or on the "honor roll". i suppose its similar to the deans list at uni, except often the honor roll doesnt have very high qualifications. its an esteem booster.

the parents now get bumper stickers and put them on their cars. its evil.

[Rinky vs.4.0]

We don't have either dean's lists or honour rolls in the UK.

[katz]

yeah i can't remember the GPA you need to get on the thing, but it's totally an esteem booster.

i've been on it twice i think when i was in high school. we got the bumper sticker which i threw out before my parents ever saw it, a little certificate saying i made honour roll for such and such semester of whatever year and the newspaper would print EVERYONE's name in a special section at the end of semester congratulating those who made it.

[jeth]

^ We got our names printed AND they called us all down to the gym for pictures too. My mom clipped one of the honor roll pictures from seventh grade and I think half my class was in there, and that was just for one semester.

I think you needed an overall average of A- to hit honor roll in our school.

[diary of wood]

My brother and I used to get those honor roll bumperstickers in middle school. Thankfully, my dad has always been strongly against putting any kind of adhesive on the cars, so the stickers went unused. :)

By the time I went to college, windowclings had become the fashion and my parents put one with the name of my college on their back window. I've always thought it was kind of silly, but at least they picked one that doesn't look too bad.

[half1113]

You usually have to have all A's or all A's and a B. I stayed on the honor roll in junior high. I even got the bumper stickers but my parents didn't put the sticker on their car.

[SMMY]

Which is why I love this little bloggy-bit:
http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/blog/?entry=1068

I want the fifth bumper sticker listed. I obviously don't have children, but would proudly display it on my bumper.

[diary of wood]

I really like "My child is a carbon-based life form at Epididymitis High."

;l

[SMMY]

I really like "My child is a carbon-based life form at Epididymitis High."

;l

I know, I changed my mind and decided that this one is the best of the lot. I wish I knew some place on the web where I could order it.

[jeth]

The last one is great, especially about counting the stickers before going into the restaurant so you know what your dining experience is like.

[Nancy]

I've seen "My child beat up your honor roll student" bumperstickers.

[Bernkastel]

God, the honor roll was such a form of humiliation for me. I think I only made it on there about two or three times my entire elementary and secondary school career. Every quarter would roll around with me getting a C in math and/or science and my grandmother would wave the honor roll list in the paper in my face and "tsk" at me. Dude, I just hated school at that point. I read fantasy novels for an entire year in my sophomore Algebra class (I'm ashamed to admit it now, but it's true).

ETA: Let's not even get into how badly I wanted to be in the honors/advanced standing programs in elementary school and high school. I honestly think I did so badly because I was bored most of the time ...

I've made the Dean's List a number of times in college, but not as many times as I could have because I haven't always been full time (that's a prerequisite). I think the GPA requirement for the semester is like ... 3.15? Or it may even be 3.0. Anyway, it is an ego boost. It makes you want to keep working at that level of quality. But it's kind of depressing when you work your ass off and get all As but don't get any recognition for it just because you had to take three classes instead of four that semester. Bah. (I'm bitter.)

[Rinky vs.4.0]

Surely getting all As is 'recognition' in itself?

[jeth]

Not with how competitive schools in the US have been getting. My high school had a lot of weighted courses meaning whatever grade you earned would be weighted one higher, so if you got an A it became an A+, if you got an A+ it became an A++ and so on. So many kids in my graduating class were taking weighted classes that a friend of mine graduated with a 4.08 (on a 4.0 scale, of course) and STILL barely made it into the top 10% of our class. I was a B+/A- student overall and I placed in the top half of my class, but not in the top 40% which cost me a lot of scholarships. Had I gone to a normal high school where the grades weren't weighted I would have placed higher because everyone else's GPA would have been lower by comparison.

I should mention that taking the weighted classes meant they were harder. A lot of kids took the regular, non-weighted classes so they didn't have to be challenged at all and could get easy As. Another friend of mine graduated in the top 25% with a higher GPA than me but she also took easy, non-weighted courses and never once challenged herself. I honestly think if I had to do it again I would consider taking the regular, non-advanced classes just so I could have gotten higher grades (I mean an easy A is still an A, right?) and more scholarships.

So yeah, you might have an A or three and that makes you feel good, but if you took a harder class and didn't do as well it hurt your GPA, and in the end the recognition you get, like honor roll or dean's list, is based solely on GPA.

[Rinky vs.4.0]

See, I don't think there should be such a thing as an 'easy' A. Ever. It negates the entire concept of an A in the first place.

See, I'm from the generation where exams were graded so only a few percent got As. Getting an A was hard to do, even if you were in the top class, so then an A actually meant something. People who got all As at O' level when I was in school were the ones who went onto Oxford and Cambridge or went to medical school. It meant you were exceptionally smart all-round. Now, getting all As is so common it means nothing anymore, so they introduced A-star (A*) a while ago to try and distinguish a bit more.

It amuses and depresses me that we keep adding to the TOP of the scale in this way, so that people can feel good about themselves and brag they're an 'A' student when what needs to happen is much more rigourous testing and grading along a curve.

Btw, we don't have GPAs either. We have exams in each subject at school which we're graded on (although coursework is an element for some), and degrees are divided into 'classes' depending on your final results, which for most subjects is primarily exam-based.

[Sulley]

Don't forget the "My child was caught doing something good at______" bumper stickers.

Ugh.

[jeth]

I agree that there shouldn't be an easy A, but it does piss me off that kids who refuse to take challenging courses can come out ahead GPA-wise of someone who takes the time to take the challenging courses and actually work for their grade.

We have regular standardized testing here as well but I'm not actually sure what they do with the results. I know we got tested every other year after a certain point. I always scored in the 99th percentile on every standardized exam I ever took but in the end all the colleges I applied to cared about was my ACT/SAT scores (which were very good), my GPA (totally decent), and my class ranking (horrible since I was in a school full of people who coasted along for their grades and/or were mega overachievers).

[nirak]

We have regular standardized testing here as well but I'm not actually sure what they do with the results. I know we got tested every other year after a certain point. I always scored in the 99th percentile on every standardized exam I ever took but in the end all the colleges I applied to cared about was my ACT/SAT scores (which were very good), my GPA (totally decent), and my class ranking (horrible since I was in a school full of people who coasted along for their grades and/or were mega overachievers).

I, and everyone I knew, always scored int he 98th and 99th percentile as well. I never understood how almost everyone seemed really smart. It always sounded fishy to me.

You know, as much as I think school sucked when I was young, and how it made me think I was bad at oh so many things that it turnes out I'm fine or pretty good at, school is so much worse now from everything I am hearing. My mom did a rotation for school where she spent some time in elementary classes, and since they don't have special ed classes anymore, eveyone is in one class and teachers have a hard time making a class that doesn't just pander to the lowest common denomonator. Honors classes are being cut in many schools- so there's a good possibility that more kids will be bored in class and end up getting bad grades and thinking they are dumb when really they just need a higher difficulty clas.

Whew. That was a lot. This is somehting I've been thinking about a lot- and it is starting to scare me. The honors classes I had were some of my only good memories from school.

[Jamie.]

To return to the initial, more shallow topic...why not have one of those bumper stickers? I mean, really--the point of putting any sticker on your bumper is to express something about yourself or your life. While we (meaning the childfree and fab crowd) may not enjoy children or the associations, thereof, why the fuck should we care if someone else does?

I was an honor roll student, by the way. I don't think my mom put the shit on her bumper, though--she was just glad I didn't drop out like all of her friends had.

[Rinky vs.4.0]

... it does piss me off that kids who refuse to take challenging courses can come out ahead GPA-wise of someone who takes the time to take the challenging courses and actually work for their grade.

Well, that IS bizarre and nonsensical, I agree. Sorry, I just get distracted and tend to start ranting when the subject of grade inflation comes up. ;)

[Heart of Moon]

Yeah. Grade inflation sucks. And nirak is right about it seeming like everybody is in the top one or two percentile on the standardized tests (I was too).

The honor roll sucked for me too because I have a twin sister. So one year, I made the honor roll and they didn't announce my name at the assembly in which they announce all the honor roll kids because her name comes before mine alphabetically and the person typing the list accidentally skipped the second person with the same last name. Then the next two years I did badly in math, so I didn't make it, but my twin sister did. So then even though other people weren't saying "Why did she and not you?" I couldnt help thinking it.

Stupid people making you think you're dumb/ subpar if you don't get As. I say get rid of inflation and make people actually learn things.

[double_psyche]

I agree that there shouldn't be an easy A, but it does piss me off that kids who refuse to take challenging courses can come out ahead GPA-wise of someone who takes the time to take the challenging courses and actually work for their grade.

This happened a lot in my class, too. A good chunk of the people who graduated with a 4.0 only had that because they took home ec classes and begged the chemistry teacher to bump up their grade so it wouldn't hurt their GPA.

[RedHead]

There is a car that is always parked on my block with a bumper sticker that says.......

"My pug is smarter than your honor student"

My husand and I laugh every single time we see it. It never gets old!

[Thom.]

Not with how competitive schools in the US have been getting. My high school had a lot of weighted courses meaning whatever grade you earned would be weighted one higher, so if you got an A it became an A+, if you got an A+ it became an A++ and so on. So many kids in my graduating class were taking weighted classes that a friend of mine graduated with a 4.08 (on a 4.0 scale, of course) and STILL barely made it into the top 10% of our class. I was a B+/A- student overall and I placed in the top half of my class, but not in the top 40% which cost me a lot of scholarships. Had I gone to a normal high school where the grades weren't weighted I would have placed higher because everyone else's GPA would have been lower by comparison.

I should mention that taking the weighted classes meant they were harder. A lot of kids took the regular, non-weighted classes so they didn't have to be challenged at all and could get easy As. Another friend of mine graduated in the top 25% with a higher GPA than me but she also took easy, non-weighted courses and never once challenged herself. I honestly think if I had to do it again I would consider taking the regular, non-advanced classes just so I could have gotten higher grades (I mean an easy A is still an A, right?) and more scholarships.

So yeah, you might have an A or three and that makes you feel good, but if you took a harder class and didn't do as well it hurt your GPA, and in the end the recognition you get, like honor roll or dean's list, is based solely on GPA.

Yep...I graduated with a 4.47. And I took college courses the summer before and during my senior year, which helped with that.

One disturbing note. I took the introductory English sequence in college instead of taking Senior English. From what I remember, all of the English classes I've taken in high school were incredibly more difficult than the first English sequence class. One thing our high school was known for was the hard as fuck English teachers. For the first English sequence class our final exam was to write a 10 sentence paragraph. A PARAGRAPH.

[Rinky vs.4.0]

A ten-sentence paragraph? The nine year-olds I tutor are required to do more than that in English! What a joke ...

[jeth]

Yeah. I thankfully tested out of having to take Freshman Comp and moved straight into the upper level classes. I saw some of the Freshman Comp coursework and was astonished at what total crap it was. It was mostly busywork meant to make sure you knew how to write a paper, cite a source, etc. While they were going on class field trips to the campus library (no, seriously) I was taking classes I actually liked. Weeee!

[Kollins]

All this talk of grade inflation freaks me out. At my old University, it was expected that the A students should make up about 7-12% of a class. Some departments even had quotas limiting the number of A grades that could be awarded, but I don't agree with that particular practice. Anything over 70% was lauded as very good.

I wondering if it'll be the same at the University I'm about to start at. I hope so. An A is supposed to mean something, damnit!

Of course, I think getting the good grade should be esteem booster enough (why are schools in the business of building self-esteem? I thought they were in the business of building knowledge bases and skills-sets). And anyway, what place do parents have boasting about their kid's performance?It's just that: the kid'sperformance. And sure, maybe you're a good parent who helped them along, but ultimately, it was them who won the award. Also, it's not like getting good grades automatically makes someone a better person.

I dunno. I just tend to find boastful behaviour tasteless and annoying, in general. What ever happened to quiet self-satisfaction?

[jeth]

I dunno. I just tend to find boastful behaviour tasteless and annoying, in general. What ever happened to quiet self-satisfaction?

Why do you hate America?

[Kollins]

Because I am from Soviet Kanadastan.

[Paul]

I always thought the "Baby on board" stickers were a warning to other drivers that the driver of said vehicle was more than likely to not be paying attention to the road because they're too busy cooing and ahhing at their ickle wickle cutie babykins in the baby seat next to them.

Maybe I misunderstood that one.

[tully]

From what I remember, all of the English classes I've taken in high school were incredibly more difficult than the first English sequence class.

We hear this every year from students who've graduated. They come back during Thanksgiving break and practically worship at our feet because they're coasting through mid and even high-level English courses at their colleges. Some kids even tutor their classmates. It's a nice feeling, especially with the whole accusation of HS curricula being "dumbed down."

But, in somewhat of a challenge of that, I get pissed every year because there are NO honors regulations in our school. In my HS experience, we had to have a certain average AND two teachers' recommendations to get into or stay in honors classes. Here, we sign a "recommendation sheet," but that doesn't matter because parents can override the recs. And they do. So next year, there will be nine sections of 10th grade honors English ... and three Regents (non-honors) level. THREE! Yes ... only 90 out of 400+ students are at a non-honors level. I'm so proud of them and their pushy assclown parents.

[jeth]

At our school you had the choice between regular and advanced English, no pre-req required. If you did badly with the Advanced course the guidance counselor may have suggested you went to regular English, but nobody forced you to.

There was a third tier Advanced English class for hand-selected students. It was hard to get into because it required a certain grade and a recommendation. I initially turned it down when it was offered to me because I didn't like the other kids that would be in that class. When I changed my mind later they had already filled the slot. They only allowed a certain number of kids in that class and the only way to get in after Freshman year was if someone moved away or dropped to regular Advance English.

[Kollins]

Man, this really is so alien --- we had no advanced courses in high school, and a troublingly large percentage of students at University have great trouble just passing their mandatory first year English course, which is a really basic course that covers all the stuff that, in my opinion, should have been covered during high school --- simple things, like writing coherently and comprehensibly.

Education system here = shit, for the most part.

[Thom.]

We hear this every year from students who've graduated. They come back during Thanksgiving break and practically worship at our feet because they're coasting through mid and even high-level English courses at their colleges. Some kids even tutor their classmates. It's a nice feeling, especially with the whole accusation of HS curricula being "dumbed down."

But, in somewhat of a challenge of that, I get pissed every year because there are NO honors regulations in our school. In my HS experience, we had to have a certain average AND two teachers' recommendations to get into or stay in honors classes. Here, we sign a "recommendation sheet," but that doesn't matter because parents can override the recs. And they do. So next year, there will be nine sections of 10th grade honors English ... and three Regents (non-honors) level. THREE! Yes ... only 90 out of 400+ students are at a non-honors level. I'm so proud of them and their pushy assclown parents.


Ouch! We had to have those requirements, but they could be overrided by a pushy parent. It just wasn't that well-known of a policy, so very few parents complained.

[haunted]

we had honors classes and the "honor roll" at my high school. I'm not sure if the honor roll ever consisted of more than your name on a piece of paper in the hall way.

our honors classes were such bull shit though. I got into honors English Sophmore year and my teacher HATED me. hated. her class was easy and she took every chance in the short period that I was there to under grade me and point out how inadequate I was. (one day we had a list of colleges for a college presentation or whatever. we all were ooing and awwing over what colleges we wanted to get into. I was the only one she made a point to tell how hard my choice was to get into. which by then just made me want to throw things at her. as she said much worse about me :P) I was so bored in her class anyhow. I actually learned more going back to regular English! we did the same thing, but with not as "special" or "smart" books.



as for college freshman level courses, they do seem easy. personally, I like the review. of course, I left High School Sophmore year and don't get as many chances to review things as I'd like. but it's really sad how many people struggle or don't try. my poor teacher at my old college. he looked so tired because no one did shit.

[leiaswift]

I agree

[Little_15]

I, and everyone I knew, always scored int he 98th and 99th percentile as well. I never understood how almost everyone seemed really smart. It always sounded fishy to me.

My guess is that people self-segregate, such that the people you spend most of your time with or the people you know well enough to know their scores tend to be about as good in school as you are. Especially with different tracks ... most of the people I knew in high school were taking the same (honors) courses as me, so most of us scored relatively well. But there are also whole groups of people who take different levels of courses and score in different percentiles.

[Samwitch]

My child was inmate of the month at the Jefferson County Jail. I've seen that one on a few cars where I used to live. Always laughed at that one. :)

[on the vine]

"My pug is smarter than your honor student"


Love it!!!

I was an honor student, in the National Honor Society, took all Honors classes blah blah and it got me nowhere! I dropped out of college and am unemployed. So stick that on your bumper & drive!

[witchykitty]

God, I love this forum... My husband had a bumper sticker made that said 'My child is a trustee at the Wake Co. Juvenile Det. Center'. I thought that was great. I've seen a few people laugh in the rearview mirror.

[Shea]

I've seen "My child beat up your honor roll student" bumperstickers.


The lamest of lame stickers are the ones I've spotted that read "My child has perfect attendance at blah biddy blah boo"

I mean.... c'mon. I don't even know what to say to that. It's like announcing to the world that your bowel movements are regular. I'd like to give a hammer punch to the clavicle to the printer of these bumperstickers.

[Charles:]

"I just took a dump!"

[empresskara]

I'd like to give a hammer punch to the clavicle to the printer of these bumperstickers.

Given the prevalence of said stickers, I'd say you'll find him on his way to the bank, laughing.

Be sure to rob him when you're done punching him. And then come share with us.

[Heart of Moon]

I saw one today that said "My child is a so and so elementary school SUPER STUDENT!!!!" and thought of you all...

Not quite as funny as bowel movements, unfortunately.

[Calli]

I think my favorite sticker I have seen is the "My child knocked up your honor student." Always makes me laugh!