The 24th annual Emperor Awards

Benjamin Franklin famously observed that “nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” Had he lived in the twenty-first century, he would have added “and the education world’s propensity for hatching bright ideas.”

Our Emperor Awards celebrate those bright ideas. The emperor, you’ll remember, proudly purchases nonexistent clothing that he’s told only stupid people can’t see. His loyal subjects, also reluctant to appear stupid, tell him how regal he looks in his fictional garments. In the same way likeminded educators and members of the general public should feel free to applaud our honorees’ achievements.

Our ceremony begins with analysts who investigated the effect of grade spans in schools. After studying “90,000 students and five hundred schools” for four years, they concluded that students “in the top of [a school’s] grade span,” meaning the biggest, oldest students, are “less likely to report” being bullied and “more likely to report feeling safe.” In another apparently unexpected development, students at the “bottom of the grade span,” meaning the smallest, youngest students, are more likely to feel unsafe as a result of being bullied, presumably by students at the top of the grade span. Equally shocking, students in the middle of the grade span “report experiences that fall between” those at the top and bottom of the grade span. This bold finding earns the Archimedes Eureka Honorarium.

The companion Sisyphus Prize for Perpetual Research toasts investigators’ discovery that most students who are absent for part of the school day either arrive late or leave early, and their prescription that schools not schedule academic classes for any students during first period. Their willingness to ignore the mundane realities of running a school merits an Emperor.

Equally deserving is a team previously overlooked by the Academy’s judges. These researchers determined that “persistently obese” students “performed significantly worse on math tests,” leading them to speculate that obesity “can harm children’s social and emotional well-being and academic performance.” For simultaneously declaring the obvious and advancing yet another justification of poor academic achievement, they go home with a belated Sisyphus.

We turn next to the process by which the education world recruits future Emperor honorees and to a prominent think tank that prides itself on “promot[ing] educational excellence.” That’s undoubtedly why its quest for a senior research and policy associate specified “the ability to speak to a variety of audiences,” “training” in “research methods,” and “passion” for the think tank’s mission among its extensive list of qualifications for the position. Absent from the list was any mention of teaching experience. For its consistent contributions to the future of public education policy and to publicly educated students, we present the inaugural Gertrude Stein Yet Another Lost Generation Trophy.

Our next award spotlights the “Starbucks” model for classrooms. Instead of desks, students enjoy an array of “standing tables, stability balls, crate seats, couches, and beanbag chairs.” Like their ancestors from the 1970s, “Starbucks” advocates claim that “traditional educational settings dull the senses” and that “twenty-first century skills can’t really be taught properly” in traditionally furnished classrooms. For their willingness to emulate the coffee chain famous for bitter, overpriced, oversugared beverages, we bestow the La-Z-Boy Medallion with matching espresso maker.

In addition to rearranging the furniture, schools are also rearranging their daily schedules. High on the list of twenty-first century priorities, right alongside all the high standards rhetoric, is recess. Boosters complain that in too many schools recess “takes a back seat in scheduling” to “literacy and math,” science, and social studies. Last year the academy paid tribute to school officials who added an extra break for a second breakfast and then ruled that “meals served in the classroom count as instructional time.” The 2017 Distinguished Priorities Cross salutes recess fans for their wisdom in reassigning “unstructured recess play” to public schools’ front seat.

Americans have always prided themselves on their pioneer spirit and perseverance in the face of hardship. With endurance in mind we travel to the Ivy League in the hours immediately following the Presidential election where stalwart undergraduates “in shock” over the results requested exemptions from midterm exams. Elsewhere this year college students reported being culturally “traumatized” by a “sombrero and tequila party” and so distressed by an inflammatory political speech that their university established “safe places” where they could recover. On campuses nationwide mandatory “trigger warnings” alert students that they’re about to hear something that might upset them. The Valley Forge Endurance Prize pays homage to these students’ verbal and emotional fortitude.

Competition for the George Orwell Creative Use of Language Prize was predictably fierce. Honorable mention goes to a doctoral dissertation examining the relationship between Girl Scout cookies and “hegemonic gender roles,” and to a treatise on the “oscillating relations between disciplinary, and increasingly prehensive forms of power that shape human and non-human materialities in Palestine.” Even more impressive, however, was the simple elegance of the fancy advanced by an online education purveyor: “Every child is uniquely brilliant.” For their soothing deception and bold disregard for the truth, the academy bestows its coveted Orwell for 2017.

As always, any readers who find themselves in agreement with one of our winners should feel free to count themselves winners, too.

And remember: each of us at some time deserves an Emperor of our own.

Even Poor Elijah and me.

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The emperor, you’ll remember, proudly purchases nonexistent clothing that he’s told only stupid people can’t see. His loyal subjects, also reluctant to appear stupid, tell him how regal he looks in his fictional garments.

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