Lincoln values academics to a fault.
Linger in any classroom for more than five minutes and you will be overwhelmed by a cacophony of humble brags and lamentations about any grade lower than a perfect A. Step into the bathrooms and you will be sure to hear a group of friends commiserating about AP course workload over a green apple Geek Bar.
It’s safe to say there is no escaping the academic rat race at Lincoln; there is no school in the city that takes as many AP classes as we do. We are certified platinum by the college board, meaning we have some of the highest levels of AP class enrollment and high average scores on AP tests. Lincoln is, for better or for worse, outside of the norm.
However, under this success hangs a cultural house of cards: one built on ambition and talent but also insecurity and inequality.
This pressure students feel is deeper than just a drive for academic success; it’s a matter of self-worth. Academic success “feels like the only way to measure yourself,” says Arden Marburg (‘26). “If I get a bad grade on a test and everyone’s going around asking me, I’m just going to feel like sh*t 25 times”
This is not just an internal issue; these feelings of inadequacy don’t only come from a student’s self-sabotaging inner monologue. At Lincoln, academics are a matter of worth; they determine the way you are treated by your fellow students. If you do not meet certain academic milestones of achievement, you will be made to feel less than. You will, implicitly or otherwise, be called stupid.
Not only have students noticed this, but so have teachers. Per Ms. Jones: “I’ve heard students not infrequently making comments about how smart a person is or is not, based on the classes that they’re taking, as if intelligence is a quantifiable thing that you have.”
But all this pressure is not, overall, awful.
“As an experience, it’s definitely bad, but if I hadn’t felt the pressure, I probably wouldn’t be in such a good spot to do the things I actually wanted,” stated Marburg.
So, the question must be asked: to what extent is this pressure worth it? Is it all students fault or is it our duty to compete? Will competition bring us to new heights?
It’s not our duty to compete and this culture is not the students’ fault. The American education system is based upon a culture of individuality. Despite all of Seattle Public School’s slogans of equity, this individuality remains.
As a student, your academic merit is measured on your accomplishments as an individual. In contrast to Lincoln’s assurances that this is indeed a ‘project based’ school, the majority of final assignments are tests or essays. The scores for these are taken as wholly indictive of your individual talent, learning, and intelligence as opposed to a lot of project-based assignments, which measure your ability to communicate and work in tandem with other students.
This framework is completely at odds with reality.
This system tells you that to be competent, you must be the best individual. It is not enough to be passable or average; you must be better than others. Your talent is measured not by its effects on the world around you, but instead it is measured by how much better or worse you are doing than your peers.
If this system stays in place so will its oppressive academic culture. Simply telling students ‘don’t be competitive, be cognizant about how you talk about grades’ is not enough. We must reform the system.
How should the system look?
Firstly, take away the current system of letter grading. This, of course, isn’t to say there is no quantitative way to express a student’s academic accomplishments, simply that our current framework is inadequate.
Secondly, incentivize teamwork. The system should be generally unconcerned with how competent a student is in isolation. Competency in isolation is competency wasted. The value of student accomplishments should be based upon how much it helps the collective, not how much it proves that this individual is exceptional.
Ideally, if letter grades must remain, they will reflect how well students contribute to each other’s work and learning, in addition to their own. More focus should be placed upon the student’s ability to help their fellow students, and more value should be placed on a student’s contribution to the academic community.
Thirdly, focus on group projects. Group projects, as maligned as they may be, are an incredibly important academic instrument. In the ‘real world’ most labor will be done in collaboration with others and thus, it is vital for schools to foster the communication and project management skills of students.
In brief, Lincoln’s toxic academic culture is not individual students’ fault: it is an outcropping of America’s toxic capitalistic culture of individuality that seeks to divide the individual from their community. As divided individuals, we are easier to exploit and control. For truly egalitarian learning to take place, this narrative must be abandoned.