Margaret
Talbot describes the situation of the heated competition for the position of valedictorian at
Sarasota High School to put human faces to an abstract issue. By describing the dilemma the
competition caused for the school principal, the stress it caused him, and the strong feelings
of the students and their parents, the question of ranking students according to academic
achievement becomes interesting.
It is an impactful rhetorical choice to
describe the principal as "sweating buckets" at graduation as the co-valedictorians
gave their speeches in a room in which he "felt like half of the students in the room hated
one of those two valedictorians and half hated the other." Talbot effectively establishes
the point that competition can be extremely divisive in an academic environment. In building
sympathy for the principal, she describes him as a "likable traditionalist" and
underscores the difficulty of holding onto traditions in schools today because of social
pressures from...
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