OPINION | With High Horrors

‘Nakapasok kaya ako sa honor list?’ 

For many Filipino students, the report card is less than a reflection of growth and more a ticket to the stage. Sleepless nights and endless hours of studying are not merely for the sake of knowledge, but to earn a spot on a long-enduring hierarchy. As names are called in descending order, the focus shifts from individual achievement to academic standing. In this system, a student’s identity is stripped of its complexity and reduced to a number on a spreadsheet. 

Academic rankings have long been employed in the country’s education system. Before the K to 12 Curriculum was introduced, rankings followed the standard ‘first, second, third, fourth…’—and so on—with titles like ‘valedictorian’ and ‘salutatorian’ given at the end of an education level. After the implementation of DepEd Order No. 36, s. 2016, the department introduced a three-level hierarchy composed of With Honors, With High Honors, and With Highest Honors. Former Department of Education (DepEd) Assistant Secretary Francis Cesar Bringas believed that this shift would allow students to focus on competing with themselves and meeting the grade criteria for each academic recognition. 

While often seen as mere labels, these functions serve as positive reinforcement, encouraging students to reach their full potential in a healthy manner. 

In psychology, positive reinforcement is an operant conditioning technique used to reward desired behaviors. Beyond psychological settings, this can be seen in academic rankings as well. Through placements, students are recognized for their hard work—in the form of good grades—through appreciation, attention, or even tangible rewards such as certificates, ribbons, or medals. Not only does this motivate students, it also fosters self-monitoring and self-evaluation which may provide long-term benefits. 

Yet, when the reward becomes the sole objective, the healthy spark of motivation often morphs into a frantic obsession with structured distinction. What motivates in moderation can divide in excess; more often than not, the drive for self-improvement turns into an active pursuit of academic rank. This persuasion unknowingly turns into toxic competition, where outranking others outweighs actual learning. 

This newfound goal of staying within the podium and besting other students shifts the purpose of learning. Instead of focusing on diving deeply into new knowledge to understand it better, they unconsciously adopt ‘tactical learning’. These methods are highly effective for short-term recall but not as beneficial for long-term mastery. Part of the reason why is that the grading system heavily relies on quiz and test scores—which sometimes inadvertently reward ‘surface learning.’ It does not matter if learners fail to understand what a concept truly means, so long as they memorize the definition, they can get high scores on most of their exams. 

Furthermore, when the system measures success and achievement through numerical scores, this reinforces the idea that the process does not matter—only the product. As the race in education intensifies, understanding slowly becomes secondary to speed. 

Beyond the individual’s cognitive shift, this competitive framework also seeps into students’ social lives. 

When students get caught up in maintaining their standing and competing with others, they become gradually detached from their social lives. According to Malayan Colleges Mindanao, learners may skip social events to focus on assignments and exams—creating a gap between them and their peers. The pressure weighing on them may also drive them to become more irritable and withdrawn towards their friends and relatives. This fosters isolation and reduces engagement in activities outside academics. 

This stratified system also undermines the very rapport and empathy required for a healthy learning environment. It breeds silent rivalries among learners, resentment, and even quiet measurement of worth against each other. This results in scenarios such as information hoarding—often manifested in refusing to share notes— or the ‘grade check’ interrogation, where if one scored higher than another, the interaction usually ends with a cold dismissal. Not only does this create a negative atmosphere within the four walls of the classroom, but it also severs collaboration—especially during group projects or activities. 

While these social rifts are damaging, the most profound cost of a competitive system is not what it does to the classroom, but what it does to the student’s sense of self. 

Students begin tying their worth on numbers and position in the hierarchy—viewing themselves in a narrow lens of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. They start living in a constant state of ‘performance anxiety’, where stopping means falling behind and losing the status they have worked so hard to attain. This need to excel creates a fragile identity; where if they are not excelling, they no longer know who they are. In this setup, students are no longer human beings capable of learning and failure—they caged by their performance, exhausted by the weight of winning in unseen competitions that have little to do with genuine wisdom.

Given the cognitive, social, and psychological toll of a rigid competitive framework, it is clear that the current culture of academic ranking requires a fundamental shift. 

While rankings aim to motivate, they currently create a society that fosters toxic comparisons among learners. Education should cultivate a community of collaborators equipped to solve real-world problems, not a hierarchy of competitors fostered to outperform one another. However, this should not imply that our education system should completely abolish academic rankings—what we need is reform. 

Schools must study and enforce a reward system that recognizes growth. Aside from highlighting high scores, they must also acknowledge those who have made noticeable progress. Diversifying recognition is another way forward: academic excellence should not be the only achievement rewarded—creatives, leaders, and athletes must receive equal acknowledgement. 

Perhaps then, the next time a student asks, ‘Nakapasok kaya ako sa honor list?’ The question will not be driven with anxiety but with confidence, because learners can finally see their value regardless of their academic rankings. Reforming how we recognize excellence is not about lowering standards, but restoring purpose. Education must build individuals, not rank them into isolation.