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Now, this may very well interest only me. I've been a fifth-grade teacher for a few years, and, as all teachers can attest, there are some really strange policies and procedures in education. We're in they days of not offending anybody. This includes the giving of awards, which has mostly been stopped due to the fact that some students don't get any. This is, of course, because they haven't earned one, but that doesn't seem to be the point. Awards days are filled with winners like "hey, good job showing up!" awards and the like. Well, this is just one example of how education has changed since I was a fifth-grader. Long gone are the Student of the Year awards and other samples of student excellence, where you would dare to hold one child above another.

One thing that did linger around until this year, however, is the Honor Roll. In our case, it was a list of students who achieved a 3.3 Grade Point Average or higher on our district's 4-point GPA scale, which is fairly standard. Now, we tabulated the nine or so grades that made up the score, and wrote down the names of the people who qualified.

I had no problem with this. Good for the kids who got it. My problem came in the figuring out of the actual honorees. During the process, I was informed that a grade of 3.25 through 3.29 should be rounded up to a 3.3. Now, it immediately seemed silly, so I asked a simple question:

"Why don't you just say that Honor Roll is for students with a 3.25 GPA or higher, then?"

This was met with an answer similar to "Because the Honor Roll is for students who have a 3.3 or higher. We're just rounding numbers to make it easier."

I thought this over for a minute and still it made no sense, especially since one could get between a 3.25 and 3.29. So I asked "Any student who has a 3.25 GPA should get rounded to a 3.3?"

"Yes."

"Then every student who has a 3.25 GPA or higher makes the Honor Roll?"

"Um…yes."

"Then we can say that a 3.25 GPA or higher makes the Honor Roll."

"No. The official policy is a 3.3 or higher."

"But 3.25s make it."

"Only after you round them to a 3.3."

I love my job, but this is typical of what I deal with on a semi-regular basis.