BurlingtonFreePress.com - There will be no valedictorian when Burlington High School's Class of 2007 graduates Friday. Burlington is the first public high school in the area to ditch the valedictorian tradition and the public student ranking that goes with it. The school made the change to reduce competition among students.

Ordinarily I’d rip this story to shreds.  But I actually have no problem with it.  People from Vermont aren’t designed to compete against each other.  It’s just not in their blood.  I think it goes against the hippy code or something.  But the thing that scares me about this story is that I could see some nitwit superintendent from MA reading this story and thinking this is a good idea. No competition is fine and dandy in Maine and Vermont because those states don’t really count, but in MA we need to prepare our children to become the future captains of industry.   Competition and separating the weak from the strong is essential to the future of mankind.