yatzr

I wasn't sure where to put this. If anyone thinks it should be moved, please do.

I've noticed a crazy phenomenon (sp?) at my hometown in the past 3 or 4 years (after talking to people about it, it's been going on far longer than that though). At graduation, when they announce the top 10 percent of the class, each kid stands up. The class size is always around 100 kids, so they usually sit them in 4 rows of 25. They are seated alphabetically starting in the front row. The kids that stand up for the top 10 percent are ALWAYS in the first two rows. In my class, the last person to stand had a last name that started with L. In the class after me, they had one exception (two actually, they were twins) who's last name started with S. They were the only ones in the last two rows to stand. The class that just graduated had nobody in the last two rows stand. Also, within the first two rows, there are always more people in the first row than the second to stand.

I have a theory for this. I first noticed this phenomenon in 7th grade science class. We played one of those review for a test games where the class was split into two teams. The teacher was too lazy to pick randomly so she just took the class roster and split it in the middle. The teams were so obviously unfair that the team with last names of N-Z didn't want to play. We played anyway, and it just seemed like one of those cruel things a teacher would do to show a dumb kid how dumb they are. So this tells me that it started early on. My theory is it evolved from alphabetical seating and doing activities or whatever in alphabetical order in elementary school. One interesting thing to point out, the twins that were the exception went to a rural school until high school with only about 10 kids in the class so they wouldn't be affected as much by this. But anyway, when a kid is often placed in the back of the room, or has to stand in the back of the line, or goes last in show and tell or whatever, I think that could lead to psychological discouragement.

Does this happen in anyone else's schools? What do you all think about this?

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Phage

It makes sense that sitting near the front of the class will make people pay more attention; after all, they are right up there with the teacher. I don't really like the idea of being placed in the back being psychologically discouraging mainly because I don't think people are that weak mentally. If being told to stand near the back of a line is going to scar you for life, did you really have a chance anyway?
However, I do think it likely that when you start to zone out during class you are probably going to recover pretty quickly with the teacher 5 feet away from you.

wilbjammin

Actually, research has proven that the students that sit in front of the class get better grades. I don't really have the time now to find the articles that prove this, but at least 4 of my professors in the College of Education have told me this. You might do a search in ERIC's database of you're interested in finding the exact research.

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ubertuber

Will,
Which one would you say is generally the cause and which is the effect? I think there are definite advantages to sitting in front. In my education though, when seating arrangements were optional (continuing in grad school today) the students that sat in front were the ones that would have gotten good grades anyway because they were engaging in other constructive behavior (like note-taking and handing in their homework on time). I am really curious about your take on this since you are studying it.

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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

Mantus

Indeed. The students that choose to sit at the rear do so because they want the least amount of attention from the teacher.

hiredgun

I would assume that those who published the report that wilbjammin referenced controlled for that possibility by isolating classrooms in which students had no choice on where to sit (thereby eliminating self-selection as a confounding factor).

yatzr

has anybody else ever seen anything as extreme as my school though? Only two people (twins though so it should probably only be considered one person and they didn't attend the public elementary/middle schools anyway) with last name past the letter N in the past 3 years that graduated in the top 10 percent. I think that's pretty extreme. Also, I can hardly even remember much alphabetical seating, and whenever we did, it would only be for the first quarter to help the teacher out with names.

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Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targets.

CoachAlan

I did a Google search on "high school 'top ten' graduate" and here's the distribution I found by the time I stopped clicking:

A - 2
B - 3
C - 7
D - 5
E - 1
F - 3
G - 8
H - 2
I - 1
J - 1
K - 0
L - 3
M - 5
N - 1
O - 2
P - 3
Q - 1
R - 4
S - 5
T - 3
U - 0
V - 5
W - 1
X - 0
Y - 0
Z - 3

It's a pretty small sample size, but the selection was pretty impartial. Draw your own cnclusions from the distribution... A helpful tool would be to compare this distribution with the distribution of last names among all students of this age. If the distributions largely match up, then it's pretty safe to say that there's no alphabetical bias. But if they don't then it warrants more investigation.

And yes, I have too much time on my hands.

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VTBrian

I don't really think there is much of a trend. Our valadictorian's name started with an s. We had a couple of top ten students in the Ws. Granted my class could have been the exception.

ibis

Could it be that socioeconomic groups are somewhat split, when it comes to order of last name in the alphabet, like your graduating class?

sapiens

I wouldn't assume that. I've seen so many studies published with poor/no controls. Ugh! Regardless, your suggestion for proper controls was a good one.

Has anyone actually seen any empirical evidence from properly controlled studies for the alphabetical order of last names being correlated with grades?

Zeld2.0

Well in my area there is a pretty heavy split in race. Our high school was (believe it or not) 50% asian, 35% hispanic, and then there was the rest (white, black, etc.).

This might sound stereotyping to people but this was the truth (from transcripts and records) - the Asians tended to have higher average GPAs. The valedectorian/salutatorians were almost always Asian (in the last 10 years at least). This tended to place more Asians in the top 10 so last names obviously were slanted towards the more common ones (namely C, L, W).

Of course that is nothing conclusive at all and is a really small sample size, but that is the *racial* factor one might put into play. If a race in an area generally performs higher on average, that might place more in certain last names.

synic213

In addition to racial factors, it seems to me that the majority of all last names fall within the first half of the alphabet. Juts looking at my local phone book, 62% of the last names begin with letters A-M. This means I would expect 62% of top10 students around here to have last names beginning with A-M.

This bias towards the beginning of the alphabet holds true for other categories too. Look at band names, the majority begin with a letter in the first half of the alphabet. Same thing for movie titles. Because we do things alphabetically, I think this will always be the case.