Bring Back "Interpretations"

Oak Park and River Forest High School has for years produced an annual history journal called Interpretations, which featured the best student essays that had been written that year. However, last year, this important tradition was abolished; Principal Rouse claimed that the collection of student work featured too many honors-track students, making it unfair and elitist. The elimination of Interpretations was an excessive measure to confront a minor issue, and it ultimately represents a change in values at the school.

Interpretations was meant to be a representation of the absolute best student work from the history department. Honors and AP classes are generally the most challenging classes in the school and demand the highest standards of writing and analysis. It is only logical that the best essays, the ones that would be chosen to be featured in the school’s collection, would be from these AP and honors classes. Interpretations made an effort to include essays regardless of the class they had come from- my brother Greg’s essay on Russian morale during the end of World War II came from his independent study, not any class, and it was featured. The claim that the selection of essays for Interpretations represented elitist attitudes is unfounded.

Even if the administration feels that there are too many essays from honors and AP classes or students, terminating Interpretations entirely was an overreaction. The school could easily have created a quota requiring a certain percentage of papers from non-honors classes. Teachers of non- honors classes could be encouraged to submit more of their students essays. The reaction did not have to be to abolish the tradition entirely.

Interpretations represented pride in the student work of our school. The students whose papers were featured gained a sense of achievement, an accolade to put on college applications, and the experience of having something they wrote published. More importantly, the essays that went into Interpretations represented hard work and dedication to excellence in academics, and eliminating the journal implies that OPRF as an educational institution no longer cares about these values. Interpretations was one of “Those things that are best,” and if OPRF truly accepts that motto, they should allow the history department to reinstate their journal.