Junior Miss can save the high school.

Really.

I used to hate Junior Miss. For most of my sixteen years as a teacher, I mocked the ≥Miss-take≤ in class and in public. I worked to cut their practice hours down (they now need to finish by 10). I kept my homework and classwork at the same pitch during the run-up to the pageant as through the rest of the class. The organizers of the program hated me, and my academic ilk, for putting so much pressure on their young charges. In return, we hated it when a young lady would be failing one of our classes, but winning Junior Miss.

My hatred came from a reasonable place. I grew up in ≥Free to be, You and Me≤ household where I could recite the Carol Channing ≥Housework≤ piece by memory. My mother was insistent that my brother and I could clean the toilets and make dinner (not in that order). My sister knew how to fix a flat and kill a spider. We rooted for Billie Jean King, not Bobby Riggs.

Then, in college and after, I learned all about treating boys and girls equally in class. Girls needed to be brought out and boys needed to be controlled. I was once evaluated for how many boys and how many girls talked in my class. The key word was ≥assertive.≤ Those lessons stuck. I was never one to let the quiet girls hide in the back of the room and do the boyπs homework.

So I came to Nantucket from the uni-sex world of academia, where men and women were to be treated equally and I ran straight into the world of Junior Miss, where the senior girls spent the first term of the Senior year practicing their talent, begging for extensions, and crash dieting. All these young women that we had been teaching to be independent, critical thinkers were waxing each other for a soft-core beauty pageant.

Junior Miss is a Beauty Pageant. If you Google Search ≥Junior Miss≤ and ≥beauty pageant,≤ guess what is the first of 6000 hits? AJM.com. Both Junior Miss and Miss America make great claims about the scholarships they are awarding. Further, the judging system is virtually the same as the Miss America Pageant. At Miss America, contestants are judged on talent, interview, casual dress, eveningwear, Q& A and swim suit. Junior Miss adds academics, but has talent, interview, poise (evening wear plus Q&A) and fitness. True, Junior Miss contains no swimsuit competition. However, the choreographed, aerobic fitness routine, done in a jog-bra and tights can be just as lascivious.

A few years ago, I also realized that I liked and respected just about all of the girls who won. You canπt get more assertive, independent, and thoughtful than Aryn Perryman, Leah Day, Kate Michelsen, Perry Stover, Jessica Lucchini and Christine Hanson. Further, in spite of my (and others) best efforts, the program has grown. With eighteen women competing, most are going to get a bunch of flowers and a hug at the end of it. Whatever was making the ≥not-a-chancers≤ practice for months must be good.

Looking at Junior Miss from another point of view, I saw something worthwhile. For several months, adults and students work together on a project than means a great deal to both of them. Students are paired with adult mentors. Students must work individually and as a group in order to succeed. The entire community comes to see and evaluate the work that was done. Junior Miss is the ultimate authentic assessment. Students must be able to show the community what they have learned. Unfortunately, most of what they have learned involves line dancing and fake smiles.

Unfortunately, the high school does not offer any other authentic assessment to the community. A modern, American high school does its work behind the closed doors or abstractions and tests. Letter grades vary school to school, year to year, teacher to teacher, student to student. SAT scores are so vague as to be almost meaningless. Even the MCAS is only less vague. At the end of four years, a school hands its students and parents two abstractions, diploma and transcript, and says ≥You know what you need to know, trust us.≤ Only time will tell if the FOIL method or ≥The Merchant of Venice≤ was truly useful.

I think Junior Miss should be reformed and made the basis for the spring semesterπs work at Nantucket High School. I realize that this would mean breaking Junior Miss away from the national organization and denying one young lady the chance of a trip to Worcester, and then to Mobile, Alabama. However, the change would immensely benefit our community.

First, all seniors would need to participate. Each would be paired with a member of the community who would work with him or her, one-on-one, for a talent demonstration. Second, the ≥poise≤ portion of the contest would be replaced with an expanded talent section or perhaps a community service video showing all of the high school seniors at work. Finally, parents, future employers, and colleagues would judge the real world abilities demonstrated by the students.

If a student wishes to be a plumber, child care provider, trombonist, physical therapist, or minister, they can practice with an expert and present their work for evaluation.

Junior Miss is a sexist beauty contest that teaches our young women that their looks, poise and charm are keys to success. Junior Miss is also a collaboration between adults and students in putting on a demonstration of skills and abilities for an interested community. If the school could strip Junior Miss of its evening gowns, and clothe it in dirty jeans, it could show what a real education can be.

Do you think you could fill the auditorium for that?