That article was both horrifying and a revelation to me, and I want to explain the latter.
I am white. I was born in 1976, and grew up in a suburb of Los Angles which was middle to upper-middle-class and had a very heavy Chinese population. Most of the families had come from either Hong Kong or Taiwan, and the kids were either born here or came here when they were no more than a few years old. At my high school, for instance, the racial breakdown was approximately 25% white, 25% various stripes of Hispanic, and 50% ethnic Chinese. I even learned a small amount of Chinese (mostly curses) by osmosis.
Just about all of my friends were Chinese. But I was never allowed to go to any of their houses. It was not until near the end of high school that I found out why: My Chinese friends were not allowed to have any friends who were not Chinese, and I was a secret they needed to keep from their parents. My Chinese friends told me that their parents were very prejudiced against anyone who was not Chinese. Non-Chinese were considered inferior, and contact between their kids and a white student such as myself would supposedly drag down their kids, and make them "common."
Anyway, the Chinese kids were very driven academically. During elementary and junior high school (for non-US readers, that's between the ages of about 5 to 13), they would attend special Chinese schools during the hours that they were not at the regular school that I attended with them. These Chinese schools would typically start when the regular school day ended, and sometimes go far into the night, as well as all day Saturday and Sunday.
At our high school, there were three types of classes in each subject: The regular class, the "dummy" class, and the advanced placement class. The Chinese kids and I took all advanced placement classes. At the beginning, there were several other white kids in those classes, and a few Hispanic kids. By the end of the first year, however, these others had fallen by the wayside, leaving only me and all the Chinese kids. I guess I had a small dose of what I now realize they were experiencing at home daily: My mother (Jewish mother stereotype) pushed me very hard academically. So I, and all of the other kids in these AP classes invariably got all A's.
Here's the mystery, which has bothered me for years, and which this article finally explained to me:
Our high school had a grade point average system whereby an A in one of the regular classes (or a "dummy" class) would count as a 4.0 towards the GPA. An A in an AP class, on the other hand, would count as a
5.0. As a result, at the end of senior year, there were 31 people (me and 30 Chinese) who had all attained an identical, highest GPA. I think it was something like 4.68. The school was at a loss. Who would they choose as valedictorian? Finally, it was decided that there would simply be 31 valedictorians. I was cool with that. I mean, who cares, right?
Massive uproar from the 30 Chinese students. This will not stand! They actually drafted a petition, which they asked me to sign. I read it carefully. It first said that having more than one valedictorian was
unacceptable. It went on to say that if there was no way of distinguishing between the 31 of us, the school administration should actually
choose one of us at random, and make that person the sole valedictorian. Kinda strange so far, but here's where it gets really weird: Their final point was that this whole random arrangement
should be forever kept secret. No one should ever know (especially parents) that there had ever been more than one valedictorian.
I thought this whole thing was stupid and didn't sign the letter. Everyone else did, however, and so the admin went along with it. Some kid (not me) was randomly chosen as valedictorian, and we all graduated and went on our merry way.
For years, I have always wondered why they were so adamant that there be just one valedictorian, to the point of using an arbitrary and meaningless random procedure (I think they used D&D dice) to ensure the point. No one would ever explain it to me. Now I know. From the OP article:
Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
...
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
The number one student. If you're not the valedictorian, you're not the number one student, and must therefore be
punished. Furthermore, if you are one of
many valedictorians, you also were not the number one student. It's like that David Merrick quote: “It is not enough for me to win. My enemies must lose.”
If there are 31 valedictorians, each and every one of them (except me, I suppose) would be punished for not "beating" the 30 others, just the same as if they had not been any sort of valedictorian at all. If only one person is to be randomly chosen as the "one true valedictorian", then at least each of them has a 1 in 31 chance of not being punished, which is better than nothing. This also explains the bizarre point about keeping this whole random thing secret: No one can every know that you have suffered the shame of tying 30 others to be "best."
In addition to explaining this life-long mystery, this article fills me with sorrow. It makes me understand the misery my friends must have been suffering in the homelife I was never permitted to see.
(that's back when I knew her; she's now out of college and presumably living on her own... Now that I'm thinking about her, I think I'll ask mom for an update)). 
, or kids-teens-young adults are more resillient than we give them credit for.
