I feel for you Joe. Don't want to sound trite; but such is the path of
learning sometimes. You said you are looking for information but all you
are getting is impressions. What do you mean by information? Even if there
were some legal or standard definition to offer, how important would that
be? In the end,we all have to contend with people's impressions regardless
of whether something is "legal", or whatever. I remember Mimsy saying
something about the value of the diploma being in the students talking about
it to whoever wanted to know about it. This seems so key to me.
Now, about the "fraud" thing: This word also probably means different
things to different people, right? I think conventional school diplomas are
a fraud! I tend to agree with you that if the diploma states what it is
for, then fraud is _less likely_ to be alleged- but who knows? All one can
do is hopefully deal with it in the moment at hand- talk about it to the
people interested.
I'm sure you know that there will not be a "right" way. Sometimes it's easy
to forget that when involved in these threads, eh?
Personally, I'd be very happy letting each student decide how s/he wanted to
complete his/her time at school. If they choose some "process", they can
design ,work on and complete it with a committtee. They will also have to
decide if and how this can be presented to the outside world.
All for now,
Ann Ide
----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Jackson <shoeless@jazztbone.com>
To: <discuss-sudbury-model@sudval.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 9:28 AM
Subject: RE: DSM: David Rovner's and Bruce Smith's recent posts on the
Diploma
>
>
> > If a Sudbury school wishes to enter into the process of
> > awarding some of their alumni with diplomas, it can do that.
> > If the school does this in such a way as to avoid actually
> > passing the judgement that offering a diploma implies to the
> > outside community, this seems to me a kind of fraud
>
> This is about the seventeen-millionth I have heard a diploma offered
> without giving the student a test called a "fraud", however it is
> interesting to note that I have not heard once where and how the speaker
> came under the impression that the use of the word "diploma" legally
> means there was an external evaluation given.
>
> I'm looking for information, but I feel like all I'm getting is people's
> general impressions.
>
> The following statement I made 6 days ago:
>
> > It has been mentioned that there is an expectation when a
> > person sees a diploma that the diploma was awarded as a
> > result of tests. I will not argue that there are those who
> > would make this assumption. There are also those who assume
> > the word "school" automatically indicates bells and report
> > cards. I question the idea that we should let the
> > assumptions of some in our society decide for us what the
> > word "diploma" means, much as I question them deciding what
> > the word "school" means.
> >
> > But when our diploma clearly states that for which the
> > diploma was awarded, I hardly think fraud can be alleged.
>
> has not been addressed in a post. So what can be my conclusion when
> folks continue to throw around the word "fraud" other than they simply
> want to label a practice as criminal without discussion and move on. I
> find this frustrating, and I find that I somewhat regret bringing it up.
>
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Wed Mar 27 2002 - 19:39:48 EST