I have no problem with mockery being the general response to someone claiming an award they don’t deserve. I’m fine with mockery,as you may have noticed :). In this specific case, if someone’s mocking the kid with Downs Syndrome, they’re a douchebag.
The difference between mocking someone who unjustly claims an honor, and preventing them from making that claim, is that the former focuses on the person who made a bad decision, and the latter focuses on the person with the genuine award. I don’t think people with genuine awards need any sort of protection.
Maybe a backwards letter? He’d think it was fine looking in a mirror.
I opened this thread assuming people would be universally appalled by the school’s actions. Wow. Y’all ok with him getting a diploma at graduation, or would that offend the rest of the class?
If he earns a diploma, he should get a diploma. If he doesn’t earn a diploma, and his parents buy him a fancy piece of paper, that doesn’t mean he gets to go on stage at the ceremony with all of the people who did earn diplomas.
At my high school, you could earn a letter for band and drama, as well as for the sports. I thus earned a letter (two, actually) despite not being on any competitive team of any sort. Did I earn my letters? Yes, because I met the requirements set forth by the people who were deciding such things. If my school had decided not to award letters for those activities, I would not have been allowed to wear the letter, and that would also have been reasonable and appropriate.
And no, I don’t think there ought to be laws against this sort of thing. School policies, however, are another matter. And if the school wants to have a policy against non-letter-earners wearing a letter on school grounds or at school events, that’s their business. The kid can still wear it anywhere but at school, and the school can’t do anything about that.
So I take it your high school didn’t award anyone with a certificate of attendance in lieu of a real diploma so that they could still walk with everyone else, despite not having fulfilled all the requirements?
A letter and a diploma aren’t even in the same universe. A school doesn’t set the rules for who gets a diploma and who doesn’t. The state does. Receiving a high school diploma makes a person eligible for jobs, military, and college. But a school letter has no gravitas beyond whatever trumped-up reverence a bunch of adolescents and their adolescent-thinking parents give it. It signifies only whatever the school says it does–and even that should be up for the people who are served by that school to decide. The opinion of one disgruntled parent shouldn’t override the opinions of those who aren’t bothered by this kid wearing a letter.
The honor for the athletes who believe they legitimately earned their letters is not in any way diminished by this student wearing a letter jacket. If the school didn’t give him a way to “earn” a letter jacket, that’s hardly his fault. Let him wear the jacket. It doesn’t hurt anyone. Honestly, the parent who complained and the school officials who took action need to have a serious talk with themselves.
As overwrought as this is making you Monstro, insulting kids and parents you’ve never met and all, I must presume some sort of unresolved backstory inolving you, a letter, and perhaps a moose.
I keep hearing people mention the need to earn such a honor. Am I undertsanding this right, that the only reason this activity doesn’t merit a letter is because the school or the district has decreed it so? I realize the same could be said of any letter-worthy activity, but is there some reason or criteria that would make clear why this kid’s activity doesn’t make the cut? Because it sounds to me as if he “earned” one as much as anyone else, save for the school’s decree that this one doesn’t count.
I could easily accuse you of the same thing. What, did one of your classmates destroy your high school experience by wearing a letter they didn’t earn?
If the student body votes to let the kid wear the letter and in the process changes the policy so that letters are no longer the sole domain of varsity athletes (who already get plenty of accolades anyway), would this be a horrible travesty in your eyes?
This will probably be surprising to you - but there actually are school systems which don’t issue diplomas to students who don’t meet specific requirements and which issue some other sort of credential to special ed students who are unable to meet the requirements.
I don’t think the whole “varsity letter” thing has any meaning, and it certainly doesn’t have any meaning beyond whatever the students and parents give it- but neither do all sorts of other awards. Different high schools have different levels of sports teams- my son’s had freshmen, junior varsity and varsity. Other schools also have intramural teams. If a school awards varsity letters only to those on the varsity team, then those on the freshman, JV and intramural teams don’t get letters. And as I said, I think the whole “letter” thing is meaningless- but apparently this mother doesn’t and apparently she thinks it has a meaning beyond " I play on the varsity team" . Because if she thinks it’s meaningless, then there’s no reason to buy it for the kid. It’s not like he and his special ed teammates are the only kids in the school without the letters- the JV, freshman, sophomore and C (club?) team athletes don’t have them either because they don’t play at the varsity level. And the the non-athletes don’t have letters either. She must think it means something beyond “I play on the varsity team” - because he doesn’t actually play on the varsity team.
I certainly don’t think there needs to be a law against it, and I actually don’t even think the school needs to have a policy against it. But I do wonder what good the woman could think would come of this. The best case scenario I can imagine involves a whole lot of people wondering silently " Who does she think she’s fooling?". Because although it may have only been a single parent who called to complain, that doesn’t mean the rest of the parents and students agree with her that letters shouldn’t be restricted to varsity athletes but should be given to all athletes.
I don’t think it would be a travesty if the students voted to change the rules- but I suspect that some people would think it was a travesty if the students voted not to change the rules. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this woman herself would think it a travesty if they voted to change the rules so that any enrolled student could wear one, even those who are not " there on Fridays, that plays their hardest and to the best of their capability, regardless what that is."
Right, because you’re not remotely coming across as having way too much of your own identity wrapped up in a letter you got way back in high school, not remotely coming across as way too aggro about it even today, way too willing to think that everyone else hasn’t gotten over their high school experience either. Way to double down on the personal attack angle there.
I think it’s semi-reasonable for the school to request he not wear a letter he didn’t earn.
That said, they should provide a way for him to earn one. Especially since, these days, letters can be a earned for a lot more than just varsity sports. I think letters should be awardable for pretty much any circumstance in which an upperclassman is contributing to the school community in an above-and-beyond / best-of-their-ability way.
Step off, dude. You got pantsed by a jock decades ago. Time to move on.
What I am seeing in this thread is the dismissal of athletic accomplishment as just not mattering. In many schools, including the one where I teach, a varsity letter is the result of countless hours of training, practice, and competition. Only the varsity athletes get them. Nobody else. The athletes who have them busted their asses to get them. We also have national honor society which requires honor level grades and approval from every teacher. Nobody else gets in. The kids who are in NHS busted their asses to get it too. They spent countless hours studying and going beyond the basic class requirements. I can’t see one good reason for a kid who hasn’t earned these things to go around wearing the jacket or pin that says he has. YM clearly does V.
The question is “what constitutes earning?” What’s the criteria for deciding something is worthy of a letter or not? If it comes down to “whatever the school says” without some reasonably objective rationale, then I think the kid has a legitimate beef. All the “you have to earn a letter” guys seem to have concluded this kid didn’t. If the only reason he didn’t is arbitrary–the school says this doesn’t make the cut, because they say so–that seems shitty. That doesn’t mean the mom handled this well.
I see a considerable difference in not admitting someone into the NHS and not letting someone wear an article of clothing that their parents purchased for them.
What do you think of a student who has not been amitted to NHS wearing a membership pin?
I’m just not big at all on people falsely presenting themselves as having earned honors or falsely claiming membership in organizations of which they are not a part. Such people are plainly and simply liars. We should not be teaching kids, special needs or otherwise, to lie about their accomplishments. In this case, the whole mess is mom-driven, so I would say she is actually the liar.
Actually, in my mother’s day, you could letter in all kinds of thing. My mother lettered in debate. My father had two letters, one was for something academic, and one was for junior ROTC. You used to be able to letter in drama, and music.
I asked my high school VP why we couldn’t letter in drama when I was there, and apparently the money for the letters had to come out of the program’s budget, which was a lot smaller than the athletics budgets (plus, they were allowed to sell advertising in their programs, and refreshments at the games, and we couldn’t sell advertising, or food during intermission). And letters are expensive, don’t ask me why.
Spec.Ed students who aren’t in diploma-earning programs get a certificate of completion. At each IEP meeting in high school, everyone decides what the student can do that year that will challenge him without overwhelming him, and if he stays on track and meets all his goals, he gets a certificate of completion, in the same frame as a diploma. Students who successfully earn them get to participate in graduation exercises, as long as they are capable of doing so. Those certificates of completion represent a lot of work for the students who earn them.
Wow, that’s just pathetic, like, literally pathetic. I almost typed out my relationship with my school’s athletic types back in the day, but realized that’s no more interesting to anyone than the details of my D&D characters–one would hope you’d realize the same thing about your own high school experiences. I’ll just say that my relationship with those guys, while not exactly friendly, was very far from what you’re imagining, and I don’t feel remotely abused by them (heh), and leave it at that.
You’re right that I don’t think athletic accomplishment is particularly important, any more than I think there’s anything particularly important about, say, having a level 20 druid. Both are things people do for entertainment, and while I’m happy for them to have those entertaining experiences, I don’t particularly need to honor them. And if someone else wants to wear the jacket, there are far more important things for me to get exercised about.