From “Teacher who gave zeros won’t appeal suspension – Legal costs too high for failed appeal”(CBC News, Jun 8, 2012), we learn,
The Edmonton [Alberta, Canada] physics teacher who broke school policy by giving zeros to his students has decided not to appeal his suspension.
Lynden Dorval, a 35-year teaching veteran, had until Friday to file an appeal. He consulted with a lawyer who told him that based on past cases, his odds of winning are slim — a position also taken by the Alberta Teachers’ Association.
Dorval became a hero to many for refusing to comply with the so-called ‘no-zero’ policy for incomplete assignments and missed tests at Edmonton’s Ross Sheppard High School.
The thinking behind the policy, which was adopted by the school a year and a half ago, is that a failure to complete assignments is a behavourial issue, and marks should reflect ability, not behaviour.
The commenters currently visible on the page are appropriately blistering.
This is the sort of moral bankruptcy combined with educational incompetence that drives parents who care to private, voucher, or charter schools, extensive tutoring, or homeschooling in increasing numbers – all the while they are forced by law to fund the bankruptcy and incompetence aimed at other people’s kids.
Kids their own kids will have to live with, employ, or be employed by.
This is what the grand fight for free, compulsory public education has come to, 150 years later.
Just for the sake of responding: Ability and behaviour are not separate in the real world, which is what high school is supposed to prepare students for: = You can’t do a good job with a bad attitude. Change your attitude or find another job. Getting a zero in some high school assignment is not nearly as serious as getting fired. The traditional system was structured as a practice run for the real game of life.
See also: (World’s) Number One educational system dumps Darwinism. Inferior systems, like the ones in North America, are beset with groups like the Darwinists, using litigation to force their beliefs on the system while science findings are failing to support them – while other groups shelter students from needed life lessons.