Friday, August 31, 2007

Punishing Genius

Just for the record, I think the punishment given to Davidson senior Kyle Garchar for the now famous "WE SUCK" prank was a bit overboard. I for one am glad that we have kids with these kinds of smarts in our District. Note that both of our kids graduated from Darby. This is funny in the same way it was funny that MIT students figured out a way to make an MIT balloon pop up at mid-field during halftime of the Harvard-Yale game a few years back.

Does that mean young Mr. Garchar and his helpers should not be punished at all?

Certainly not. But the punishment needs to fit the injury and the intent.

Maybe you could sentence him to serve as a Darby cheerleader for a Darby home game. Or maybe as waterboy. Something faintly humiliating, but in the same spirit of fun.

That being said, my assessment is based on the assumption that this was a practical joke between student bodies that mutually respect each other as equals. However, if the intent by Mr. Garchar was to maliciously paint the Darby community as inferior to those from Davidson, then we need to pay attention.

3 comments:

  1. Good post. A minor quibble is that it's the nature of rivalries that schools will deem the other inferior. OSU certainly thinks MICH is inferior and vice-versa. (Michigan is superior academically - which doesn't seem to hurt the self-esteem of us OSU fans one iota. LOL! Similarly, if Davidson is academically stronger and becomes even more so, that needn't impinge on Darby's self-esteem.)

    It ultimately doesn't really matter whether Darby & Davidson are equal except in terms of the respective character of their student bodies -- because ultimately we are not judged by how smart we are or how rich we are but by the content of our character.

    It might be an overstatement, but Americans generally want good schools not for purposes of character formation (can't do that in schools anymore!) or receiving good liberal educations, but so that their kids can earn more money so they can consume more. Seems shallow.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agree with your post. I was at the game and for the most part, the interactions that I witnessed were good-natured. There were a few things said back and forth between a few students, but I don't recall seeing anything widespread. The sportmanship seemed better than what I had seen at the basketball games that were at Darby.

    Actually, the athletes themselves have been the best example in the two Darby-Davidson contests that I've been to. Both games seemed to be cleanly played.

    I have to admit - as a Darby fan, it has been enjoyable to see Darby winning most of these intradistrict games with Davidson. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've always thought that the two schools and their respective 6th grade and middle school feeders were actually similar (and very good) in performance. If you look at the latest information available from the Ohio Dept. of Education, it seems to bear that out. Of course, there is a danger of putting too much stock in standardized test scores, but it is one indication (among others) of how students in schools are performing. Below are the Performance Index Scores of the secondary schools in Hilliard.

    Davidson..105.3
    Darby.....104.2

    Memorial...99.0
    Heritage...98.7
    Weaver.....97.8

    Station...104.7
    Tharp......99.9

    I'm starting to come to the conclusion that no matter what evidence that there is to the contrary, that Davidson and Weaver (and probably Tharp, too) will always be considered considerably superior to the other schools - at least by some of the parents in the Davidson/Weaver attendance area. As long as the students in the rest of Hilliard are provided a high quality education at the secondary level (as well as the elementary level), I will be content.

    ReplyDelete