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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: MLK and Jewish holidays
Message-ID: <1328@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Oct-83 04:36:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1328
Posted: Tue Oct 25 04:36:09 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Oct-83 06:20:53 EDT
References: <2550@teklabs.UUCP> <2474@utcsrgv.UUCP>, <3296@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 36

here is a solution to the "my religion has a holiday" problem. Change
the idea of tests. (well, I never said that it was going to be easy!).
If everyone wrote their tests on the day of their choice then you would
not have a problem. And any religious group that has decided that their
High Holy day was a Tuesday would not have any problem either -- they
could work Saturday or Sunday or work longer hours during the week.

Clearly this is only possible when the notion of students all over
taking "independant studies" is accepted, which may be never. 

Personally, I like the idea. No high school student need ever take a
test on a day that one feels ill. And if there is some peoblem in
your family (say a parent dies, for an extreme example) one could
wait and think about other things than the math exam you have tomorrow.

The great objection that most people have to this scheme is that the
people who have the test earlier are able to teach the people who have
the test later so that the later-takers are at a disadvantage with
respect to the earlier-takers. To me this reflects an attitude that
the schools are there to MEASURE PERFORMANCE as opposed to IMPART
KNOWLEDGE that I find very upsetting. If the purpose of an education
is to actually teach people then I would expect that it would be
a very good thing if the earlier-takers were able to teach the later-
takers. the later-takers would be taught, and the earlier-takers would
have learned something about teaching people. not to mention that if
you ever have to teach something you often end up learning the subject
better than you had before, which benefits everyone. And it gives
students the idea that teaching and helping people is something that
they themselves can do, rather than the responsibility of some government
or government agency.

It sounds very good to me. How come people look at me blankly whenever
I mention it?

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura