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Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
Going back to the Student A and B example, Student A is university bound and Student B is not, they do the same thing on the team, Student B is an Introvert and A is not. They are both failing Honors English 11. Do you think it is appropriate to accept failure from one of them and not from the other? Yes it would benefit B to go, and it might inspire him but what message would it send to A? Is it a message we want to send?
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It's too simplistic to cast this as merely accepting failure. And besides: would you allow only A to participate, and risk sending a message to B that introversion and/or non-university studies are correlated with diminished value to the team? (Maybe the correlation is valid—but is it wise to send that message under those circumstances?)
In the scenario that you envisioned, communicating the fact that you are attempting to act fairly might be difficult, because you obviously can't go describing other individuals' personal problems when you explain the selections to the team. In that case, Student A might be justifiably annoyed at being overlooked. But I'd argue that that's just adding another dimension to the problem, rather than negating the utility of the solution; now you have to manage the situation so that it is fair (in your judgment), and also that it
appears fair.
But if you can't satisfy all of the desirable criteria at once, I think it's often most important to do what's best for the student, and prepare to withstand (or deflect) the criticism that may come as a result. (This course of action obviously has many complex implications, so this is by no means an absolute rule to live by: it's just a statement of priorities.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
The difficulty in these questions is the fairness. The reason for such rigid rules is partially to protect mentors from accusations of favoritism. The real important thing is to allow an appeals process in which the mentors (or a board of them) meet with the teacher, the student, and the student's parents and discuss steps that must be completed in order to regain the right of traveling. Make sure that students and parents are made aware that the appeals process will be handled individually and privately on a case by case basis.
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I'm very much in favour of having rules that are precise and all-encompassing so that all the bases are covered, and so that unfair treatment is unlikely. But when that isn't possible or practical, building flexibility into these rules would tend to allow some sort of equitable resolution. That's a reasonable way to provide that flexibility, but its major deficiency is that it requires the student to be rejected before the situation can be resolved.
I think that ultimately, it still comes down to our priorities: in my opinion, the people making the decisions need to attempt to evaluate the relative benefits to each student as a significant part of their deliberation.