Since you seem to have some trouble understanding TiefBlau, I'll summarize:Simon Hadow said:I'll address this point by point:TiefBlau said:School is as much a valid sampling of reality as irritable bowel syndrome is a valid sampling of Indian food.Craorach said:It being a high school is precisely the reason things like this should not happen. School is a setting in which we learn social norms and actions we expect to encounter in the rest of our lives.
That's fine. If you want to audition for your city's symphony orchestra, the judges owe you this kind of mentality.Craorach said:Contests of skill are not, ever, about "who puts in the most effort" in the real world. They are about who is the best in their given field.
This is a high school talent show. You could cure cancer before their very eyes and no one would take you seriously. Not nearly as seriously as the guy that juggled while sitting on a unicycle, anyways.
Completely agree. Look at all those record deals that autistic boy earned.Craorach said:Behaviour like this instils a simple idea in the minds of everyone involved, including the Autistic kid. That message is that, if someone is disabled, they should be given a free pass into situations where their disability is directly in conflict with their ability to perform.
Opportunity completely wasted on a glorified fundraising activity.
Protip: Neither school, nor the world has a fuck to give about either one. No one cares about how much self-perceived "merit" you have or how talented you are or how much you think you deserve anything.Craorach said:It also instils in the parents and students at the school the expectation that future contests at the school will not be based upon merit but upon effort.
They care about what makes them the happy. It's part of the whole "supply and demand" deal. There are many people who would rather know they're aiding the self-esteem of a boy with severe mental disabilities than sit through yet another technically competent singing performance.
You may call those people naive. I call them "high schoolers and their doting parents".
1: I'm not even sure what you're saying here. Maybe I have to know more about Indian food, I don't know, but you really didn't get your point across, at least to me.
2: The Example about the curing of cancer vs. the juggler. You seem to say that people care more about being entertained than a genuine world changing revolution in medicine (At least in your metaphor). While your point rings true on the value of high school talent shows, and that I'm caring too much, it avoids the fact that the topic isn't about wether it changes anybodies lives or not, it's about wether it was, in the context of the situation, fair.
3: I saw this in the news. Agree with you completely on this one.
4: You're point about people caring more about what makes them happy then about talent and personal merits. True; people are selfish. They'll kill friends, and say someone else did it for a handful of hundred dollar bills. But that wasn't what Craorach was talking about (Feel free to correct me on this if I'm misinterpreting this, Craorach) he was talking about real world, non-hypothetical situations like job interviews. Nobody is going to be more or less happy if they hire my friend over the autistic boy. Nobody will hire him to be anything more than a janitor out of sympathy to make themselves feel like a good person unless he can do something that another applicant can't that makes him better at the job.
It's just high school. High school talent shows don't matter. At all. They have NO bearing on reality, and anyone who thinks they do probably ought to be up there with the autistic guy.
High school talent shows are where autistic people can still win. Might as well let the kid have his fun; real life will suck for him.