If you have trouble reading the document below, try this link.
Videos from the two events are on the jump.
Lions Roar questions originality of Superintendent Fleishman’s commencement speech
by Village 14 | Jul 23, 2014 | David Fleishman, Newton South | 17 comments
Wow, this is big news! Strong work by Jordan.
A quick check of the Tab website shows absolutely no mention of this…hopefully they’re working on the story?
This story reminded me of this story:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/16/mansfield-school-superintendent-announces-she-will-step-down-amid-plagiarism-controversy/MQwQxRSzcsSTbRATQuS4yO/story.html
Having covered more high school graduations than I can count, I’m amazed anyone can remember any of the speeches enough to recognize language they’ve heard before. In one ear and out the other for me, I’m afraid.
This is the type of thing in life where you have the option to bring this to the attention of administration and see if they have an explanation or remedy (i.e., public apology, personnel reprimand, etc.). This kind of public embarrassment as the first approach makes me uneasy. What is the purpose other than to claim some personal badge of honor? This is not the honorable first step.
@Hoss, did you even read the article? It reads, in relevant part:
Aside from using a split infinitive [i.e., “to personally apologize”], these students appear to have upheld the highest academic and journalistic ethics. You may disagree with the newsworthiness of this story, but you cannot reasonably dispute that the steps they took to give the Superintendent a chance to respond before publishing was honorable.
*WBUR*
Ted – there’s nothing wrong with split infinitives. That rule was made up by people who held Latin up as the ideal. It’s impossible to split an infinitive in Latin, so they said it shouldn’t be done in English.
http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/What-Is-A-Split-Infinitive-And-Whats-Wrong-With-It.htm
I agree with Ted that the students certainly behaved professionally and honorably.
As for the merits of the story, the superintendent very clearly plagiarized. That’s wrong for anybody to do, but it’s particularly wrong for a member of the school system, which itself preaches about the evils of plagiarism from the third grade onward.
Too bad that the superintendent would take a shortcut like this for a kind of speech that nobody ever cares much about or even listens to. But I’m beginning to think that only a small fraction of the world’s prepared content (written or formally spoken) is actually original.
Strong work by the Tab for still having no mention of this…
And if one thought another’s speech was so moving that he would want to repeat it and share it with more people, the least one should do is cite the source, right?
It seems particularly unethical that he is denying that he even got it from Gov. Patrick which pretty much adds insult to injury.
ONE similarity might be excused from an “I don’t remember where I heard it, but I thought it was good” … but 5, almost word for word, phrases? Really?
Ted — I see what you saw now. I agree that it is newsworthy. I apologize to Jordan.
And how ironic it is that Deval prefaces his speech by joking that no one will remember what he was about to say.
Sorry to dwell on this, but I still cannot believe that the only mention of this anywhere on the web is by the Lion’s Roar, Village 14, and (within the last 15 minutes) the Newton North newspaper’s Twitter feed.
As Julia’s link points out, the Mansfield superintendent had to resign two weeks ago for doing exactly the same thing as Superintendent Fleishman.
Is this going to somehow conveniently go away?
(Ted, check out my doubly-split infinitive!)
The Globe has just posted this and notes that Fleishman will have a comment this afternoon.
…and the Tab still snoozes away, happy to be outdone by the student paper…
I would have thought this to be the kind of story that would inspire the local newspaper to send somebody in to write up overnight, but I guess I’ve been watching too many Robert Redford/Dustin Hoffman movies.
If my memory serves me well, I heard these same remarks at the Newton North graduation in June.
@Lisap: I think he usually gives the same speech to both schools, as does the mayor. It’s only fair, right? I mean, what if one of the school’s heard a better speech? 🙂
So can we ask the 2 students if they were asked to delay this release of the Lions Roar till the SC was sure that most of Newton was on Vacation?
What took them so long? Or were they just looking for a REAL apology from the Superintendent and when they did not get that they decided to go public?
Joanne: did you bother to read their article? Most of the answers to your questions are there.