We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…
Everyone is equal before the law.
Teachers should treat all students equally.
One platitude after another…
Who can disagree with these assertions?
After all, isn't treating everyone equally the same as fairness?
Teaching is Different than Running a Lunch Counter
This article is about providing love, service, protection and caring instruction to every child.
In fact, children of illegal immigrants, the children of the same religion of the terrorist airplane hijacker, the children who come to school wearing the same dirty tee-shirt for weeks at a time…deserve to be treated fairly.
But, for all the compassion, empathy and caring that teachers hold; for all the dedication that teachers donate to students and our society by perfecting their instructional skills; treating children equally is unfair. In fact, treating children equally turns out to be stingy, uncaring and unkind.
Here we expose some of the effects of the "Treat/ Teach all children equally" prescription…
Since No Child is the Same, Squeeze them All into Grade-Level Achievement Molds
The factory model of education is "efficient" because it processes large numbers of children…cheaply.
"Two chickens in every pot and a car in every garage" are great ideals…except for vegetarians; or for the person who wants their car to be something other than black, and who doesn't want to have to use a hand crank to start the car.
And, keep children in lockstep for at least a year. If they try to move too fast, keep them busy, "let them play on the computer" until the other children catch up. (We will be integrating technology into instruction.)
What if a child could "move up a grade" after only two or three months. Would the trauma be greater for the child (in holding the child back, separating the child from friends), of for the system (in making adjustments, creating new class rolls, changing computer entries)?
And, force every teacher to pretend to like every student. The truly likeable ones will fail to learn how valuable their charm and grace are; and the unlikable children will fail to learn what personality traits it takes to succeed in the real world.
Since Each Child's Exhibits Many Talents, Abilities and Gifts; Narrow Instruction to Test-Taking Abilities
This strategy is unfair to everyone. Even the children who find test-taking to be easy, even fun, are mistreated and "dis-serviced" because test-taking skills serve no useful purpose in their lives outside of the classroom environment.
In fact, test-taking skills over reach with grand expectations, are overvalued, and provide limited payoffs, even in the classroom.
And, those students who rise as "cream" in the "test-taking milk" are ill served because they come to believe that those skills will work for them in their careers and vocations. Sorry!
There is little justification for limiting a child's contribution to their education by ignoring all the skills and talents that that they have, by ignoring all the things that they can do; in favor of molding them into activities that they will seldom use (such as multiple choice test-taking).
Does anyone know of real-life situations where choices require only one mark, where choices boil down to four alternatives…with only one alternative being right and the others being clearly wrong?
Wouldn't children be better served if they learned to ask more (difficult to answer, nuanced, pin-our-politicians-down-type) questions instead of learning to provide discrete answers to shallow, uniformly-constructed questions?
Equal Portions of Pabulum for Everyone
Pabulum, Anyone?
Let our curriculum be bland and offensive to no one. Keep our language clean and "cuss-free". Model middle-of-the-road values, and chastise teachers who raise questions that cause children to question.
And, for the test that gauges Adequate (Acceptable) Yearly Progress, make that a "minimum skills test.
What this means is that the teaching target becomes minimal performance [and Oh! how deplorable when whole classrooms (or schools, or districts) full of students fail to reach this mark.]
Well, it is more deplorable when children as artists, musicians, debaters, problem-solvers, craftsmen and craftswomen, skilled tradesmen and trades women, statesmen and stateswomen, technicians, healers, teachers, farmers, negotiators, deal-makers, agents, managers, executives and traders are dealt a test-taking-skills-hand-of-Jokers instead of a flush or full house.
Spend as Much as You Have to on Education: As Long as it Don't [sic] Cost a Lot
Make sure that education is the best that money can buy, as long as it is affordable (cheap).
And watch costs so that expenditures remain under control, and see to it that no children cost more to educate (unless of course a court order forces us to spend more for the 10% or more of students that are tagged as "Special Education" students, or the increasing number who are targeted as "Bilingual.").
And, when the school's money supply tightens, remove all non-load-bearing expenditures such as art, music, P. E.…and let classroom technology become so old that the equipment is more of an object-lesson-history course than a useful tool. And by the way, eliminate recess because it "subtracts" from productive teaching time. (Isn't it time that teachers and parents, not politicians did the education math?)
And, keep categorizing teachers as "exempt employees." Translation: Brow beat teachers into working longer hours for the same pay, and convince them that they will be fired if they don't bring their students' test scores up.
Treat Individual Differences as a Curse that Must be Exorcised
How dare a child to be "different." Who do they think they are, someone special?
And, if the child is bored in school, it is their own fault. They should learn to pay better attention.
If a child finishes their assignments early, they should do more problems, look up more words, copy extra sentences from their grammar text.
We already spend more than any other nation on earth for instruction, and our textbooks are the most expensive mass-market books in the world; what gall to want to learn something that is personal and meaningful. We have our state standards.
Give Every Child a Highly Qualified Teacher: But Drive the Best Teachers Out of the Classroom with Stupid Laws and Bureaucratic Bungling
We can buy at least three "newbie" teachers for the two "old-timers"(experienced teachers) that we get rid of. If we are really lucky, we can get two for one.
Since labor costs constitute 80% of a school district's budget, the lower that we can keep labor costs, the better.
Give Uniform (Uncontroversial) Textbooks instead of Current Technology
Given technology today, students can explore our globe, examine issues and synthesize knowledge. Given textbooks, students can learn to parrot non-controversial facts and to regurgitate the opinions of groups of textbook authors who avoid toe-stepping statements that could arouse passion.
Textbook publishers are generous big businesses that write hefty campaign contribution checks. And, their lobbyists have clout. Besides, students encounter unreliable information on the Internet, and we fear that they won't be able to think for themselves and evaluate (judge) what information is correct.
Presenting textbooks with agreed upon content is the best way to ensure that "every child is on the same page" concerning what information they acquire in school. It is only fair that all students learn the same thing at the same time.
Value Some Skills and Abilities, but Reject Children who Don't Bear these Valued Skills
This is really only the flip side of providing "education on the cheap."
Translated, this means that it costs extra money to do anything extra for students.
Imagine how much it would cost if each teacher created individual worksheets for every child for every subject. The photocopy costs would "bust" the campus' and district's budget.
Now, magnify these costs for something other than photocopied worksheets, and see just how unreasonable it is to ask for anything different or extra four our students.
And, anything like art, music, or P. E. that doesn't pull its own weight, forget it. All these "extras" send costs through the roof.
Graduate Students that are Barely Employable, or, "Hold the Back" Until they Pass
Executives and business managers lament that our graduates lack the skills needed for employment. Therefore, or high-stakes-testing school environment is not delivering what the world of work needs.
There are several solutions:
- Increase the guest worker program and streamline the path to citizenship so that students from other countries can work in our country to fill open positions
Encourage our employers to relocate their companies in other countries where the pool of skilled employees is large enough
Abandon the non-functional "teach-to-the-test" strategy and provide our students with a useful (i.e., expensive) education.
Providing an equal education and an equal opportunity is less than fair if that opportunity is mediocre and minimal.
Our goal needs to be to help our students grow into becoming (to borrow an ad jingle) "all that they can be."
Anything less is second best, less than fair, deplorable, and the current state of affairs in our educational system.
Let's start our educational system on a track to deliver more of everything that our students need to succeed in their personal and economic lives; and less of the minimal, mediocre and malaise-inducing equality that characterizes a "keep it cheap" educational system.
Imagine what beautiful outcomes our schools could provide in the lives our our students if we focused upon building love, service, caring and protection into the instruction that we deliver to every child.
What would a quality school system like this look like?
We don't know because no system like this has been built.
One thing is for sure, a system that delivers on its promise to educate all children to become "all that they can be" won't be "cheap."
That's the reason that we'll continue "concentrating" on providing an "equal" education. It's the only "fair" way to distribute scarce wealth to all.
