Despite Thomas Jefferson’s soaring words in the Declaration of Independence, all men are not created equal. Some are taller than others, and greater height confers many advantages in life. Some are better-looking than others; we all know that better-looking people have advantages in life. Some are physically stronger, some are faster or quicker, some more athletic, and some more intelligent.
These things matter, and they most certainly matter in school.
If you happen to be one of the smarter ones, you will remember those times in school where your teacher had taught something, you got it, and then he taught the same thing again, because not everyone learned it the first time through. Since we want to believe that almost anyone can earn his high school diploma, teachers are expected to keep teaching the points necessary until everyone gets it. This, to put it bluntly, sets the education pace at the rate at which the dumber students learn.
Of course, educators know this, and have been addressing it for many years; these days they are called ‘honors programs,’ in which the smarter students have the opportunity to take classes in which the ‘slower learners’ are left out.
Vancouver School Board cuts honours programs
School board says honours programs create inequities between students
CBC News · Posted: June 16, 2021 6:07 PM PT
The Vancouver School Board is cutting honours programs for secondary school students effective this fall.
Honours math and science will be cut, and honours English has already been discontinued.
Eric Hamber secondary and Magee secondary are the last two schools to offer honours math and science, as conversations about cancelling honours programs began more than five years ago.
In an emailed statement to CBC News, a school board spokesperson said honours courses create inequities for students.
“By phasing out these courses, all students will have access to an inclusive model of education, and all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely,” the statement reads.
Fulsomely, huh? The Cambridge Dictionary defines fulsomely as “in a way that expresses a lot of admiration or praise for someone, often too much, in a way that does not sound sincere.” The Merriam-Webster gives a definition which allows, in some cases, it not to have a snarky intent, and, given the nature of the author, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be insincere, but I can see, in the evil corner of my mind, the school board not meaning it that way, but which ever individual who wrote it did.
When I read this, my mind went immediately to the notion of the ‘progressives’ when it comes to socialism. To the left, socialism means that everyone will be treated, and rewarded, equally, and that we will all have a sort of upper-middle class lifestyle. There will be no billionaires, but there will also be no poor.
Except, of course, several countries have already tried some forms of socialism: Venezuela, North Korea, the old Soviet Union, the eastern European nations under Soviet sway, and China.
What actually happened was that there were a few wealthy and powerful people, but the great mass of the population suffered through poverty and scarcity. The population were, generally speaking, more economically equal, but what they were was equally poor.
This is what the Vancouver School Board is doing. They can’t make the slower learners catch up to the smarter students, but they can hold back the smarter students to the pace of the slower ones. That, I guess, is real ‘social justice.’