The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.
That’s the first sentence of Kurt Vonnegut’s short story about how everybody with above-average intelligence, looks, or talent is chronically handicapped, by law. To enforce equality.
“Harrison Bergeron” is satire. Vonnegut exaggerates and invents. Our world will never be like the world he depicts.
But not for lack of trying.
The latest episode ripe for satire? The decision of the Vancouver School Board to kill honors programs to enforce “equity.”
What is that?
Don’t bother using an old dictionary.
Today, equity is a code word for bringing everybody down to the same low level in defiance of the real differences in abilities among students — not to mention effort expended.
The board had already killed English honors programs. Now it’s killing science and math honors programs. To foster “an inclusive model of education.”
Jennifer Katz, professor at University of British Columbia, accuses parents angry about the decision of supporting “systemic racism.”
My family has been subjected to this mentality. Years ago, my daughter was advanced in math, way ahead of other first-graders at a private school. My wife asked the teachers to give her some more difficult problems in addition to what the class was doing so that she wouldn’t die of boredom.
Answer: “No.” Reason: “Then she would be even further ahead.”
We never took our daughter back to that school. How could we? How could we knowingly keep her in a place where she would be allowed to stagnate for the “greater good” of keeping people “equal”?
Whether in my state of Virginia or in Vancouver, British Columbia, children should be free to learn, to progress. Let’s keep Vonnegut’s work fiction, not prophecy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Screenshot from Harrison Bergeron (2013)
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4 replies on “Handicapping the Best”
Not often I agree with this author, but treating ALL students as identical is clearly unfair! I am sure that many would feel completely different if the same decision was made regarding athletic competition. But I do believe that there is a solution! Instead of grouping students by age we start grouping them by their accomplishments academically! When a student, of any age, has demonstrated proficiency in Algebra 1 — move them on to Algebra 2, etc.
I’m glad I was in school long before this insanity. I learned to read before I started school and had read all of the standard reading books through 6th grade while still in second. I was a reading group by myself for years.
In the name of equity™, it is time for you to stop treating those who cannot do mathematics as if they aren’t even human when they try to comment to your ‘blog! Right now, if I don’t know that “8” “-” “1” supposedly “= seven”, this comment will be blocked! That’s just racist™!
Hehe Daniel do your best and let “equity” worry about the rest!