[MD] Quality sacrificed to equality

[Arlo Bensinger]

Craig/Ian,

Are we confusing the sentence "some things are better than others" 
with "some people are better than others"? Not "better at", mind you, 
just "better"? Is that what drives this? The need to proclaim 
superiority? Or the need to proclaim someone else "inferior"?

What we are seeing is (as is most always the case) a pendulum 
swinging perhaps too far in the opposing direction but one whose arc 
was defined by the history it opposes. Have we gone "too far" in 
creating some ridiculous situations to appease a false sense of 
"fairness"? Perhaps. Maybe. Sure. But one has to remember where we've 
been, and the gross injustices of that opposing swing before one can 
simply condemn where we are.

For every kid that is given an award so "he doesn't feel left out", 
we have children now who are given opportunities to learn in 
environments they may have failed at in the past. I can accept (but 
still be critical of) excesses in this direction, but I know the 
converse excesses, and they were no better. So one can, in good 
talk-radio hype mode, cite those ridiculously absurd cases that 
appear in the news where so-and-so school doesn't allow its teams to 
keep score, or so-and-so's class gave every student an award "just to 
make everyone feel good", but we now have a world where a child's 
failure is examined critically and rather than simply pass the child 
off a "loser" (as seems to be need for some), we can give that child 
an opportunity to excel in alternate environments. Rather than get 
our collective rocks off by hierarchically labeling people, we can do 
our best to provide the opportunity for more to excel.

And as far as I know, despite the hype examples trumpeted on 
talk-radio, there are still Valedictorians across the country, there 
were winning football seasons and losing football seasons. There was 
a spelling bee champion and someone who has to repeat the tenth 
grade. The "right" can rest assured that we are still very much a 
hierarchical people, who put those who succeed on pedestals and brush 
aside those who fail.

In the meantime, we should argue the case that "failure at" does not 
imply "failure". Nor does it imply some fixed, unchanging status. 
Conversely, we should remember that "better at" does not mean 
"better" in the sense of some existential human worth. The star 
athlete may be undeniably "better" at wrestling than his classmates, 
but can he build a wooden elephant that lights when you pull the trunk?

And as regard to "equalization" being the reason our schools "fail", 
I think a far stronger argument shows that failures we do see are the 
result of a lack of value; individual, familial and communal. Once 
again, Finnish culture places an even far greater emphasis on 
"equality" than our own, and yet their schools excel fantastically.

And now onto the nonsense. The idiotic catch phrase repeated as 
nauseum, "typical leftist...". I could argue (easily) that the most 
insidious assault on "language" going on in the modern dialogue is 
the attempt to reframe good and evil as "conservative" and "liberal", 
while it attempts to redefine the far-spectrum wing-nuts as the 
"middle" (essentially defining even the slightest movement to the 
left or right as "radical" and "evil" and a "threat to liberty"). On 
both ends of the spectrum, we have ideologues who do nothing but 
drumbeat fear, fear, fear while painting the grossest of caricatures 
of any who digress in the smallest amount from there far-wing 
beliefs. And while I expect this from ideological blowhards like 
Limbaugh and Soros, it is the height of embarrassment that it appears 
here at all, let along with such repetition and unabashed idiocy.

The tenor, then, of Platt's post was not to draw criticism or 
conversation to some examples of excess, nor to initiate a dialogue 
on the historical points our modern situation is in reaction to. It 
offers nothing except the glib, moronic "fear" that "leftists" are 
destroying education (the same way they are destroying the family, 
the nation, the individual, the economy, the environment, 
agriculture, science, healthcare, marriage and pizza pie).

And to that end it uses the Big Bad Spectre of "Social Engineering". 
Except I am just not sure what I am supposed to fear here? That 
wheelchair bound kids are given respect and opportunity? That when a 
child fails, all involved (child, family, teachers, school) should 
intervene to find out "why", and then seek to do what is possible to 
give that child a chance to excel? That if a gay child is in the 
classroom, the other kids are told to respect that? Or does this go 
all the way back to the race issue? Is this "social engineering" the 
latest buzzword for "integrating black kids and white kids"? Was 
forcing the states to recognize inter-racial marriage an example of 
evil social engineering? What about forcing communities to let blacks 
drink out of the same water fountains?

Now, are we passing kids who should not be passing. I see it often. 
And there are many reasons. And none of them are "social engineering" 
or "equalization". If you want to talk about that, I am game. If its 
just moronic fear about "leftists destroying _____", then it should 
be condemned as DMB did.

Arlo