School shouldn’t be about equality

The public, like many politicians, tends to assume that they are experts in the field of education solely because they have been experiencing the effects of schooling for 13 years. It’s understandable, but surely nobody believes they are experts in web design after having spent a decade on Facebook.

Besides, education is so much more than just school: it’s about the home, the family, the community, the administrators, the trustees, the council, the board, the government, the world, the culture. To think that education exists mostly in the classroom is ironic: after all, we spend only 5 hours per day (1 hour is for recess and lunch), 5 days per week, in a classroom. Children and youth are educated through the media, through their friends, through socialization, even if that means learning not to go in front of someone in a line at the cashier.

However, it seems that the current trend (in the loosest sense of the word) is that school should be equal for all. This is especially true of the No Child Left Behind Act of Congress from the United States, where state assessments are developed to assess basic skills to help improve individual outcomes. The key in this Act is the emphasis on testing, especially state testing, meaning all students need to take the same test at the same time to ensure equality.

Equality is not equity.

Equality is not the best answer to any nation’s problems, unless all of its students have exactly identical learning profiles with exactly identical learning needs with exactly identical cultures. What works for one student may be a total disaster for another because their process of understanding may be different.

Many politicians (and citizens who are uninformed but have good intent) would exclaim, “But that isn’t fair!”

And that’s completely all right. Why should school be fair? Why is flattening everyone’s abilities a good way for everyone to learn? Or is learning not the priority of education in modern times?

Some of the criticisms of NCLB are that it violates the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which basically says that if a student’s IEP states that they need a question read to them out loud, the teacher may do so. However, because NCLB emphasizes on “equality”, all students must do the tests in one way, and in one way only: sit at a desk with paper and pencil (and eraser), and they must read the questions silently to themselves with no assistance from teachers. Moreover, NCLB was enacted after IDEA, so NCLB may trump IDEA in areas where they differ.

This means that blind students would receive a zero.

Schools should be aiming for equity instead. Equity is when you help the students in whichever way they can (obviously in accountable, responsible, and ethical ways) so that all of them are able to achieve the same goal. So if you want everyone to be able to understand algebra, and some kids require algebra tiles, you give the kids that need algebra tiles the resources. Kids who don’t need algebra tiles don’t get any, unless they request them to deepen their understanding (and that you can see they are not merely playing with them to build structures).

Reformers are currently supporting the notion where everybody receives 2 sandwiches, even though Bobby may need 3 sandwiches to be full. Everyone else is doing fine, but Bobby is always hungry. Ron may only need 1 sandwich to feel full, so he never even touches his second sandwich, leaving it to go to waste.

That shouldn’t be the goal in schools. The goal should be helping everyone feel full and nourished.

Equality is out, equity is in. Equitable teaching practices help all students achieve the same goal: understanding the concept. Equality devalues every student’s needs, and does more harm than good in leaving children behind. The usual “slow” group does get left behind, that much is known: special needs, behavioural disability, learning disability, learners whose learning styles are not dominantly visual/audio, etc. Learners in the “fast” group are also left behind through the pedagogy of equality: gifted children, students who understand concepts faster than the teacher anticipates, students whose learning styles are so attuned to the dominant trends that they excel. These “fast” students are left with nothing to nourish their thirst for knowledge because the teacher would emphasize on equality.

Educators of all types (not only in schools, but also in the family) need to realize that we actually don’t want our schools to be fair. No, we want them to be equitable. We want them to instil accountability and responsibility in the leaders of our futures. Assessments should be equitable. It’s a hard journey, but nobody said it would be easy. Equity ensures that students are able to reach the same goal and achieve success.

Equality is not fair to everyone.