As I touched on in my last post, the concept of equality is very complex and although it appears to have a straightforward definition, it is actually quite dynamic and interpretive. With that, the most difficult part of transforming our school system and providing equal opportunity is having Americans realize that these problems cannot be fixed solely by money. In order to see progress, we must change the way we think and view the world, as well as what we believe is the purpose of our existence. I’m still not sure whether equal opportunity is attainable, or at least not in the way that most people interpret it. Included in changing the way we think, is understanding that pure equality does not exist with humans and if it did, it would only result in uniformity and restrictions. In that way, we must accept that each human is unique and thus variations will always exist in every aspect of society, including education, wealth, religion, and political policy. Creating equal opportunity does not mean leveling, or producing identical students and schools, it means establishing equal concern and preventing actions that exclude persons from equal membership in a shared community. The school system must be designed in a way that provides students with options and offers equal access to different programs based on interest and skill level, rather than location, income and social status. When equality is allowed to be interpreted in a simple and standard way, it normally results in counter productiveness, which is what is occurring in many different areas of our education system. Listed below are a few examples of how the misinterpretation of equality has resulted in a move backwards instead of forwards for our schools.
1. Title IX and the inequality in men's and women's intercollegiate athletics often limits athletic options, instead of improving them. For instance, at Brown University they proposed the solution of cutting the number of opportunities available to male athletes until they reached parity with the lower number of opportunities for female athletes, which has also occurred in colleges all over the country. Glorious
2. After losing an equal protection challenge to its males-only admissions policy, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) threatened to become private and very expensive in order to remedy the problem instead of admitting women.
3. In response to the successful challenging of inequality in public school funding, the former Governor of New Jersey, Christine Whitman, proposed a plan to level down spending in wealthier school districts in order to reach equality with poorer districts. This has occurred all over the nation and although it improves under privileged schools, it also punishes schools that are able to raise money within the community, which completely defeats the purpose of improving schools.
4. Many of the school districts that have been charged with discriminating against gay and lesbian student groups in violation of the federal Equal Access Act have responded by banning, or threatening to ban, all extracurricular student clubs.
5. NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND results in LEVELING
The list goes on and on, but I think you get the point that if we continue to have such a literal interpretation of equal opportunity, we will actually create more problems than we solve. Before we can even attempt to outline a plan for equal opportunity, we must first make it plausible, which requires a complete rearrangement of the public schools that gives all students more freedom in choosing their own path based on their individual wants and needs. This of course requires every aspect of the school to be changed, which most Americans do not believe is possible without a huge tax increase. I’m not going to go in depth about this point, as I’ve already touched on it before, but just remember that ever-growing number in the upper right corner of the page. I bet a lot could be done to our school system with $512 BILLION, especially if the community is able to work together towards a single goal.
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