A recent flap in a Berkeley high school reveals what a farce “fairness” can be.
Because this is ultra-liberal Berkeley, perhaps we should not be surprised that a proposal
has been made to eliminate four jobs as science teachers and use the money saved for programs
to help low achievers.
In Berkeley, as in many other communities across the country, black and Latino students
are not performing as well as Asian and white students.
In fact, the racial gap in academic achievement at Berkeley High School is the highest in
California—no doubt a special source of embarrassment in politically correct Berkeley.
According to the principal, “Our community at Berkeley High School has failed the African-Americans.”
Therefore “We need to bring everybody up—that’s what this plan is about.”
Surely no one, not even in Berkeley, seriously believes that you will “bring everybody
up” by eliminating science teachers.
This is a proposal to redistribute money from science to social work, by providing every
student with advisors on note-taking, time management and other learning skills.
The point is to close educational gaps among groups, or at least go on record as trying.
As with most equalization crusades, whether in education or in the economy, it is about
equalizing downward, by lowering those at the top.
“Fairness” strikes again!
This is not just a crazy idea by one principal in Berkeley.
It is a crazy idea taught in schools of education across the country.
A professor of education at the University of San Francisco has weighed in on the controversy
at Berkeley, supporting the idea of “projects designed to narrow the achievement gap.”
In keeping with the rhetoric of the prevailing ideology, our education professor refers to
“privileged” parents and “privileged” children who want to “forestall any progress
toward equity.”
In the language of the politically correct, achievement is equated with privilege.
Such verbal sleight of hand evades the question whether individuals’ own priorities and
efforts affect outcomes, whether in education or in other endeavors.
No need to look at empirical evidence when a clever phrase can take that whole question
off the table.
This verbal sleight of hand is not confined to education.
A study of incomes of various groups in Toronto concluded that Canadians of Japanese ancestry
were the most “privileged” group in that city.
That is, people of Japanese ancestry there had higher incomes than members of other minorities
and higher than that of the white majority in Toronto.
What makes the “privileged” label a particularly bad joke in this case is a history of blatant
discrimination against the Japanese in Canada in years past, including a longer internment
during World War II than that of Japanese Americans.
But, to some on the left, the very concept of achievement must be banished by all means
necessary, regardless of the facts.
Achievement by overcoming obstacles is a special threat to the left’s vision of the world,
and so must be magically transformed into privilege through rhetoric.
Those with that vision do not want to even discuss evidence that students from different
groups spend different amounts of time on homework and different amounts of time on
social activities.
To admit that inputs affect outputs, whether in education, in the economy or in other areas,
would be to undermine the vision and agenda of the left, and deprive those who believe
in that vision of a moral melodrama, starring themselves as defenders of the oppressed and
crusaders against the forces of evil.
Redistribution of material resources has a very poor track record when it comes to actually
helping those who are lagging, whether in education, in the economy or elsewhere.
What they need are the attitudes, priorities and behavior which produce the outcomes desired.
But changing anyone’s attitudes, priorities and behavior is a lot harder than taking a
stance as defenders of the oppressed and crusaders against the forces of evil.
To the extent that doing the latter misdiagnoses the problem, it makes solving the problem
even harder.
That does no good for those who are lagging, however much it exalts those who pose as their
defenders.
“Fairness” indeed!