Rational Education Policy?
Leon McGinnis

Public education is coming dangerously close to requiring that all children learn the same thing at the same age. How can such a societal decision possibly be justified? It flies in the face of the fact that each child is different, and learns different things at different times, and with different levels of interest. However, such a requirement must be rational from some point of view; the challenge is to find that point of view and understand it!

If all children were given exactly the same curriculum, then it would be (theoretically) possible to give them all a standard test on that material. By looking at their results, we could make two specific kinds of evaluations. We could tell where a given child stands with regard to all other children, i.e., how well that child has performed relative all other children. We also could tell how each teacher stands with regard to all other teachers, i.e., how that teacher's class performed relative to all other teachers. One could argue that such measures would be useful for performance tracking, for diagnosing problems, and for evaluating the efficacy of problem resolution.

However, what this fails to recognize is what has not been measured! The test has not measured the child's learning in areas not covered by the test, and it has not measured how much the child has learned under the tutelage of this particular teacher. Both clearly bear on any assessment of either learning or teaching. At least if one wants a rational assessment.

How are the results of the standard test to be used? For example, suppose every child in one school tests at the 90th percentile on one topic, and at the 10th percentile on one topic. Will effort be expended during the coming year to maintain the 90th percentile performance? Or will effort be expended to raise the 10th percentile performance? The answer is obvious, because such tests are intended to be diagnostic tools for discovering deficiencies, not for discovering excellence. This, of course, completely ignores the fact that there will always be 50% of the students who are below average, and begs the question, "What do we really want?"

If all children were given exactly the same curriculum, then it could be argued that they are being treated equally or fairly. No student is being given an advantage.

This might be rational if all children were identical in their capabilities, their interests, their readiness, and their motivation. But children are not identical. To treat them as if they are identical is manifestly unfair to almost everyone. Those whose capabilities, interests, readiness, and motivation are not adequate to the prescribed curriculum topic of the moment will suffer, as will those for whom the prescribed curriculum topic of the moment is old hat. The former group learns that they are "dumb" and the latter group learns that they should act "dumb" so as to not attract attention to themselves.