Professor Jonathan Turley: Eliminating Gifted Programs Will Produce ‘Equity Through Mediocrity’
“part of a campaign to eliminate racial disparities”
Schools are eliminating gifted programs in the name of equity. This is absurd and will only succeed in holding back students who should be allowed to flourish.
Professor Jonathan Turley writes at The Hill:
Achieving equity through mediocrity: Why elimination of gifted programs should worry us all
Journalist H.L. Mencken once denounced public education as an effort “simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” Mencken’s fears may be coming true in a way that few of us thought possible just a few years ago.
While much of our public debate today has centered on the teaching of the concepts of systemic racism and white privilege, a far more worrisome trend is sweeping our public school system. Across the country, school districts are removing advanced programs and even standardized testing to achieve an artificial appearance of equity. Indeed, it promises a kind of equity through mediocrity that all families should reject.
This movement was on display this week after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the elimination of the Gifted and Talented (G&T) program for the city’s school system. G&T programs have been denounced by some as racist because a disproportionate number of white and Asian students are in the advanced programs. The move is part of a campaign to eliminate racial disparities not by elevating the performance of minority students but by removing standardized testing and special programs that highlight such disparities.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
These are the most racist actions of all. The presumption on the part of the ruling elite is that people of color can never achieve more, so we will pull down everyone. The elites want a nation of sheep. They want people who can’t think critically. They want people who can’t counter what has been decided and who are dependent upon government. A nation of dumbed down, drug addled, entitled sheep who blindly follow the directions of the government / elite overlords is where we are headed.
There has been tension over multi-tracked education for as long as it has existed. People don’t want their kids labeled as “disadvantaged” and they resent when other people’s kids are labeled “advanced” or whatever the local terminology is.
Race became injected into this issue because, these days, race is injected into everything, whether it makes sense or not.
In sports, particularly, and in music people have been “tracked” forever. Where is the “equity” there? When I was a kid, I played with all the neighborhood kids and what (tracked) class we were in at school was irrelevant. This is a modern phenomenon. IMO the situation would be resolved within one generation with $$$ following the child for every last one (universal school choice) and keeping the thugs out of schools.
How about a charter school catering to gifted students?
Forcing dumb people to be intelligent is impossible. But, it would be possible to dumb down intelligent people to a lowest common denominator!
That path to utopian equality can be achieved with inexpensive means, such as a little lead in the water or outlawing bike helmets, car seats and prenatal care.
Parents…love your children. They grow up way too fast and all y’all can go back to your precious “careers” soon enough.
Governors….live your people and decriminalize school truancy.
Well, if you are in Oregon and don’t kneed readin’
writen’ and ‘rithmatic; you don’t knead a gifted program!
A nation that does what it can to thwart talent is surely headed for mediocrity, at best.
You’d think they’d ask themselves, “Who’s going to create all that wealth we want to redistribute if we prevent achievers from creating it in the first place,” but apparently they’re not smart enough to figure that out.
Just as Fido doesn’t know or care how dog food got into that can, the Equity Uber Alles crowd can’t seem to figure out that someone’s got to put it there before they can hand it out.
The only people they really care about handing it out to, would be themselves. When the well goes dry, they figure to be dead and gone anyway.
China is busy educating their students in math and science and laughing at our deliberate dumbing down of education.
What country deliberately commits suicide?!