When I came across ‘Harrison Bergeron’* and how to close the achievement gap, John Kellmayer’s guest column in the New Jersey star-Ledger, I thought, “Here they go again—another call to lower educational standards for some egalitarian utopian goal to equalize outcomes by penalizing academic achievement.”
And then I read the first paragraph, and it hit me like a welcome blast of Arctic air. I knew I’d found a really special column in this age of tribalism, racism, bastardized “equity” crusading, and mealy-mouthed opposition. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984 and Ayn Rand’s Anthem, Kellmayer opens with:
Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” was published in 1961* and tells the tale of Harrison, a handsome and gifted intellectually and athletic 14-year-old. Set in the year 2081, the United States government has finally succeeded in achieving full equality for all Americans with the passage of the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments. No one is allowed to be more intelligent, attractive, or physically gifted than anyone else. Those who are smarter must wear a device that disrupts their thinking; those who are too attractive must wear masks and those with athletic prowess must wear weights. Harrison rebels and is eventually executed by the United States Handicapper General.
Whoa! There’s more. Kellmayer doesn’t shy away from the obvious implications of that story. After this blockbuster dystopian warning of where today's fanatical new "equality" warriors want to take us, he spells out the antipode to that horrific future. He makes a crucial, greatly underappreciated point in this age of twisted "equity." Kellmayer builds on Vonnegut’s devastating condemnation of Egalitarianism, directly attacking the evil "equality of outcome" premise that dominates the Left and Democrats. And he does it with an ingredient usually missing from today’s mealy-mouthed, compromising opponents of egalitarianism: moral certitude:
Although Vonnegut’s science fiction story is certainly extreme, it illustrates something important about the achievement gap. An achievement gap is a phenomenon of a free and healthy democratic society and reflects a polarity between conflicting core values shared by most Americans. Most of us accept the sometimes conflicting principles of equality of educational opportunity and the exercise of individual liberty.
Virtually all Americans agree that all children deserve an equal opportunity for a quality education and a chance to obtain the good things in life. At the same time, however, most Americans believe that if they have the resources to ensure that their children have a head start in life — better teachers and schools, technology in the home, summer camps, private tutoring — then they have not only the right but the moral responsibility to provide their children with these advantages.
Hence, unless the nightmare future Vonnegut presented in “Harrison Bergeron” becomes real, there will always be an achievement gap. This gap will grow larger or smaller primarily as a result of societal circumstances that have nothing to do with the schools. [My emphasis]
Even as Kellmeyer accepts that governmental force be used to equalize opportunity, he recognizes that it requires the sacrifice of some individual liberty. He understands that these are conflicting principles. Equal opportunity doesn’t exist in nature outside of the freedom we all possess to take advantage of whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. But we can forgive this slip-up because Kellmayer recognizes that the equalization of opportunity is, in effect, a necessary evil, and because of the much more important points he makes.
By asserting the right and moral responsibility of parents/guardians to help their children get “a head start in life,” Kellmayer stands up firmly for individual rights. A “head start” means inequality, and Kellmayer unabashedly defends it, rather than grudgingly accept inequality as a necessary evil. He also recognizes the responsibility of culture—”societal circumstances”—in instilling respect for educational achievement.
I don’t fully agree that the schools “have nothing to do with” the achievement gap. Good educational philosophy is vital. For example, are children encouraged to think independently, or conform to the group? The Montessori Method, which instills integrated critical thinking, and Progressive Education, which eschews principles and encourages groupthink, will certainly lead to opposing educational outcomes -- i.e., “gaps.”
Because there will always be an achievement gap (and this is necessary and good in a free society), it is for the government and not the schools to address the systemic inequalities that minority and economically marginalized groups face by creating more opportunities for members of these groups.
Instead, we should redefine the problem in terms of an opportunity gap. If this opportunity gap is successfully addressed, then the achievement gap will diminish and Kurt Vonnegut’s prophecy of a dystopian future will represent only a minor footnote to this discussion. [My emphasis]
In a fully free society, in which the separation of education and state is a fundamental principle, government would have no role. But since the government does dominate education, however, Kellmayer is certainly correct that the government has a role in creating opportunities. It can expand opportunity by instituting universal school choice through tax credits or education savings accounts—in which education tax dollars follow the child, not the child’s address. The success of New Jersey’s charter school program, the project of the Administration of NJ Governor Chris Christie, points to another option for expanding opportunity. Christie’s charter program, which is wildly popular among parents in the worst performing school districts like Newark, demonstrates the vital importance and power of parental educational choice as well as showing the role the government must play.
But Kellmayer doesn’t let parents and the home environment, and the values instilled thereof, or not instilled, off the hook.
Since the 1960s, a great deal has been written about the achievement gap. Twelve years after schools were desegregated in 1954, Congress wanted to know how minority children were progressing and commissioned James Coleman and a team of researchers from John Hopkins University to find out. Coleman’s findings were enormously important then and still are today. He concluded that schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his or her background and general social context; and that this very lack of an independent effect means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood, and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school.
Andy Porter, one of the nation’s leading experts on standardized testing and the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education writes, “The gap between whites and blacks is present before children experience any schooling. By the time children are three or four, it is already a standard deviation.” [My emphasis]
Leftist egalitarians and race-baiters shriek in horror at the idea that responsibility for outcomes rests primarily with the individual, especially darker skinned individuals, whom they believe are incapable of self-responsibility. But many scholars have fingered cultural and familial failures as the source of low achievement among certain groups. De Paul University (Chicago) Philosophy Professor Jason C. Hill, for example, in his book We Have Overcome, condemns the practice of parents and community leaders, reinforced by the media and the politicians of the Left, telling children that the “system” is rigged against them and that they shouldn’t “act white” by striving to excel in school through their own self-respect, self-discipline, and hard work. This false narrative, not racism or discrimination, is the cause of underachievement that we call the achievement gap.
Kellmayer seems to understand the real source of the achievement gap and how to address it, while recognizing that achievement gaps, as such, are not a drawback but a healthy feature of a free society. He offers a breath of fresh air -- and sanity -- that one rarely finds in our current Woke-mad, “racial reckoning” state of affairs. This new "equity," redefined from "fair and impartial treatment" to "equality of outcome," is destructive of achievement, and excellence across the board. This is egalitarianism, laid bare. A war on individualism. This—nihilism—is the new equity warriors' “solution" to the achievement gap. Of course, Ayn Rand anticipated Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron character with the character Equality 7-2521 in her 1938 novella Anthem. If we want to avoid the 2081 nightmare, or the world of Anthem, we must recognize the undiluted evil of egalitarianism. Kellmayer does just that. Well said, Mr. Kellmayer.
*[full TEXT of HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a chapter in the book Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works]
Related Reading:
Chris Christie’s School Choice Achievement
‘Equity’ in Education is Inequitable and Anti-Education Excellence
School Choice Doesn’t ‘Discriminate’; It Expands Opportunity Through Liberation
The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’: San Diego’s ‘Educators’
The Comprachicos—Ayn Rand
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