Progressive ideology in education

Vincent J. Curtis

22 April 2014

Over the last week, the newspaper of my hometown has run a series of articles on so-called EQAO testing.  (Education Quality Accountability Office.)  It is a set of standardized tests run across the province to evaluated the educational attainments of students.  The newspaper report focused on the differences in performance generally between inner city schools, and those of the affluent suburbs.  In general, the tone of the articles was non-ideological.  However,, those individuals quoted in the articles did have an ideological bias, namely the unwarranted belief that educational outcomes ought to be the same.  Since they are not the same, something is wrong and they are ready to apply their nostrums to fix the alleged problem.

Below is a missive on the subject.

 

There is no question that each child is a special, unique, and different individual, with their own set of gifts.

 

When these unique individuals are put through the same education system, it should not be surprising that the outcome from each individual will be different.  Call these differences gaps, if you will.

 

To say that these gaps should not exist is to substitute an ideological position for a logical deduction.

 

It may seem progressive to insist that the educational outcomes of different individuals should be measurably identical, but think about what that ideological position means.

 

In order to obtain identical educational outcomes from different individuals it would require that the education each individual received be specifically tailored to enable that individual to achieve the standard, and no more.  It will also require that education be denied high achieving individuals so that they do not exceed the standard, lest that detested gap reappear.  I doubt that the educational authorities possess the knowledge necessary to put together such a program, nor would the morality of it be accepted once it became evident.  Thus we have the naked claim that different individuals ought to perform the same on the basis of nothing but ideological predilections.

 

Instead of trying to teach each child to become a good economic unit, children should be taught to be good citizens.

 

In the end, society, Ontario, and Canada will belong to the generation said presently to be suffering from educational gaps.  So long as they pay our pensions, that problem will be theirs to solve as adults, as we did.

-30-