A Coalescence of Ideas

One of the great advantages of having nothing to do and a brain that stores trivia in random and inconsistent ways is that I get to make connections between conversations that I have had, sometimes years apart, and things that I am reading now. As I have mentioned before, I am in constant awe of how things flow and connect within my limited internal universe.

For example: a number of years ago I was having a discussion with a very good friend. The general topic was unions and I was ranting on about how unfair it was that unionized employees got such great pay and benefits while the rest of the employed got, in comparison, so little. I further suggested that it was the unionized employees who voted for Mike Harris in Ontario in 1995 in an attempt to maintain their comfortable status quo. I don't think I was suggesting that we do away with unions but rather that they were taking more than their fair share. My friend did not agree with me reminding me that rather than reducing unionized workers down to the pay level of non-unionized workers, the task was to raise everyone else up to their level.

Just last Sunday I was having a hot chocolate after the Cedar Farmer's Market and somehow the three of us started to talk about education and how poorly and sometimes how discriminating our system was preparing some of our young people for the world that they would have to live in. I mentioned that the school system had always tried to "weed out" those it thought did not belong. I, and as it turned out, another participant in the conversation had both experienced the aggressive streaming of our school systems when we were younger. I, for example, was encouraged to leave school in grade nine as I was deemed "too stupid" to go to university.

In this month's Walrus (I am behind in my reading), there is an article about those students who are deemed to be "gifted" and therefore get to attend different classes and sometime even schools that cater to students who have the capacity to excel. The article suggests that students from middle and upper class white families are over represented in those enriched classes; that those students have an unfair advantage in getting into those classes.

My initial reaction to the article especially after my conversation on Sunday, was what else is new? Of course the system is discrimatory. School have always been a defender of and an advocate for the class system. There is no reason think that things will change anytime soon. The Walrus article in part seems to argue that we need to ensure that all students, regardless of their background, ethnicity or who their parents have the right to access such individualized and exceptional programming. The article does go on to point out that if more students leave the general classroom to participate in the gifted classes, then system will be even more dysfunctional (my words not the authors).

In that strange fashion that my brain functions.... the conversation from years ago, the one on Sunday and the Walrus article all coalesced into an almost seamless discussion within my mind. I am in favour of ensuring that children who have an exceptional talent in any area, are given the opportunity to develop that skill. I accept that it is incredibly difficult to teach a range of students in one classroom where some of the students are highly motivated and others are either bored or disinterested in the subject matter. It should surprise no one that in a classroom of 30 plus students there will be a wide range of interests and capacity to learn at any one time. If there is a strength to our democratic educational system it is our capacity to be encourage individuals to be different.

It struck me however, similar to my discussion with my friend, the proponent of unions, who argued that we need to raise everyone up to the highest level of pay and benefits, we should not be taking students out of the classroom to give them extra learning opportunities, but rather we need to find ways to raising everyone's educational experiences within that classroom. That the task is not to ensure that that we reduce all the classrooms to the lowest common denominator of educational expectations but rather that we raise it up to the highest level for everyone. To create a system that says all students are equal but some need (read deserve) more than others is just to perpetuate a class system.

We should be able, with all of our resources and skills, to develop a system that supports all students without leaving some behind.