Streaming In Schools: Opinions (Part 6)

Categories: Opinions Series, Léo’s Insights 2018-2019 Academic Year

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I would like to say that my disagreeing with an article happens on occasion, but that would be untrue. I disagree with most articles I read in papers, journals and magazines. I try to limit my reading to media that reflects my worldview, but Christianity is now in disrepute because its enemies, while claiming the moral high ground, have said so.

Moral high ground, eh? The problem is, there cannot be a high, or low ground for that matter, when the basis for such does not exist.

Simply put, moral relativists immediately contradict themselves when they claim there is no such thing as right and wrong when they uncritically claim that their statement is indeed true and right. It is not morality that these lost souls are debating, but the essence of God.

You cannot have any moral structure without a moral authority to establish it. Therefore, in their limited understanding, relativists think that to unilaterally eliminate any reference to right and wrong, they have eliminated God. Flawed thinking to be sure.

This has a resemblance to the proverbial sticking of one’s head in the sand. The world may not seem to exist, but it is the person who has eliminated it by refusing to see it.

This was brought to light the other day as I read an article about schools in Ontario. In a vain attempt to make everyone equitable (a much different thing from equal) the school has determined to change its programming to make everyone exactly the same. Let me explain the difference.

To be equal means we can be different, yet have the same opportunities or be treated with the same degree of respect. To desire equity is to want everyone to be the same. An example of the logical extension of this would be the desire to have every person’s skin colour modified to be exactly the same. That way, there could be no racism based on skin colour.

Ridiculous, no doubt, but that is the ultimate wish of those who push the equitable-treatment-of-everyone agenda, although they have not likely extended their thinking beyond themselves and their non-existent utopian world.

The article talked about a whole-hearted push for the equitable treatment of all students. That is, the educational establishment or “intelligentsia” has determined that to stream students according to their abilities is “unjust” and in a most bizarre example of illogic, introduces or advances “entrenched systems of power and privilege”.

These people are “constantly working to centre the conversation around the effects of inequity, oppression, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of hate and discrimination specifically for racialized (sic) students.” “In other words, kids’ success or failure is shaped by historic forces that determine their victim status.”

Now you can be forgiven for not understanding this “verbal diarrhea.” You cannot understand this nonsense unless you crawl into, what I would consider to be, their “confused” heads.

You must understand that this would be the natural extension of their disbelief in God. If there is no God, then there is no such thing as individual gifts, talents, abilities, interests and so on. We are all the product of brainless chance evolution that can only create clones of some sort.

These folks believe that the differences that we find are the product of our environment only and so if we homogenize the environment, we will create a homogenous population. And if we are all the same we will not be able to highlight differences and therefore, end racism.

I realize that this is a very big stretch in logic, but that is where the public system is going if the modern educational establishment has its way. Let me tell you a story.

I have a brother who may be only a year younger than me but “years” apart respecting our characters. Not that either of us is lacking in our respective talents, but I have always been better at using my head than my hands. My brother, on the other hand, while not lacking in brain power, displays a genius level of creativity and ability to make, fix or invent anything!

While I had no problem “doing” math, my brother “applied” it. If we would have been put in the same math class, we would both have been challenged, but not in the way these “directors of education” think.

In order to accommodate both of our learning styles, they would have had to reduce the level of academic expectation which would have caused me to be bored out of my mind and him to be struggling while learning a math that was not at all related to what he could and would do. It would certainly never have made us the same, even if we studied the same math in the same way.

Thankfully, the schools back then were streamed. That is, my brother went through the system emphasizing and developing his gifts and strengths, while I went a route that emphasized mine. We both ended up with high school diplomas that not only qualified us, but prepared us to continue in our respective worlds.

Now you may wonder why I am bringing this up. Why is the home educator talking about the craziness that is going on in the schools? The answer is simple. Don’t do that. Emphasize and celebrate the differences in your children.

I want to end by quoting the last part of that article, then I encourage you to consider what it says in light of home education.

“What’s so awful about social-justice doctrine is that it will hurt the very kids it’s supposed to help. It deploys significant resources in the wrong direction and aggressively ignores everything important that we know about kids and school achievement.
 
Decades of social-science research confirms that the biggest predictors of school achievement are family structure effects – family composition, stability, maternal education and socioeconomic status.
 
These have nothing to do with entrenched systems of power and privilege, and everything to do with factors such as having two parents and close parental supervision. Sad to say, not all the anti-bias training in the world is going to change that.” (Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail, Dec. 1, 2017)

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