Economic leveling is an idea sold as making poor people more equal. What it does is make more Middle-Class people poor while the elite ruling class gets richer. At least one State Board of education has applied this thinking to math. They want to hold kids back so others will feel more equal.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is eliminating accelerated math courses before 11th grade to “[i]mprove equity in mathematics learning opportunities.” … The VDOE website says that in addition to improving equity, the change will “[e]mpower students to be active participants in a quantitative world.”
Translation. We’re dumbing down the math, and it will frustrate and suppress accelerated learning, which is somehow good for everyone. This is like telling good musicians to suppress their natural abilities, so kids who can’t carry a tune don’t get left out. But they do. You have not only denied everyone the motivation to try harder or do better, but you have also denied everyone the greater benefit of those gifts.
Related: Mask Math is Hard – It’s Harder for Sheep
A culture deprived of inspiring music suffers a great loss, as does the one that has – out of some misguided notion of equity – suppressed inspired leaps of science and engineering.
Instead of seeking paths to lift everyone, you set up roadblocks to success and systemic advantages for the wealthy and politically connected.
A deepening of the gentrification and socialization of education.
Those who can afford it will get their kids into better schools or in front of better programs guaranteeing a two-class system in both education and economics reminiscent of the sorts of “equity” found in Feudalism. A land with a politically approved ruling class that passes its learning, money, and power to succeeding generations of family members, leaving the peasants and serfs effectively trapped at the bottom.
The new continues to look a lot like the old, which explains why they want so badly to rewrite all the history, hoping you won’t notice.
