January 29, 2006

EGALITARIANISM REQUIRES TYRANNY:

London school takes a hands-off approach to Q&A (Liz Lightfoot, January 29, 2006, LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH)

Pupils in an East London school have been banned from raising their hands to answer questions in class because their teachers fear it leads to feelings of victimization.

"No hands up" notices have been posted in every room at the Jo Richardson comprehensive school in Dagenham, as a reminder that the teachers will decide who should answer.

The principal, Andrew Buck, said it is always the same children who wave their arms in the air, while the rest of the class sits back. When teachers try to involve less-adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, that leads to feelings of victimization.

Or, as Richard Weaver put it:
When it was found that equality before the law has no effect on inequalities of ability and achievement, humanitarians concluded that they had been tricked into asking only part of their just claim. The claim to political equality was then supplemented by the demand for economic democracy, which was to give substance to the ideal of the levelers. Nothing but a despotism could enforce anything so unrealistic, and this explains why modern governments dedicated to this program have become, under one guise and another, despotic.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 29, 2006 8:24 AM
Comments

Won't the kids barred from raising their hands have 'feelings of victimization' under the new regime?

Posted by: pj at January 29, 2006 8:37 AM

I'm embarrassed to be a part of the education system after reading this twaddle...

Posted by: Bartman at January 29, 2006 9:25 AM

We're all victims.

Posted by: erp at January 29, 2006 10:19 AM

I don't have a big problem with this. It could almost be aimed at the teachers more than the students. Some teachers are real jackasses.

Posted by: RC at January 29, 2006 10:27 AM

A good teacher teaches every child in the classroom. They all have equal rights, every one of them, but not to equal things.

There are techniques whereby a teacher may involve every member if the class in the lesson. Placing lead weights of on the legs of the agile and electronic distractors on the heads of the intelligent are not among these. This is not 2081. We cannot make equal what is unequal.

The price for attempting to so is the destruction of diversity and inclusion. It is very simple: the parents of gifted children find out what is going on and they bail out. They do whatever it takes to get their choldren out of a destructive, repressive environment.

Posted by: Lou Gots at January 29, 2006 12:10 PM

Look, if I know the answer, I'll raise my hand. If I don't, please, call on the other kid with his hand up and don't embarrass me in front of the cute girl in the next row.

Posted by: Patrick H at January 29, 2006 12:40 PM

"humanitarians concluded that they had been tricked into asking only part of their just claim"
Somehow these humanitarians always end up on top bossying everybody else around, living in the best quarters that are assigned in these so-called equalitarian societies. In the evil capitalistic US, at best they can do are like the hicks living down the road. The humanitarians cannot stand out as superior human beings, they resent that non-special status. Thus they hate capitalistic US where they are not awarded special status for their superior humanistic advocacies which benefit themselves most. What skills do these humanitarians have to survive in a meritocratic society?

Posted by: ic at January 29, 2006 4:37 PM

RC, Patrick, and Lou:

As a former Catholic school student and now a teacher in Catholic schools I know how devastating humiliation can be to kids. I refuse to go down that path.

I teach from the point of view that even though they are kids they should be treated as human beings...i.e. with respect.

What I've found is that they don't want to disappoint me. That's all the leverage I need to maintain my classroom.

I only call on kids that raise their hand, but sometimes I will ask individuals if they understand what's going on. In some cases it's a mild way to "wake them up."

Posted by: Bartman at January 29, 2006 5:51 PM
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