Learning supremacy: How standardizing education fuels inequity
If you want to build a diverse, just, and equitable society, you cannot do it with the current educational system.
That may sound harsh, but there’s no use pretending otherwise.
Consider for a moment not what happens on the surface of most schooling — not the math, history, chemistry, or civics…. Consider instead what’s happening beneath these, about the structural armature over which all the diverse disciplinary practices and activities have been stretched. Think about what happens in most classrooms, regardless of the learners’ ages, the subjects their teachers are addressing, or the country or city in which they’re located…
It starts with good intentions.
Working to do their best, teachers demonstrate a principle, concept, or skill. Then they ask learners to complete an exercise designed to implement and solidify this lesson. Most teachers would love to try a different, more creative, more student-centered approach, but they just don’t have time. They’re overwhelmed with too many students and too much bureaucratic paperwork. So they ask all students to complete the same assignment. It’s sheer, handy pragmatics. This way, teachers can compare one learner’s performance with another’s to see ‘who’s getting it and who isn’t.’ It makes grading easier, maybe even…
