By Sara Bertoncelj
It is becoming more and more obvious that the predictions of the film Idiocracy, in which our once intelligent society was finally buried by commercialism, which turned people into controllable and stupid creatures, are coming true. It is certainly easier for poorly educated people to govern – which, of course, is best achieved by adapting the entire school or education system for this purpose. The ideas of equality, equal opportunities and everything that belongs to the increasingly popular “woke” ideology, which they sell to us at every step, certainly contribute to this idea as support. Portal Russia Today reports that they have already taken a step forward in the United States, with the California Department of Education announcing that the gap between good students and their less able peers must disappear – albeit at the expense of the gifted. As we know, American trends also reach us sooner or later.
The California Department of Education has announced that the gap between good students and their less able peers must disappear. But it seems that words alone are not enough – schools should actually ensure “justice” in the classrooms. Pursuing this goal would also involve faculties retaining well-functioning students while pushing their less intellectual peers forward as if they were all truly equal in ability. Having groups of talented individuals stuck in a situation where they are being held back by a single peer who simply cannot solve the problem properly and needs special instructions is hardly something for the school or students themselves to be proud of.
The California Department of Health’s extensive and hundreds-page long manifesto, published on Tuesday, describes how schools need to focus on “active efforts” in math. Efforts to prevent the establishment of “gifted” or talented people at the faculty should begin at the beginning of K-12 education (in the USA, education from kindergarten to 12th grade). Such a policy requires from parents that if they want the same free public education as anywhere else in their school district, they have no choice but to subject their children to racist slander and a twisted new form of math that many find offensive. In fact, mathematically gifted children will be held back until the last few years of high school, which will essentially force them to miss the opportunity to hone their talent at a younger age. “We reject ideas about natural talents,” the proposal states, insisting, “that there is no criterion that would determine when one child is gifted and another is not.” The proposal also seeks to replace the idea of innate mathematical talent and talent alone with the view that every student is on the path to growth. The authors of the recently released Framework for Teaching Mathematics have decided that too many students are classified into different math groups according to their natural abilities, and argue that gifted Californian children owe their peers sacrificing their opportunities for as long as they can – all in the name of equality.
They would introduce a teaching model using the lowest common denominator method
Fortunately for California students (and their parents), the proposal has not yet been translated into National Education Administration policy, but there is a risk that some other states will join the idea. The states of Oregon, Virginia, and Illinois, for example, are in favour of this extreme idea. Virginia particularly wanted to join the effort to transform children’s education into a new, patronising style of social control. Last month, Virginia announced it would streamline educational justice. They came up with a plan to replace mathematics with “basic concepts” to get rid of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. They want to introduce a model of teaching according to the method of the lowest common denominator, and advanced mathematics courses or classes would be abolished until the entry into the 11th grade. Meanwhile, New York City abolished admission requirements for some of its most prestigious private schools and with it outraged some parents who believe in parenting in a more “traditional” environment. Dalton, the city’s prestigious private school, launched an anti-racism manifesto last year demanding that the institution hire 12 diversity officers and even psychologists to suppress racial-based traumatic stress.