Not That Kind Of Diversity
Variations in human ability continue to frustrate those who would perfect us:
You see, if a problem can’t be solved, the next-best thing is to hide it:
The genius of the “equity-focussed” policies, also being advanced in California and elsewhere, is that they are likely to have negative consequences for both ends of the ability spectrum. The cognitively untalented will be spared the normal incentives to master at least the basics, even the basics of behaviour, while the gifted will be denied access to advanced material more suited to their abilities, resulting in boredom and demoralisation.
Again, hiding that bothersome unevenness in effort and ability.
Readers will note that the retreat from clear metrics into euphemism and pernicious fuzzwords – chief among which, “equity” – not only makes it difficult to determine pupils’ academic progress and actual competence, but also has a secondary effect of making it more difficult to identify the shortcomings of progressive educators and administrators. A coincidence, I’m sure.
The pernicious woo named “equity” – which roughly translates as equality of outcome regardless of inputs – has of course been mentioned here before.
If the examples linked above aren’t sufficiently striking, I do have more.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Harrison Bergeron was not a how-to guide.
Should further illustrations of “equity” be required, see the Problematic Competence tag. Where you’ll find things of this kind:
For instance.
If a grade can never go below 50%, then there is no point of having the lower 50% of grades, since they are assigned to nobody. If they are assigned to nobody, then you might as well delete them, resulting in the original situation that was derided with people failing to do any work getting a grade of zero. These equity activists are complete idiots.
Well, it’s unlikely that they’re the sharpest individuals. Valeria Silva, mentioned here, comes to mind, as does Alison Collins. They do tend to be beneficiaries of their own woo, and therefore promoted far beyond their abilities.
But it’s also the fact that their chosen piety, “equity,” is premised on faulty egalitarian assumptions – or outright dishonesties – resulting in a need for ever more fudging, contortion, and denial of the obvious.
Are we not being reminded, once again, that a certain demographic falls well short of the mark, which was probably not the intention of these ‘equity’ warriors. It’s a long way up for oppressed – too hard. Bring everyone else down instead.
I suppose it is not too far fetched within the woo of “equity” and current resistance to “fatphobia” that certain metrics in medicine will be redefined, such as one’s A1C levels. Sure, the diabeetus will kill you but at least you won’t die feeling scolded by your primary care physician. BMI has already been outed as a tool of White Supremacy.
On a happier note . . .
a secondary effect of making it more difficult to identify the shortcomings of progressive educators and administrators
It may be a secondary effect but I’d bet it’s a primary objective.
Should a student cheat or fail to submit an assignment on time, teachers should provide a grade of at least 50 percent, the district handout outlining the initiative says. The initiative also calls to replace the typical ‘0-100’ grading scale with a ‘0-4’ scale.
Hang on – for doing bupkis the minimum is 50%, but the new scale is “0-4” wouldn’t that mean the scale is really 2-4 which is now basically pass-fail, but because nobody fails, the score is just pass?
More of not that kind of diversity also from California, the Chabot School Equity and Inclusion Committee hosted a “Playdate Social”, but only “if your family identifies as black, brown, or API…”
“Equitable segregation now, equitable segregation tomorrow, equitable segregation forever”.
“The pernicious woo”
Track 3 (entire side) of our Prog Rock double album.
“the new scale is “0-4” wouldn’t that mean the scale is really 2-4”
Ah. You see, these go to “11”. Therefore muchbettergooder.
You see, these go to “11”.
Leo says 11 is rookie numbers…
Meh. When I tried to tell people, even conservative people, my doctor even, that this was where we were headed, that this was essentially what the circle/square/triangle grading system of 30+ years ago was about, I was told I was overreacting. Y’all must be really, really overreacting act this point. Seek professional help. Take some Prozac, some Xannies. Chill out.
Nah, bro. There have always been idiots. The people who failed to stand up to them, especially the people who criticized those who did stand up to them, especially the conservative…”conservative” people who criticized those who stood up to them, they are the real idiots.
The cognitively untalented will be spared the normal incentives to master at least the basics, even the basics of behaviour, while the gifted will be denied access to advanced material more suited to their abilities, resulting in boredom and demoralisation.
The educators are pretending that the former are a more vibrant version of the latter, and that only racial bias and white-centric norms prevent us from recognizing it. The inspiring ghetto teacher film where if teachers can put aside their prejudice about the slang and the minor misdemeanors, the classroom will turn out to be full of Wakanda rocket scientists.
“Valid evidence of students’ content knowledge”, “summative assessments instead of classwork etc”, “a mosaic of grading practices across schools and across the district that is confusing to students and families”. As if the F (or RMG = racially marginalized genius) students have structure or motivation for learning the content without their teacher being aware of it and having to bring them through every step. As if they’re getting penalized for trifling differences between the classroom textbook and the textbook they’ve been reading in the public library.
what the circle/square/triangle grading system of 30+ years ago was about,
I seem to have missed that. Do you have link handy to save me wasted hours on Bing?
“I’m a doctor who studied 5K near-death experiences — there is life after death”
Unfortunately the only thing he could possibly have “proven” is that there is life after near-death.
Which is not quite so uplifting.
Unfortunately the only thing he could possibly have “proven” is that there is life after near-death.
Minor point – life during near-death.
Wow, what a rabbit hole. I see your point. I will have to come back to this. Perhaps someone here remembers this. What I recall is reading, possibly in Scientific American, in the early 1990’s about primary school educators at the University of Alabama studying changing to this system because hierarchy is bad or something. It was one of the first absurdities that I mentioned to my doctor about what a f’d up direction things were heading in. He gave me that little head pat and pointed out to me that ridiculous things in academia happen a lot and that such things will obviously fail and while this was a pity for those poor schmuck kids near Tuscaloosa, we folks living in normal places like Central Florida really shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it. Later that same week, in passing discussion over dinner, I mention to my wife that same silly article and how silly I felt for being concerned about it. After all, it was some academic experiment in Alabama and we lived in small, conservative, NASA bedroom community Titusville. Nobody, not the smart people in our area would fall for that. She looked at me somewhat irritated and said that a mutual friend/co-worker of ours had told her that she was told this was the kind of grades she was seeing for her kid. That she had repeated that to me months previously. Obviously I wasn’t listening.
[ Fondles amulet, fires up bong. ]
Triangle-circle-square – an assessment tool, not a grading tool, according to these guys.
Normal, in much the same way way as Jeffrey Dahmer was normal.
I’m bewildered by your gift for up-buggering links.
[ Puts away bong. ]
I mean, when you highlight the text that you want to hyperlink and then click the ‘link’ icon, and the ‘enter link’ box appears, what the hell are you pasting into it?
Yeah. Yeah, right. Idiot. There is no “normal”. If you take your head out of your ass and look around you will see plenty of stupidity in even conservative…”conservative” places. Up here in Appalachia there’s corruption, stupidity, drunkenness, sloth, damn near everything you hear in a George Jones song in addition to meth, fentanyl, etc. Fortunately we have acquired a tough sheriff but the locals of course must piss and moan about his actually enforcing the laws.
As for Jeffery Dahmer…per wiki…
David… Apologies. I tried to change ‘idiot’ to ‘doofus’ but I’m guessing it’s the number of carried over links from the wiki article that are the problem…or not.
As for Triangle-circle-square – an assessment tool
Of course buggered link doesn’t help but don’t see wtf your point is here. Just because they used it as an assessment where/whenever, is irrelevant to what I saw. Granted decades passed and my memory is not perfect but…well, buggered link so…
Many liberals have been driven mad by the failure of so many of their policies: They cannot accept that their “solutions” could have proved to wrong, as that would threaten their entire world view. Worse, it would threaten their sense of self worth and moral authority. Thus, they never reject their delusions but instead keep doubling down with increasingly deranged theories and policies and increasingly strident efforts to silence and punish their critics: Better the culture collapse and millions die than that they face their own errors.
Idiocy can’t explain this. Malevolence can.
Nah. Idiocy. Malevolence, like the poor (not saying there’s a connection) we will always have with us. The true idiocy is the tolerance, acceptance, and the self-induced inability to confront the malevolence. Because why take the risk? Someone else will do it. Cargo cult accountability. High trust societies take these things for granted and thus become low trust societies.
Can’t help but chuckle every time some ‘phobia’ or another is bandied about as indisputable fact. Then again, what with all the ‘equity’ in assessments, it shouldn’t be surprising that the meaning of words is lost.
“You see, if a problem can’t be solved, the next-best thing is to hide it…“
We’re running out of carpet, surely?
asiaseen: “It may be a secondary effect but I’d bet it’s a primary objective.“
Oh, THIS! Times a thousand!
Yeah. Yeah, right. Idiot. There is no “normal”.
My, somebody is touchy, but defending Jeffrey Dahmer is a weird flex, as the kids say.
Upbuggered links – interesting that this happens more frequently than The Before Times. Bear in mind the Link-O-Matic 9000™ is coded by the same people who can’t get the edit function right.
Regardless, Triangle-Circle-Square. Little Garbanzo isn’t being sent home with circles and squares on his report card, little Garbanzo and the teacher use the system to see what, if anything, he has learned during a lesson so that what, if anything, needs to be rehashed can be determined.
Granted decades passed and my memory is not perfect but…never let that stand in the way of the first hit on a search engine.
Heh. Getting frustrated AF trying to find a link to that 1990’s grading stuff. Finding similar, more modern idiocy but two things working against me I think are, it’s early 1990’s and thus too long before popularization of the web and, similar to stated by others here, something they probably want to hide/bury. Like the “open schools” concept of the 1970’s. This is of course the thing. All this searching around I’m hitting on farm more different and in some ways scarier concepts in “new” education because essentially, education sucks. It somewhat always did. People for the most part were better educated by being pointed in the proper direction of things that they were interested in. While I personally am a fan of the concept of the Renaissance Man, I realize it’s not for everyone. Not even most people. People do need to understand basics outside of their preferred focus but at some point you’re forcing a square peg into a round hole. Or as the other saying goes, trying to teach a cat to sing. The cat don’t wanna sing, it’s a waste of time, and it’s bloody annoying to anyone present.
So back to what I was about to say…I thought I’d try to unbugger the link but I now see that the basic problem wasn’t the link itself but an inability to verify what was pasted into the link. What had been pasted there was a copy of the line of my comment that he quoted.
Oh, look who’s back. Mr. Ican’tCopyAndPasteButLetMeTellYouHowDumbYouAre…ahem. So you unbuggered your link that was never buggered to begin with and provide something that looks rather recent. Certainly not from 30+ years ago. And this somehow proves I am…what? Wrong? Again, my reference was to what I read about, and what a parent co-worker told my wife back in the 1990’s. I’ll admit, I could very well be wrong. OK, not very well but I could be. You OTOH are wasting time.
Are you operating the keyboard with your feet?
Yeah…yeah…missed this part. FYC, ok? I’ve spent considerable time trying to research something that is not in recent/modern/internetty context. YOU on the other hand cannot COP”Y AND PASTE. Dude. You do know you’re not supposed to eat the paste, right?
Are you operating the keyboard with your feet?
In all seriousness, as I check the link before posting, sometimes the %20 nonsense gets inserted, as as happened to others who have posted otherwise normal links, and occasionally it appears to switch to the last thing pasted. Granted it may be a browser abnormality, but it really is a POS, not unlike the edit function, the auto list, and other oddities of the depraved machinations of millennial and Gen Z code monkeys.
Yet I am the one wasting time. OK, you go with that.
The %20 nonsense is why you should use underscores rather than spaces in file names, since three characters is more than one and by default there is a maximum file path number of characters in Windows.
Intellectual curiosity combined with someone having asked me to look it up since I would be more familiar with the various other parameters. You OTOH…I pity your patients.
That assessment depends on what you mean by educated.
An eighth-grade education was once considered quite sufficient for the majority because, well, it was. At the turn of the century (the last, not the current) an eighth-grade education was more comprehensive and rigorous than a high-school education 50 years later or a college education 100 years later.
Is that what’s required?
More white supremacy on display.
Let’s talk about Nounself pronouns.
Let’s not.
Yes. That is precisely what I mean. I have an aunt who dropped out of school in the 8th grade. I was shocked when she told me this. She had more sense than most of my teachers. I just presumed she had at least graduated high school. At 8th grade, per those days though of course there was not a broad consistency back then, one could expect a young person to perform basic tasks necessary to help a business.
So this happened yesterday…up here in God’s conservativey conservative country. We stopped at our favorite fruit/veg stand before hitting the grocery store and my wife thought we might try another jar of wild honey. We go to check out and the young lady is turning the jar around and around saying she can’t find the size. This is local stuff, no bar codes. I was about to say that it quite obviously looks to be about a pint but decided best to say nothing. We get in the car, wife looks at receipt and it reads $23 for a quart. I’m like…no way is that a quart. I see the label and it reads 16 oz. Girlfriend only had pints/quarts/etc. in her computer. Didn’t know what those words meant. Owner can’t figure it out either, calls Gen-X worker woman over. She futzes around forever and frustrated says, “I took $5 off for you”. $5 off. For half of a $23 item. I was so embarrassed for everyone there I just let it go.
When I view the source behind your bad link, I see h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash followed by ” normal places like Central Florida”. So, I think what happened was that you thought you had copied the link but in reality the clipboard still contained the previous item copied.
I have had that problem a few times, when I either failed to correctly type Ctrl-C or Windows decided that it hated me. 😉
[ Stares at Muldoon. ]
[ Everyone stares at Muldoon. ]
Yeah. What he said.
So, I think what happened was that you thought you had copied the link but in reality the clipboard still contained the previous item copied.
Never blame on a clipboard error that which can be blamed on demented millennial and Gen Z code monkeys.
Now you all know the serenity of gazing out over a Tahitian sunset while a gentle trade wind wafts the scent of hibiscus over you, you lucky SOBs.
Intellectual curiosity…
That you are.