Education--The Knack of It

More thoughts on mainstreamed education—and the underlying notion that all students (people) are cookie cutter made, identical and equal in every way. Yesterday I called this idea diabolically cruel. It is that and more.
By assuming that everyone is capable of identical academic achievement, it sets up everyone who may not be equally capable in all areas of academic work for assured failure. It blinds itself to the fact that a student may do 4.0 work in three or four areas and yet be baffled by a fourth or fifth area. He may do superbly in math and science and, for instance, abominably in economics.
Pretending this is not so—which “No child left behind mainstreaming does—is supposedly a logical extension of democracy. Nonsense. That’s not democracy! Democracy merely presupposes a level playing field in which each individual is free to perform to the level of his ability. It NEVER guaranteed everyone an equal result for his efforts.
Having everyone take the same classes no matter what his abilities is a mindlessly cruel way of denying that differences really do exist. Some of us really do have a knack for one thing; some of us have a knack for another—blasphemy to the writers of “No child left behind” legislation.
I realized this years ago when I was teaching night classes at the local community college. A lot of nurses with RN degrees were finding it necessary to go on for their BSN degrees. American history was a requirement for the advanced degree.
These were bright ladies, charge nurses, supervisors, so forth (these are the ones who save your neck when a physician makes a mistake). They knew their anatomy, their pharmacopeia, and a whale of a lot about medicine. But history was throwing many of them.
That got me thinking. I fell into history when I was ten years old—because it was so easy for me. What did I see/sense that these ladies did not? When I was in school, many very bright fellow students had no taste for the subject. Why did I have no trouble? What was the knack?
It hit me. My knack was very like that of an artist—who senses form, color and design. I see time in three dimensions. I thought about my nurses and my history hating friends. They saw time on a two-dimensional flat plane. For them, 1492, 1776, 1865, 1066 all smudged up in one unarticulated blob on a flat plane that they saw as historical time. They couldn’t sort it out.
I perceived time as something that flowed from a point far beyond me toward me. Way out there was 4000 BC. Closer was 3000 BC. Closer yet was 1000 BC. It was easy to see how something in 2000 BC could relate (and be causative) to something in 1000 and 500 BC.
As time gets closer to me and more data is available it becomes easy to see that there could be no Constitutional Convention without a victorious Revolution, no President Washington without a ratified constitution and so forth and so forth. The ladies didn’t see that.
I, in turn, have no knack whatsoever for grasping how and why A + B = C2 ! It made no sense to me in the Ninth Grade; it makes no sense when my wife—who aced college algebra—tries to explain it to me. I even took a community education course with no comprehension.
I can do regular math, computer math (you can see the variables DOING something) and even basic (non algebraic) geometry. But algebra itself is simply a fuzzy blob on a two dimensional plane to me. Force me to take more algebra and you doom me to failure. Several nurses were at similar risk in history. It’s a cruel thing to do. (Nothing I’ve ever done in real life has EVER required algebra. I suspect the nurses will never find anything about the Civil War useful in saving a life.)
So why not do as the English do? After a basic eighth grade education, they start to specialize in things they can do well and will actually work with. What a clever idea! Let me stick to history and literature; let the nurses stick to anatomy and physiology.
Why insist that we experience failure?