National Security and Educational Excellence
The dual and desirable educational goals of student equity and student excellence have often been in a serious struggle for scarce resources. Student equity ensures all students a fair shot at a good education. Student excellence promises every student the right to achieve as far and as high as he or she is capable. Because the problems of equity have greater immediacy than does the long-term enhancement of excellence, this struggle has often been won by equity. Driven by yearly budget cycles and chronic shortages of resources, educators are more likely to tackle the problems of those students in the most visible trouble in our schools.
This year, President Bush has underscored the importance of considering society’s long-term goals by focusing on the projected problems in the Social Security system. Such a focus should remind us that in education there are also important long-term national goals that need consideration. Until recently, it has been politically incorrect to mention that the major contributions to society in business, medicine, the arts, and the sciences—contributions that enhance the quality of life for us all—have been made by a relatively small creative minority.
Educators as a group have not been terribly concerned with the nurturing of these talented persons. They, like the general public, often assume that students of this sort will “make it on their own” without much help. There is also a philosophical commitment in the field to a brand of equity that refuses to recognize any individual differences in students except those caused by unfair cultural and economic advantages or disabilities. The tendency to homogenize education into a single setting or common curriculum, shown in both the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the movement toward inclusion of children with disabilities in the general classroom, has resulted in a resistance in our public schools to the creation of separate programming for...
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