mtpolitics.net

Cultivating Genius?

John Clayton recently posted this quote as an argument why schools should be public:

Schools should serve “the Benefit of the Poor and the Rich; that the Children of all, partaking of equal Advantages and being placed upon an equal Footing, no Distinction might be made among them in the Schools on account of the different Circumstances of their Parents, but that the Capacity & natural Genius of each might be cultivated & improved for the future benefit of the whole Community.”

- a resolution passed by a Boston town meeting in 1784, kicking off America’s public school system, as quoted by J. Anthony Lukas in “Common Ground,” page 121

A noble idea, in my mind, but there’s a huge difference from the ideals stated here, and the reality of schools today.

[...]that the Capacity & natural Genius of each might be cultivated & improved for the future benefit of the whole Community.

That’s all well and good, but it’s been my experience that schools today are more interested in cultivating mediocrity from genius, rather than vice versa.

Most schools just aren’t equipped to handle the outliers on either end of the bell curve.

This isn’t a knock against teachers; there are tons of them who work hard and do all they can for their students, but necessity dictates that they have to take care of the folks in the middle. The thinking seems to be that kids on the upper end of the curve will take care of themselves, so there is no need to worry about them. The kids on the other end of the curve usually get special help elsewhere.