John Derbyshire confesses to a certain cynical fatalism about his children’s public-school education:
Having beggared ourselves to buy a house in a decent school district, I feel we have done most of what we can do. The kids will learn, or not, according mainly to their own inclinations and abilities. The teachers, when we meet them, seem like decent types, but a child needs to be well-nigh homicidal before the teacher will say anything negative about him.At our children’s level — intermediate and middle school — education is a caucus race, in which every child is wonderful and all will get prizes. Somewhat later they will take an IQ test (it is called the SAT, but IQ and SAT scores correlate at around the 0.82 level), then be decanted into precisely the appropriate tier of the great American meritocracy as indicated by the result of that test. For the time being, though, everyone is equal and No Child will be Left Behind.
Thus are reconciled two cherished, but unfortunately contradictory, American ideals: the first, that ability should be fully employed and fairly rewarded, and the second, that all are metaphysically equal in ability, the observed differences being mere illusions, most likely arising from some malign intent on the part of the observer.
I sometimes wonder to myself, quietly, what will be the psychological effect on my kids of this faux-egalitarianism. Cynicism, or double-think?