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Hey! First time poster here. Please be critical.
I saw this article last week and am not sure how to think about it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee
The TL;DR is that honors classes in this subset of all honors classes had a clear bias in terms of racial makeup relative to baseline. So they stopped offering honors classes.
On the one hand this seems super effective— with a strategy like this maybe in a generation or so when they start offering honors classes again there might be less bias.
On the other hand my intuition says that in general it’s okay to allow students to self-select (or students and whoever is telling them what to do) and decide how much schoolwork they want to do.
It seems relevant to the school-flavor culture war stuff.
Any links to previous threads on similar topics would be appreciated.
Curious to know more.
Edit: not bait, genuine curiosity. Got some good criticism about low-effort top-level-posting, would appreciate suggestions/pointers to excellent top-level posts.
Continued edit: Also curious what about this post codes it as bait? A few people saw it that way.
There’s always going to be racial disparities because there are racial disparities in academic skill as evidenced by testing. Getting rid of honor’s classes because black and latino students do poorly is like getting rid of swimming competitions because short guys do poorly or getting rid of beauty models because fat women feel offended. It is the exact wrong way of looking at the world. The black and latino students, instead of narcissistically believing they are morally harmed, should feel gratitude that they live in a nation where smarter people live and should feel blessed that they have more capable competitors to inspire them. If there is any moral harm occurring, it is that smart students will grow up to have to subsidize the problems of dumb students. In no way do the dumb students possess moral victimhood status, IMHO.
You're essentially arguing that black and Latino students should just accept the reality that they aren't as smart as white people, and be grateful that there are white people around to serve as role models.
Even if this were true, our society is not constructed such that we can assert a modern-day Great Chain of Being and expect the people born into the bottom rungs to accept it.
White people pretty well accept it, though. They accept Asian representation without a wince and have a pathological belief that PoC make better musicians, comics and dancers. If some group, hypothetically, had a civilizationally-challenged level of narcissism that prevents fair and just grading, the issue is squarely on them.
They accept it because, as I said, it doesn't harm them. Even if you want to be a musician, comic, or dancer (accepting your premise for the moment, and "white men can't dance" jokes aside, I don't think anyone seriously believes white people have a genetic disadvantage in the performative arts), white people are obviously able to succeed there as well.
I see no evidence for any race having a "civilizationally-challenged level of narcissim."
Affirmative action certainly harms whites, as does having a low regard for whites in total.
What do you mean “white people are obviously able to succeed”? Everyone talented is obviously able to succeed.
I mean there's no evidence that white people are either genetically or socially disadvantaged in those endeavors.
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