Equality — the central tenet that gives meaning and purpose to American democracy—has a way of generating real-life headaches. (This is an admittedly simplistic summing up of Tocqueville’s rich and subtle argument in Democracy in America, but it’s useful for my purpose here.) The hallowed Declaration of Independence eloquently affirms our commitment to the democratic principle that all men are created equal. Yet who of us, deep down, really believes this? To reconcile our lofty democratic ideals about humanity’s equality with our everyday experiences of people requires we modify the word “equality” with the words, “of opportunity.”
Two articles — “No Longer Letting Scores Separate Pupils,” in this morning’s New York Times, and “Not Every Child is Secretly a Genius,” in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education — struck me as deeply related to one another, despite their different topics. Although neither article mentions the word “equality,” each is ultimately concerned with the matter.
The Times article concerns public middle schools in Stamford, Connecticut. Beginning this fall they will abandon their long practice of “tracking,” or placing students in academic levels based on their academic ability as measured by standardized tests. Instead, Stamford will divide middle school students into two simple groups: The top quarter will enter honors classes and the rest will go into regular college-prep classes.
Many parents of the students who were in what had been the top track of Stamford’s multi-tiered system object to the new plan, but the Stanford superintendent says that tracking is “not fair to too many kids.” The Times points out that although Hispanic and black students constituted 46 percent of Stamford’s sixth grade this year, they made up 78 percent of the middle track and only 7 percent of the highest track. The argument for ending tracking in Stamford rests on the social injustice of any system that ends up with numbers like these, along with evidence that when kids of all academic abilities are grouped together, objections notwithstanding that the top group ends up a little bit bored, the bottom group shows significant academic improvement.
Now consider Chronicle author Christopher Ferguson’s article. Ferguson, a professor of behavioral and applied sciences and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University, argues that it’s time to abandon Howard Gardner’s oft-cited theory of multiple intelligences. Although politically appealing, Ferguson argues, the theory doesn’t hold water.
Ferguson segues into a discussion of education, arguing that educators should return to the old idea of a “single intelligence.” Intelligence (understood in the old way) and motivation, according to Ferguson, are the two best predictors of academic success and, later on, employment.
Ferguson brusquely admits that the old notion of intelligence is a “fundamentally meritocratic construct” in which there are “winners and there are losers.” He carefully warns us that we need to “avoid the fallacy that some people deserve to live in poverty, or that entire groups of people are inherently inferior in regard to intelligence.” What’s needed, he argues, is to openly accept that “some children and adults are just unintelligent.” The problem is “to work with the reality we have, not the one we wish we had.” Climbing out of poverty, he concludes, requires a “healthy dose” of both motivation and intelligence understood in the traditional way.
After reading Ferguson, I was left wondering how, exactly, talking openly about some people being more intelligent than others can help anything. It seems to me that it leads straight to making us an even meaner species than we already are. Will it improve education? Will it make things better for less intelligent people — many of whom already know they’re not the sharpest crayons in the box? Will it benefit smart people, who’ve already been given an edge by Mother Nature that almost inevitably (according to Ferguson) leads to their success in life?
Whether we call students “bright” or “academically successful” doesn’t matter one whit to them, except for the odd fact that the former feeds individual vanity far more than the latter. But calling students “unintelligent” is always harmful.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Ferguson is right that we should abandon multiple-intelligence theories and use only the one, traditional idea of intelligence. We still don’t know the best way to educate all the children in our society.
One thing we do know, however. If Ferguson is right, Stamford is right to give up tracking. If dumped into one pool, the smartest and most motivated kids, whatever race or ethnic group they come from, and whether they’re rich or poor, will end up succeeding no matter what. The students we must worry about are what Ferguson referred to as “losers.” Calling them that is the dumbest idea in the world.
