Originally Posted by Mama22Gs
Originally Posted by Cricket2
His feeling is that, if education focuses on bringing the lower and avg bunch of kids up, that all kids will benefit b/c a rising tide floats all boats. As a financial analogy, he mentioned how providing tax cuts and services to those who are already wealthy only serves to increase the disparity of resources. However, if lower income folks are provided tax cuts, etc. it was of benefit to everyone in terms of not having pockets of crime and low income.

I don't think the financial analogy works. The wealthy already have the resources they require, the gifted child does not.

What if you take his analogy and morph it into a sports analogy. All kids should be taught to play football in the same way, with the same resources. Those who are talented at football need no access to higher-level training because they're already good at the sport. The goal should be to make everyone good at the game. This way, everyone will be on an even playing field. All kids regardless of talent should be put in the same clinic, and go through all the same drills and exercises. Talented players should not be given access to any higher-level training. In fact, more time/resources should be given to those NOT good at the sport to raise the overall quality of the game played. (Of course, the Superbowl might not be as popular in this scenario! So, the advertisers may balk.)

I really like the sports analogy. I wonder how persuasive it would be with someone who has a different world view about what is fair educationally. (it doesn't help that there is some correlation between the attainment of particular levels of education and income levels - that brings politics into it.)

As for the financial analogy, it may or may not work, depending on whether you define the resources to be educational resources to be used or innate intelligence resources that cannot be transferred. I think it will again come down to defining what equal opportunity means in terms of educational resources (one would hope not equal results - a low tide drops all boats?).