In what has turned out to be some of the best comment-produicing material on this blog, I wrote about Asperger’s Syndrome early this month. Amidst the comments, G. Broaddus dropped this little gem:
Fairness in the classroom is not always about giving equal tasks; it is sometimes about giving students an equal chance to succeed, and clearly a student with Asperger’s will need a different way to demonstrate learning than his or her “typical” peers.
He then later fleshed out that idea on his own blog with the post Fairness and equality in the classroom. Please check out his post to read some of these thoughts.
As we take this break and get ready to go back into our classes in January, I want to challenge you to reflect on how you may be being unfair in your quest to provide equality for your students. Though the subjects in the two linked posts deal with disabilities, I contend that equality is unfair for most people in most circumstances. This is why communism is such a flawed concept. Equality is, in many cases, counterproductive to the concept of hard work.
Speaking of fairs, the 204th Carnival of Education was posted this morning!
