The Education of Equality?

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The word “equality” is resounding throughout our land with a religious tone to it.  It has a judicial amplification, and in many ways it has become a magical note to chant a spell to educate our society to a new worldview!  The education of equality in contemporary America is not just to see that each is offered opportunities to achieve equal to his or her potential, but it is to impose the idea of education of the society into accepting all groups as equally valid and to support even life styles that might be harmful to individuals and the society at large.

What is equality?  It is fine when understood rightly, but bad when understood wrongly. In schooling, is it good when it motivates achievement, but when this degenerates into mediocrity, it is bad?  There are exhaustive calls for equality in education with the overall goal being to create an environment where the educational playing field is leveled, so as to create equal educational opportunities and to counter the growing income inequality and the widening chasm separating our nation’s richest and poorest workers.  But the sad picture is that most of the vast sums of money that are being spent in this regard are not achieving the intended results.

From the Progressive prospective, it has been noted that: “From a shortage of funding for quality early childhood programs to flaws in programs designed to prepare low-income students for college, there are myriad weaknesses in our education system. Identifying the most urgent of these gaps, as well as the strategies to fix them, must be a central tenet of any viable plan for growing the middle class” (Center for American Progress-May, 2013).  Equality has been the focus in education for the past fifty years yet all has gone down.  If the focus would have been on the use of God’s directives in contrast to the Progressive focus, it would have gone up and not down.

There is an achievement problem, but it relates to all segments of our society, not just the down and out, but the up and outers as well. College was once the key to high achievement.  But is college, when the standards are lowered to accommodate less prepared students, really a good goal.  And furthermore, statistics show that half of all college graduates in the 2010-2011 graduating classes were either unemployed or underemployed.  (Is College Worth It?, William J. Bennett, 2013 p. viii)  We need to see education as something more than just a degree or diploma!

The civil rights focus is the call for equality, which is good, but entailed in this is the question about what actually is equality.  There is such a thing as IQ, and students who are on the shorter end of this can’t achieve certain things, regardless how money is spent to make up for the deficiencies. Is it right to hold the more proficient back, so as to pull the less efficient up?  No, but that is what our educational system in the public schools has been doing, all under the banner of equality.

If education depended on the amount of money a nation spent on education, the United States would far excel all the rest of the world in achievement. This is putting our money where our mouth is, but the fact is that money can’t do everything.  We are spending the money in America for education, but what are the results?

We are spending all kinds of money but, in respect to results in our society, there are disturbing facts that are very much evident as we are turning to spending money to solve our problems, where it should be toward seeking to rediscover the centrality of faith in God as a central core in learning or, at least, positive, disciplined life styles.

Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  Change is in the wind, but it is change in the wrong direction, for it is a change that ignores respect to God and his ways! It is a change that seeks to teach negative life styles that cannot lead to positive results.  Leviticus 18:22 say, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”  To teach that something, which the Bible calls an abomination should be affirmed by calling for the marriage of people of the same sex is itself an abomination!

The church, the schools, and the family were once regarded as underlying supports of our government.  But we are seeing the youth flee from the mainline churches, Protestant and Catholic, seeing schools in many places becoming war zones, and the institution of family disintegrate into official, legal homosexual unions, even being defined as marriage.

Under the banner of equality, we are observing not only our schools, but the society at large, our land being educated to accept things that once were rightly regarded with true disdain, such as marriage being between people of the same sex.  It is educating our society to subtract learning that God’s ordained marriage to be between man and woman and into accepting the union of same sex couples as marriage, which attacks the very fabric of what is marriage.

However, many churches such as the PCUSA and others such as the United Church of Christ are applauding it.  I was reading an article by the Church of Christ that stated:  “Another state has voted against discrimination, choosing love and inclusion for all couples who want to marry, with leaders from the United Church of Christ celebrating another historic moment in the movement for full marriage equality…We are delighted that Delaware is joining Maryland and the District of Columbia in affirming marriage equality,”   ( “UCC leaders, pastors celebrate another win for marriage equality in Delaware”  by Anthony Moujaes   —  The United Church of Christ  —May 8, 2013).

The UCC article said, “Delaware’s approval of the bill came quickly on the heels of the actions of Rhode Island’s lawmakers, who approved marriage equality legislation in late April. In other parts of the country, Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey are also considering marriage equality legislation. The pending laws might also be a reflection of how public opinion has changed on the issue of same-sex marriage.”  This is the change in the wind that many politics have been applauding, but it is not a good change, as the UCC seems to feel!

This position of the UCC is a characterization of the Progressive thinking that is very much committed to imposing its view of equality on the rest of the society—be it in the church, in the school, in the family, and ultimately imposed by the whole state.  It is to educate our society into accepting what is wrong to the full, all because of the use of that magical word, “equality”.

I read what someone had jotted down in a summary of contemporary America that well describes our plight, as “the melody being taken out of our music, the pride out of appearance, the courtesy out of driving, the romance out of love, the commitment out of marriage, the responsibility out of parenthood, the togetherness out of the family, the service out of patriotism, the Golden Rule from the nativity scenes out of cities, the civility out of behavior, the refinement out of language, the dedication out of employment, the prudence out of spending, the ambition out of achievement, God out of government and school, and the learning out of education.”   Things are getting all turned around!

Education is not just what is taught, but it is what is learned in the schools and society itself.  Much of this question relates to the education of equality as a pattern of seeking to make everything equal, whether it be constructive or destructive.  Negative five is not equal to positive five.  The Progressives have been leading the band for the past fifty years, but the working middle class is fading, the mainline churches are fading, and marriages are up in the air, as our schools are faltering.  How should we understand what we mean by “equality”?  It can be a confusing term.

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Avenue, Lavonia, Georgia 30553,  706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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