‘Equality’ in Education: France Mulls Banning Homework

Below is an example of policy absurdity employed by politicians in order to attain the charade of “equality”.

From Washington Post Blog (bold mine)

French President François Hollande has said he will end homework as part of a series of reforms to overhaul the country’s education system.

And the reason he wants to ban homework? 

He doesn’t think it is fair that some kids get help from their parents at home while children who come from disadvantaged families don’t. It’s an issue that goes well beyond France, and has been part of the reason that some Americans oppose homework too.

Hollande’s reform plans include increasing the number of teachers, moving the school week from four days to 4 1/2 days, overhauling the curriculum and taking steps to cut down on absenteeism.

“Education is priority,” Hollande was quoted as saying by France24.com at Paris’s Sorbonne University last week. “An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home,” as a way to ensure that students who have no help at home are not disadvantaged.

This is yet a neat example of the pretentious wisdom by politicians, on what for them is good for society, from which the interests of individuals are subordinated.

In reality, this represents a war on education in the guise of equality. Politicians clearly want to limit people's learning.

 

Yet there is one sure outcome from such daft measures: equality in ignorance. Yes, keeping people ignorant seems a great way to control them.

As French Jurist, Dalloy warned

When ignorance reigns in society and disorder in the minds of men, laws are multiplied, legislation is expected to do everything, and each fresh law being a fresh miscalculation, men are continually led to demand from it what can proceed only from themselves, from their own education and their own morality.

Olympics and the Egalitarian Bunk

Politicians and their mainstream sycophants frequently lectures, directly and indirectly (through media), the public about the supposed necessity of having a society based on ‘equality’ or egalitarianism.

Unfortunately they hardly practice what they preach.

Professor Tibor Machan exposes the egalitarian balderdash.

The Olympic Games come in very handy for those of us who find egalitarianism morally and politically intolerable. The Games show how little appeal there is to forcing everyone into the same mold, how much violence and coercion it would--and where attempted does--take to even toy with bringing about an egalitarian society.

The only place where equality has a decisive role in human social affairs is when it comes to protecting everyone’s basic rights. This is the way the Declaration of Independence finds room for equality. Once everyone’s basic rights are secure, from that point on no room exists for equalization in a just human community.

Sure, there can be special areas where equality can be of value, for example in the application of standards and rules, as shown in athletics. But even there equality will apply in highly diverse ways--one way in the classroom, another in the legal system, and yet another at a beauty contest. General equality belongs only in the protection of individual rights, period.

Elsewhere it is just as it’s illustrated by the Olympic Games, with variety and differences breaking out all over. As long as these are peacefully obtained, as long as ranking comes about without corruption, there is nothing objectionable about inequalities in human affairs. Furthermore, attempting to make things equal achieves the exact opposite since those doing the attempting will enjoy the worst kind of inequality, namely, power over their fellows as they try to manipulate everyone to be equal.

Just as elsewhere in most of nature, in human affairs, too, inequality is the norm. But since human beings are free to establish various rules in their societies, they have the option, which they ought to exercise, to preclude all coercion from human interactions. Beyond that, it is futile to try to exclude inequalities in human affairs.

It is not inequality that needs to be abolished but coercive force. With that achieved, at least substantially, let diversity and difference be the norm. As that old saying goes, “Vive la difference.” Any serious examination of the prospects of an egalitarians polity should reveal just how insidious the idea is. Just consider requiring that all outcomes of the Olympic Games be equal!

The simple point is that Olympics is all about the inequality of human affairs. The fact that governments promote Olympics has been an implicit recognition of such diversity.

Yet in reality, the politics of egalitarianism represents nothing more than convenient excuses to implement social policies of redistribution or interventionism and the rule of philosopher kings.

Quote of the Day: Hayek on Equality

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means, as De Tocqueville described it, “a new form of servitude.

That’s from Friedrich August von Hayek in Individualism and economic order (hat tip Professor Don Boudreaux)

Video: Understanding Liberty and Equality

Professor James Otteson, in the video below, explains the relationship between Liberty and Equality


From LearnLiberty (bold emphasis mine)

Two central values in American political life are liberty and equality. But are these two values in tension with one another?

As philosophy Prof. James Otteson explains, it depends on how you define them. There is more than one way to think about liberty, and more than one way to think about equality. For example, when talking about equality, there are two different central conceptions. The first is formal equality, equality that comes from the form of institutions. An example of formal equality is equality before the law: all laws apply equally to everyone. Formal equality is a central tenet of the classical liberal tradition, and compatible with individual liberty.

But a second conception of equality is material, or substantive, equality. Material equality holds that people ought to be equal in material respects, such as wealth or resources.

Material equality poses real challenges to classical liberalism, and according to Otteson, also faces challenges of its own. Otteson outlines three major challenges to material equality: first, it may be impossible, both to measure, and to achieve. Second, material equality interferes with human diversity. Humans have different talents, different interests, and different values, which in a free society get reflected in a range of goods & activities that individuals acquire and pursue. To try to enforce some kind of material equality would mean interfering with this diversity.

That leads to the third problem, which is that material equality interferes with human dignity. Part of what it means to have human dignity is to have the capacity and the freedom to make choices. These choices are reflected in the way we live our lives; to respect the free choices that people make is to respect their dignity. Enforcing material equality would necessarily interfere with the free choices that people make.