A levelling-down agenda

Kittie Helmick says efforts to boost the number of minority students at her U.S. high school have served neither the students nor academic standards

‘‘TJ IS IN THE NEWS AGAIN,” a friend texted me. What would it be this time, I wondered. Winning the national Rubik’s Cube competition? Launching a satellite into space? No, this time my high school alma mater had made headlines because of a cheating scandal — cheating not by the students, but the administrators. School officials had admitted to concealing students’ National Merit awards from them, with the laughable excuse that they didn’t want to “hurt” the other students’ feelings. Parents were understandably outraged, as it is the school’s responsibility to notify families of these awards — ideally before college application deadlines. More schools were duly implicated in the same deceptive practice. I didn’t follow the story closely. I didn’t want to face more evidence that the grievance complex had…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2023

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