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• Title: Elitism Misunderstood: In Defense of Equal Opportunity (Forum on "Social Class and Honors") (Essay)
• Author : Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council
• Release Date : January 22, 2009
• Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 62 KB

Description

At one time or another, we have all dealt with colleagues who expressed doubts about dedicating resources to honors students. They argue that gifted and high-achieving students do not need or deserve additional resources to pursue their educational goals; they will do just fine on their own. Critics of honors often comment that money spent on honors students, who will graduate anyway, should be invested in helping students with traditionally low retention rates; these latter students are the ones who need the resources. At some time in the discussion, such critics typically say that honors education is inherently "elitist" because it serves the "upper" social class. In this essay, we make the argument that honors is not elitist and that the unique needs of honors students from all social classes are no less nor more important than the needs of other students. If we consider the normal distribution, or bell curve, in level of intelligence, we find that just fewer than 70% of the population should fall into the average range of intelligence (those with an IQ in the range of approximately 85 to 115, with 100 considered average; Eysenck, 2006; Herrnstein & Murray, 1995). Five percent of individuals fall into the extreme ranges with about 2% at either end of the normal distribution. In other words, about 2% of individuals have an IQ lower than 70, which places them in the mentally retarded range, and about 2% have an IQ greater than 130, which places them in the intellectually gifted range. Since the average IQ is 100, if we had students with an IQ lower than 70, should we provide special services for those students? In fact, don't we? In public education at the elementary and secondary levels, federal law (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, revised in 2004) mandates that states provide free and appropriate public education for all students with an IQ lower than 70. Now, what about students with an IQ greater than 130? Should they receive special services, too? The upper group and the lower group each represent about 2% of the population, so we might assume that they should get equal treatment, but they do not. Only students at the lower end of the normal distribution are protected by federal laws, not students at the upper end. Intellectually gifted students are usually served only by state and local laws, if at all. In 1988, the federal government passed the Gifted and Talented Students Education Act, which recognized that intellectually gifted students have needs but did not require states to provide special services for them. In efforts to give everyone a chance to succeed, public schools at all levels are often guilty of ignoring the needs of the intellectually gifted with the expectation that, since gifted students are able to succeed on their own, resources should be given to students with greater needs. Also, special programs for the intellectually gifted are seen as promoting elitism.

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