THE LIE THAT IS INCLUSIVE EDUCATION.

Just before the corona tyranny began, followed by a summer of mostly peaceful protests, Power Line's John Hinderaker charged that "Liberalism causes achievement gaps."  Perhaps that's because more sensitive or restorative methods of school discipline don't produce kinder, gentler hellions, or because affirming those different ways of communicating or figuring don't produce intellectually curious youngsters; rather they're effective at producing socially promoted subliterates.  No agency, no discipline, no standards, no child gets ahead.  That leads to a sad conclusion, "[W]e can predict that the black-white achievement gap will be worst in school districts where [critical studies] values and principles take deepest root."  Put bluntly, "inclusive education" with a heavy dose of critical studies comes close to suggesting the students who the woke would like to protect are actually not competent.

Rod Dreher suggests it's the epistemic closure in such school districts.  "Note how there can be no answer for the underperformance of minority students in class other than white racism. These ideologues insist that reality must conform to the tenets of the ideology."  To suggest otherwise is to commit the secular sin of blaming the victim.  "What is not being taught—what students are not exposed to, and not even allowed to hear—is the contrary position that persistent racial inequalities are oftentimes rooted in cultural differences and behavioral tendencies that are not all traceable to slavery or Jim Crow, and cannot all be solved by purging the vague category of 'structural racism.'"  Rather, we pull down the shades on the train, and pretend we are moving.  "[Oregon spinner Charles] Boyle said in an emailed statement that suspending the reading, writing and math proficiency requirements will benefit 'Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of colour.'"

The idea behind so-called inclusive education is that it's supposed to produce those intellectually curious youngsters.  The lie is that those intellectually curious youngsters exist, and somehow a more conventional education doesn't hurt them.  Think about this, dear reader.  Each month I receive glossy alumni magazines from a university you might have heard of (not always in a good way) and you might be excused for thinking they're sending out Benetton catalogs based on the covers, and the feature stories.  The stories, though, describe faculty members or graduates working on Really Useful projects, and the language and presentation is impeccable.  One wonders if those star faculty members and featured graduates would have gotten anywhere at all had they been subjected to public education as offered in Madison or Minneapolis.