Fantasy of Fairness

According to one broadside, students in American high schools say "that's not fair" an average of 8.6 times per day.

Where have they gotten the idea that "life is fair" or at least that it should be?

In part, young people tend to think that way, and they rarely grow out of it.

On the other hand, public schools are indoctrinated with the narrative of fairness, pushing multicultural, feel-good ethnocentric learning to appeal to students sense of race, in weak attempts to boost their self-esteem.

Fairness is also one of the most deeply held beliefs of the Left, which has dominated the public school system for generations. As a state monopoly ployed and prodded by public sector unions, liberalism is a stalwart spirit haunting public schools.

Kids have to be treated fairly. Teachers are expected to demonstrate respect -- near deference -- to the students, when only by commanding respect can a teacher effect any learning in the classroom.

Fairness has forced teachers to pass students by taking into consideration physical, social, and economic handicaps. Since when have we permitted a person's upbringing to excuse failure and sloth? Yet the mantra of fairness has so occluded standards of excellence and leadership, that students can get away with doing very little.

In conflicts between teachers and parents, the student is allowed to have a say every time. In more school districts, out of a misplaced sense of justice, abject fairness is leading administrators to take the kid's side on everything.

Fairness does not exist in nature. Human being are endowed with the same rights from one Creator, but what they do with those right in conjunction with skills, genetics, or will is a matter for each person to resolve on his or her own.

Fairness is a fantasy, a "this should work" fallacy that has nothing to do with preparing young people for the real world. Schools have inoculated young people from the grueling realities that sometimes hard work does not pay off, at least immediately, that grace is necessary to face and overcome much in this life, and that much of the time effort in itself is sometimes the only reward.

The truth of these matters would be better expounded only in light of spiritual verities, much of which have been summarily cast out of the public square, a perversion of truth which twists young minds to question everything, stand for nothing, and wondering why they are still searching for something.

The cult of fairness is not an answer to these eternal queries.