{"id":759,"date":"2004-11-21T13:14:01","date_gmt":"2004-11-21T13:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=759"},"modified":"2004-11-21T13:14:01","modified_gmt":"2004-11-21T13:14:01","slug":"the_tyranny_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=759","title":{"rendered":"The Tyranny of Low Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/11\/21\/weekinreview\/21tier.html?ex=1258693200&#038;en=109a868d7785cdf1&#038;ei=5088&#038;partner=rssnyt\" TITLE=\"John Tierney NY Times Article Link\">John Tierney writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>At one level, the debate is over current controversies in public education: Many parents believe that their children, mostly in elite schools, are being pushed too hard in a hypercompetitive atmosphere. But other parents are complaining about a decline in programs for gifted children, leaving students to languish in &#8220;untracked&#8221; and unstimulating classrooms. Some critics of education believe that boys especially are languishing in schools that emphasize cooperation instead of competition. No Child Left Behind, indeed.<br \/>\nBut the basic issue is the same one raised four decades ago by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vonnegut.com\/\">Kurt Vonnegut<\/a> in &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22Harrison+Bergeron%22&#038;sourceid=mozilla-search&#038;start=0&#038;start=0&#038;ie=utf-8&#038;oe=utf-8&#038;client=firefox-a&#038;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official\">Harrison Bergeron<\/a>,&#8221; a short story set in the America of 2081, about a 14-year-old genius and star athlete. To keep others from feeling inferior, the Handicapper General weighs him down with 300-pound weights and makes him wear earphones that blast noise, so he cannot take &#8220;unfair advantage&#8221; of his brain.<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s hardly the America of 2004, but today&#8217;s children do grow up with soccer leagues and spelling bees where everyone gets a prize. On some playgrounds dodge ball is deemed too traumatic to the dodging-impaired. Some parents consider musical chairs dangerously exclusionary. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>  Fascinating article&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Tierney writes: At one level, the debate is over current controversies in public education: Many parents believe that their children, mostly in elite schools, are being pushed too hard in a hypercompetitive atmosphere. But other parents are complaining about a decline in programs for gifted children, leaving students to languish in &#8220;untracked&#8221; and unstimulating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}