I think whether I'm saying what you think I'm saying depends on what you mean by educational equality.
I think every kid should have the opportunity to learn the most challenging material they can handle. I absolutely accept that kids should have the opportunity to move between streams if they turn out to be able to handle more challenging material than their teachers originally thought. Every kid who has the basic intellectual ability to handle university prep material should be able to study that material, and if you're correct that most kids do have that ability (and I'm willing to believe that), most kids should have that opportunity. So I believe in educational equality if what you mean by that is that everybody should get the opportunity to develop their academic potential to its fullest.
What I'm not convinced of is the idea that if you give every kid the same opportunities and level of support, most of them will achieve around the same level. I'm certain there are real differences in ability among kids (which I know you accept in the case of LD/non-neurotypicality), and I would be surprised if there aren't real differences in ability among basically neurotypical/non-LD kids. If that's the case, making them all achieve at the same level (e.g. that of the academic/university prep stream in Ontario high schools right now) would require more support and challenge for some students than for others. That would mean that students who couldn't do any better than the current university prep standard would be supported and challenged enough to achieve to the best of their abilities, where students who could do better would only be supported enough to get them to the current university prep standard. I think every student should be supported enough to get them to achieve to the best of their ability. So if by educational equality you mean every neurotypical/non-LD student achieving at the same level, I'm kind of skeptical of that because I don't think it would happen even if there was equality of opportunity--I think it would require better opportunities for the less able students.
no subject
I think every kid should have the opportunity to learn the most challenging material they can handle. I absolutely accept that kids should have the opportunity to move between streams if they turn out to be able to handle more challenging material than their teachers originally thought. Every kid who has the basic intellectual ability to handle university prep material should be able to study that material, and if you're correct that most kids do have that ability (and I'm willing to believe that), most kids should have that opportunity. So I believe in educational equality if what you mean by that is that everybody should get the opportunity to develop their academic potential to its fullest.
What I'm not convinced of is the idea that if you give every kid the same opportunities and level of support, most of them will achieve around the same level. I'm certain there are real differences in ability among kids (which I know you accept in the case of LD/non-neurotypicality), and I would be surprised if there aren't real differences in ability among basically neurotypical/non-LD kids. If that's the case, making them all achieve at the same level (e.g. that of the academic/university prep stream in Ontario high schools right now) would require more support and challenge for some students than for others. That would mean that students who couldn't do any better than the current university prep standard would be supported and challenged enough to achieve to the best of their abilities, where students who could do better would only be supported enough to get them to the current university prep standard. I think every student should be supported enough to get them to achieve to the best of their ability. So if by educational equality you mean every neurotypical/non-LD student achieving at the same level, I'm kind of skeptical of that because I don't think it would happen even if there was equality of opportunity--I think it would require better opportunities for the less able students.
I hope that doesn't make me horribly classist.