"If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?"
-- Sojourner Truth at the 1851 Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio
Suffragette and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, according to the most popular account of her speech in Akron, had to ask for the word educated folks used when talking about "this thing in the head."
That word, somebody reportedly told her, is "intellect." That's what the old woman was referring to when she made her analogy about different measurements: intellect. One of the knocks on women was that there was no need to educate them since they never could be made as smart as a man.
Sojourner Truth doesn't directly challenge that statement. She uses an approach that's more subversive and sophisticated. Even if that's true, she argues, what would it hurt those with the big man-sized brains to let women take in as much learning as their puny heads can handle? At a certain point, she suggests with her own estimable intellect, a condescending person is indistinguishable from a mean one.
Louisianians can decide for themselves if the condescension Gov. Bobby Jindal is showing the state's struggling students crossed a line; that is, if it's mean-spirited. Even if the governor signed a bill creating a meaningless diploma out of clueless, well-intentioned condescension, the effect is the same: Students will suffer because of it.
The so-called "career diploma," available for students who fail part of the eighth-grade LEAP, is inherently shameful because it encourages adults to give up on their young students and those students to give up on themselves. It implies that they won't ever be able to learn as much as others, so why go through the pretense of trying to teach them?
The bill is even more shameful because it was signed into law by a governor who got his full quart's worth of education. If you had to make any assumption about a Rhodes Scholar like Jindal, you'd probably guess that such a scholar would place an incredibly high value on education and encourage children to maximize their potential. You wouldn't assume that such a brainiac would dissuade poor students from higher aspirations.
"This looks like social promotion," Orleans Parish School Board Vice President Lourdes Moran said of the career diploma Tuesday. "We're doing a disservice to our children." The Orleans Parish School Board is asking the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to give it a waiver so that the local board isn't forced to create a demeaning career diploma track for its students.
When Moran ran for office in 2004, her opponents gleefully pointed out that she didn't have a college degree. How ironic that Moran and her oft-maligned School Board are pushing for higher standards against a highly educated governor who has helped lower the state's standards.
Moran and the School Board argue that students should be required to meet certain mininum requirements to be presented diplomas. Jindal thinks that students who can't do the minimum should have the minimum requirements moved down so they won't have to work as hard to reach them.
I remember a recent Republican president who described such condescension as "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
Whether you choose Sojourner Truth's analogy or George Bush's colorful phrase, it should be plain to see that Bobby Jindal's actions run counter to longstanding wisdom.