OUR CONCEPT OF EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY

The American Federation of Teachers has a traditional commitment to the principle of Equal Educational Opportunity. In any given situation we have been in agreement on the position that favors this principle. We here present a comprehensive description of our concept of Equal Educational Opportunity for the purpose of developing public understanding and professional allegiance, and to serve as the philosophical foundation for collective bargaining and legislative efforts. We base our description on these fundamental assumptions:

That Equal Educational Opportunity means to us education equal to the best education provided anywhere for any student and is not a euphemism for some mediocre compromise of educational excellence;

That Equal Educational Opportunity requires the removal of physiological, sociological and emotional barriers to education achievement;

That Equal Educational Opportunity must exist for both sexes, all racial or ethnic stocks and for all ages of students who seek it.

In this resolution we itemize the specifics that we include in the term, Equal Educational Opportunity.

Regarding age levels

Equal Educational Opportunity

• meets in early childhood every entering pupil where he is in his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual development;

• guarantees admittance to public institutions of higher learning to all graduates of high schools;

• provides free tuition and cost-of-living stipend for every student in 1Oth grade or above;

• provides extension courses of institutions of higher learning for groups of students not living near a campus and correspondence courses for individual students unable to attend;

• offers a standard evening high school program wherever residents request such a program;

• offers an evening study course in any field of knowledge requested by twenty or more residents of the school district;

• affords any person of any age who is institutionalized for the protection of himself or of society, rehabilitory education appropriate to his needs;

• involves optimum use of all mass media for credit courses, non-credit courses, educational enrichment, documentary presentations, public debate, literacy instruction, and the general elevation of the popular cultural level for all ages in cooperation with educational institutions, authorities, and organizations

Regarding health

Equal Educational Opportunity

• provides diversified tranquil learning environments for all pupils, making special provision for those with perceptual, emotional, physical or other problems, intervening to bring them therapeutic treatment and care if not already provided through family resources;

• effectively counteracts the social handicaps of dialectal or language differences, physical defects, under-nourishment, lack of suitable clothing, poor and/or crowded housing, transportation difficulty, necessity to work during the educational period to meet expenses;

• provides the environment in which he can learn to understand and respect his own emotions and those of others and to take care of his emotional health, to understand and respect his own body and those of others, and to take care of his emotional health, to understand and respect his own body and those of others, and to take care of his physical health, and to understand and respect his mental ability and that of others;

• requires that all middle and secondary school students receive pre-parenthood instruction which includes nutritional, immunizational, and drug abuse instruction as well as pre- and postnatal care of family and child, emphasizing the child's need to receive affection, attention, and multi-sensory stimulation from birth on;

• encourages the parent to see that the child's physical and mental health be subject to frequent and thorough professional examination therapy, beginning with the prenatal period

Regarding intellectual attainment

Equal Educational Opportunity

• provides him with appropriate and sufficient instruction to advance him as far in his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual development as he has the capacity and desire to go in response to the optimum methods of motivation, instruction and educational experience;

• gives training to every person from early childhood to enable him without losing his native tongue, to understand, read, speak and write a prestige dialect prevailing in his part of the world, and provides him with the option, at least, of learning another major language;

• opens to him honestly and usefully an understanding of the problems, errors and achievements of the past as they illuminate the present;

• gives him, to advance his intellectual development as an adult, the tools which are available to any other student in our society;

• provides enriching experiences to develop the student's aesthetic appreciation of the arts: visual arts, auditory arts, and literature and encourages him to engage in creative personal activity;

• releases his creativity to enrich his private life in channels of his personal choice;

• requires the presence in the local community of well-stocked and well-equipped free neighborhood libraries, and/or the availability of regional libraries and bookmobiles, the development of home libraries and through providing funds for family budgets, educating parents to provisions of books in the home, the location of shops where they may be purchased and the establishment of a system of local community museums of science, the arts, and general culture

Regarding social orientation

Equal Educational Opportunity

• effectively counteracts the disturbing pressures of domestic discord and anxiety, physical insecurity in the neighborhood and the rankling presence of discrimination and exclusion on grounds of ancestry, creed, mother-tongue, sex or perceptible personal "differentness";

• qualifies him to function effectively as a peer among all mankind;

• affords him the utmost in broadening experience to make him at home with the people of any culture whom he may ever meet or may have occasion to associate or ally himself with as a member of a community, be it local, national, or world-wide;

• presents him with a wide variety of actual and/or vicarious acquaintance with the occupational scene, prepares him to earn his living in the dignity of useful labor in accord with his inclinations and talents; affords him opportunity, through the total educational experience, to see people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, including his own, as his peers and in positions of success, authority, prestige and respect, especially in the schools

Regarding character development

Equal Educational Opportunity

• helps the students to appreciate the value of personality and character development, stimulates him to develop a sense of responsibility toward his own growth, toward the welfare of himself and others, and toward the good of society;

• instructs the students at all ages in the ecology of the earth, the individual's responsibility in maintaining it, the responsibility of society, and the reward to be found in enjoyment of natural phenomena

In this document we are limiting ourselves entirely to the definition of universal goals. Means for implementation will vary from time to time and from place to place, according to the social organization and the resources of particular communities or nations. However, it is essential for the intelligent consideration of any legal or professional proposal for change that we have a clearly defined concept of the end in view, so that we shall be able always to measure such a proposal in terms of its probable tendency to forward or to hinder the achievement of the goals of Equal Educational Opportunity.