Clearly undeterred—and perhaps even spurred onward—by the backlash over its recent interventions in schools’ disciplinary practices and access to advanced courses, the Education Department’s proactive Office for Civil Rights is again moving into new territory: student lockers and alphabetical order. In the first instance, government enforcers have determined that high schoolers often have bigger lockers than second graders and now threaten punitive action if any school system does not give every student access to an equally capacious locker. Even more draconian is the fate awaiting districts in which little kids presently have “cubbies” rather than proper lockers.
As for alphabetical order, OCR has surfaced two problems that outrage their sense of fairness. It seems that teachers and schools routinely sort and categorize their students by the beginning letters of their surnames, which means that, 93 percent of the time,the Aarons and Adamses go first, while the Youngners and Zimmermans are relegated to lives at the end of the line. This blatant discrimination must be rectified. On some occasions, and perhaps half the time, the last must be first.
The second OCR issue is more nuanced. Teachers who attempt to treat kids fairly by occasionally instituting reverse alphabetical order are causing other kinds of problems, so saith the agency. Some early-alphabeters are said to suffer emotional scarring, while others lash out in tantrums, disrupting classroom learning. Meanwhile, the Ys and Zs are at risk of panic attacks due to being “put on the spot” by the sudden reversal. That’s not a reason to stop reversing. It’s a sign that culpable districts must provide appropriate emotional counseling to all affected. And teachers should opt for random-number generators or abolish all ordering of their pupils. Or else.
