In which a thought experiment designed to teach students the real consequences of socialism ends up as policy … inevitably, in San Francisco. Be careful what you metaphor, in other words.
The thought experiment asks students to define equity, which usually produces some kind of demand for redistribution. The instructor agrees and then announces a plan to redistribute grade results on the basis of “equity,” with merits transferred from the achievers to the non-achievers. The point of this exercise is to apply real-world consequences to redistributions of results, and usually — usually — this teaches the students a lesson about punishing producers and incentivizing non-producers.
In San Francisco, however, the progressives have decided to implement this as policy in more than a dozen high schools. Not only did they try to sneak this change past parents,…
