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Sir,

How do we define fairness? Is fairness when we treat everyone the same or is it when we allow everyone the same opportunity? Treating everyone equally comes from the belief that we are indeed equal and thus of equal need. And as you’re aware from reading the George Orwell classic Animal Farm, ‘some are more equal than others’. I know society has a hard time seeing fairness in equity; to mean, society has a hard time seeing unequal treatment as fair. Society rather prefers to view equality as fair. But I find that to be an oversimplification that ignores some unique circumstances of reality.

Angus Maguire illustrated the equality versus equity discourse perfectly in the famous picture of three people of varied height standing behind a fence at a baseball game. The ‘equality’ side of the picture shows the three individuals standing on top of three respective boxes of the same height. What is depicted is that the shortest of the three cannot observe the game at all; the fence is in the way.

The ‘equity’ side is very different because all of them can watch the game. How? The tallest guy forfeits his pedestal to the shortest guy so that the shortest guy is standing on two boxes, one on top of the other, to compensate for his height… or lack of it. A picture is worth a thousand words, so please Google the image, but don’t ask me why the three dudes didn’t just buy tickets to the game instead of watching over the fence.

The role of fairness ought to be levelling the playing field. Allotting equal time to respective individuals on a lopsided field will always favour those who are playing downhill compared to those who have to play going uphill. This is the precise failure of formal schooling. Pupils from middle class households disproportionately outperform those from impoverished backgrounds, despite intelligence being randomly distributed. Public schools are said to be plagued with incompetent staff. Maybe some of the blame is due, but are we saying that we expect pupils who do not know where their next meal is coming from to perform at the level of pupils with electricity, computers and internet in their bedrooms?

Mangaliso