Tangent: clarification of excellence rhetoric

OK, I totally admit that this is just me being pedantic and cranky, but the fact that "excellence for all" doesn't seem to ever be pointed out as a linguistic oxymoron drives me crazy. "Excellence" has become some strange signifier, along with "world class standards" and other signifiers designed to create some sense of American exceptionalism (a Lake Wobegon where "all the children are above average") while at the same time acquiescing to American egalitarianism. This is most evident in the "all children can learn" mantra...100 years ago Pavlov taught us that dogs can learn, so what are we really saying there? That everyone--no matter what else is going on in their lives--can learn this stuff...it's just that easy? Who's advocating for that position? If everyone can learn "at world class levels" or whatever, then what are special ed classes all about? Do we seriously believe that all babies can master any curriculum we throw at them by the same stage in life? Anyone who knows anything about children knows how crazy that is. Yet we act as if this is sound education policy.

It's like "reading at grade level": grade level (used to) mean(s) that in a typical classroom, 50% of students of a given grade would be reading above that level, and 50% would be below that level...so how can "all students read at grade level"? And why will no one point out that this is just asinine education policy?

Unless statisticians are willing to give up their beloved bell curve (which they've gone so far to call a "normal distribution") and rethink the entire concept of a range of abilities, unless we're prepared to really believe—against all logic and evidence to the contrary—the "we're #1" jingoistic rhetoric that every one of our kids is smarter than than the smartest kids in every other nation (thereby leaving them to fill out the other standard deviations of the bell curve), we need to describe "excellence" as what it really is: a minimum level of competency.