A new email friend of mine (Hi, Susan!) asked a rhetorical question that got me thinking:
"that is a touch word in the education field also.. normal. who thought of that silly word anyway??"
I started looking at
Merriam-Webster online to see what the definition of "norm" was:
a : a set standard of development or achievement usually derived from the average or median achievement of a large group
b : a pattern or trait taken to be typical in the behavior of a social group
Now I'm wondering how a term that started off referring to commonly observed behavior changed into The Only Acceptable Behavior.
I also realized that some people prefer to see themselves as being on the crest of the bell curve and will designate anyone to their left as Down There, and anyone to their right as Way Up There. This causes a big distortion in the curve, but as long as it makes them feel "Normal", it serves their purpose.
And naturally I segued into looking up "average":
a : a single value (as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values
Having been the beneficiary of an excellent course in Statistics in graduate school, I realized that the
three different types of average can be used to create startlingly different portrayls of the same data. If you don't understand this from the definitions alone, there is a great book that explains it fully,
How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrell Huff (Norton).
You may be asking by now, "What does this have to do with me?" Well, it matters in terms of who is doing the calculations about where you are in relation to them, in *their* perspective. For example, who decides about distribution of resources and interpretation of laws? Where do they see you in relation to themselves? Who decides the criteria for admission into programs and schools? Who determines the parameters of such things as "education" and "literacy"?
Bright Blessings,
Spiral Crone
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