EDIT: This is the opening paragraph. It says it all:
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
I thought the original was a bit over the top a bit ridiculous almost. Bergeron's some kind of god being almost. The movie kept it a little more realistic and was darker i felt.
Every time people talk about the real problem of so-called "gifted" classes containing disproportionately large numbers of white students, this story gets trotted out as an ominous warning of "where this could go". This is the slippery slope fallacy; who is suggesting that we attach bags of lead weights to people who are stronger than average or play loud noises to disrupt the thinking of people smarter than average? No such measures, or anything like them, is proposed in the article. Actually, no measures are proposed at all because the school hasn't decided what to do yet (beyond temporarily suspending gifted classes).
So how is this story at all relevant or illuminating to the article, beyond as an exercise in fearmongering?
You can't apply a literal interpretation of the story when no such interpretation was intended by Vonnegut. Of course he never expected actual lead weights would be strapped to people by legal decree. That's not the point.
How it relates to the article is the "lead weight" of removing the availability of AP classes from White and Asian students is a severely misguided attempt at making Black and Hispanic students equal, as if they weren't already. It's actually a terribly wrong message to the Black and Hispanic students.
It seems to me that a better approach is try to understand the reasons why more Black and Hispanic students aren't enrolling while continuing to provide these classes to any student who qualifies, regardless of race.
