What Children Know (Think) about Fairness

My grandson recently reminded me that even children realize that we are all individuals and that treating everyone alike is the same as being fairer to some than to others because we all have differing needs and emotions. (In other words, treating people all the same way, i.e. alike, is not treating them equally because equal means meeting individual needs at the same level, not in the same way. I'm not sure I am making myself clear, but I hope I am. Perhaps thinking about the US constitution would help clarify. It is written there that all people are created equal; it is not written that all people are created the same.)

Anyway, back to my grandson. It seems that his first-grade teacher required the entire class to put their heads down because the class was being too noisy. My grandson acquiesced to the teacher's demand, but at the end of the school day, he approached her and said, "We have to talk."

What he wanted to talk about was the unfairness of treating everyone the same. "You made us all put our heads down for being noisy but I was not noisy," he told her, "and that was unfair. I would like an explanation." (He is an only child and therefore has been raised with adult language that is sometimes a little off-putting.)

The teacher was nonplussed and apparently did not give a reasonable explanation in my grandson's view. "I guess she didn't have a good reason and was afraid to tell me that," he related to his parents.

His father had no right to complain about his son's behavior for he had done something quite similar when he was in the fifth grade. His teacher had become frustrated with some mischievousness among the students in the row in which he was sitting and told the whole row that they had to stay in at recess. My son objected. "You are a group," she told him, "and I expect you to be responsible for each other."

"You chose the grouping, not I," he continued to object, but she would not hear it and insisted that they all stay in at recess.

My son went outside. That frustrated the teacher, who then told him he would have to stay after school for detention.

"Okay," he readily agreed. "That's fair because I disobeyed you."

His teacher was both amused and confused when she related to me what had happened. "How else could I have handled this?" she asked.

I did not have a good answer for her because children do perceive fairness in much more black-and-white terms than do we adults; at least my kids did. It is often difficult to understand that treating everyone the same is not the same as treating them all equally and fairly.

What do y'all think? Same or equal? What can kids teach us in this respect? Any stories from your children, students, grandkids?

And what about this contemporary concept of teaching the group, making the group responsible for the group, even giving one grade for the whole group? That was not part of my experience growing up -- which may explain why I am such an individualist and why I raised an individualist, who is, in turn, raising an individualist. I would love to hear from those who grew up with the group approach to learning -- did it work for you? Why or why not?