Well, equality is one of the human values. I think the journalists are adding this spin because readers want to read it; because it is a political topic. Saying that one child leaves the school system smarter than the other child makes people think “that’s unfair”. And being unfair, especially towards children, is a bad thing. So yes, a policy that improves all children is strictly worse at creating a feeling of equality.
(Of course there are other values besides equality, which shouldn’t be sacrificed, unless you want to say things like: “No one should be able to find a cure for cancer, until we all are able to find a cure for cancer… which realistically means: never.” But this is exactly the mindkilling effect of politics: focus on one value and ignore all the others, because our team identifies with this value, and the other value is used in the same way by the other team.)
Well, equality is one of the human values. I think the journalists are adding this spin because readers want to read it; because it is a political topic. Saying that one child leaves the school system smarter than the other child makes people think “that’s unfair”. And being unfair, especially towards children, is a bad thing. So yes, a policy that improves all children is strictly worse at creating a feeling of equality.
(Of course there are other values besides equality, which shouldn’t be sacrificed, unless you want to say things like: “No one should be able to find a cure for cancer, until we all are able to find a cure for cancer… which realistically means: never.” But this is exactly the mindkilling effect of politics: focus on one value and ignore all the others, because our team identifies with this value, and the other value is used in the same way by the other team.)