Equal opportunities, inclusion, level playing fields - all great phrases but what do they actually mean? Can opportunities really be equal? Is there really such a thing as a level playing field? How does diversity and individuality fit with all of this?
These are big questions, but they are questions that I find popping into my head when I have a sense that things are not adequately equal, that things are not sufficiently fair, that somehow there is an injustice being done which I, by simply doing as I'm told, become the victim of. I am trying hard not to be 'Angry of Leicestershire' but I do get more than a tad irritated to be told the requirements of 'x' are 'y' only to discover that the same is not true for someone else. I have pondered long and hard putting this into words, let alone putting it on the web where all and sundry can read it, but I do think I need to 'dump' it.
Just what is appropriate to level a playing field, to make opportunities adequately equal for all participants? I recall that for the Manchester Commonwealth Games a local bike shop supplied good quality cycles to one of the African(?) cycling teams who had arrived with little more than standard roadsters. The level of inequality was, they judged, too great, and even had these athletes been the finest in the world, they were not able to compete on equal terms with the UK or antipodean teams. (There was also the lovely story of the overseas team who cycled up the hard shoulder of the M61 not realising this was illegal!). Giving them these commercial cycles did not give them the same opportuities as the western cyclists but it closed the gap a bit - it made the race more fair. That seems to me a good thing.
More recently there was the decision not to allow the 'blade runner' to compete alongside 'able bodied' atheletes because he had the potential to engineer his blades to give him unfair advantage. The logic being that you can't tinker with the human body (or can you? - Western atheletes use dietary supplements and blood exchanges to boost their performances quite legally). Even single and double amputees cannot race against each other for this reason - if you have one artificial leg the length is dictated by that of your remaining leg; if you have two you can choose to be taller by choosing longer proththeses!
Of course, I'm not really talking about athletics here, but my own experiences in a very different sphere where I find myself questioning not only justice and fairness, but actually whether some of the attempts at inclusion and ensuring everyone ends up a winner are helpful. I would never enter myself to run a marathon - I simply cannot run that far, my ankles would not survive even if the rest of me did. It would be a total nonsense if I entered, ran about a mile, which I could probably just about manage on a good day, and was either told it didn't matter, I could have the medal anyway, or if someone carried me the rest of the way. The medal would be meaningless, I would not be a marathon runner no matter what it said on the certificate.
We seem to live in an age in which failure is just not accepted, where if you can't clear the bar, well we'll just lower it until you can. Partly, I fear, this is driven by the very requirement for success - to show more people doing better year on year no matter what. Universities and colleges need to show that students are succeeding in greater numbers to higher levels - which is just not going to happen unless we change the rules as we go along.
I do know and appreciate that circumstances change and people do need to be treated as individuals, and I do know that life is inherently unfair. I am just left wondering whether the drive for inclusion and success mean that rather than making the playing fields more level they are just skewed differently. Certainly, and this is as blunt as I am going to be, I am not convinced that playing by the rules or actually being fit enough to enter the 'race' actually count for very much when everyone is going to win anyway. Of course, I will carry on playing by the rules, cos that's the kind of girl I am, and I will succeed or fail on my own merits - but right now I'm not so sure what the value of the medal will be if and when I get it.
