There is a difference between equality and equity, and prior to my experience beyond the classroom, I had neither fully understood how equality wasn’t equivalent to fairness nor how difficult it was for standardization and equity to coexist due to the nature of the two. Before I ultimately decided on pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mass communications, I had also pursued two other majors, one of which was early childhood education. As counterpart to one of my classes, I was assigned to be a teacher’s assistant for the whole semester at a low-income middle school for a sixth-grade history class. Although I helped the whole class with various activities at times, I primarily worked with one young boy because the teacher was concerned about his progress in the class and his retention of the information being taught, and for privacy purposes I’m going to call him James. 

          James was a “D” or “C” student at best, had low confidence and esteem in his learning abilities, and had several medical issues and learning disabilities that prohibited him from learning the material as well as his peers. I wanted to use methods of positive reinforcement and a reward system to foster improvement in James’ learning, and so I put together a treasure box because I sought for James to succeed with a smile. For months I would tutor him and watch his confidence in himself grow with each passing week, but it seemed like prior to my arrival that no one took the time to explain information to him in a way that he understood which had caused him to internalize that he wasn’t smart enough. There were hardly any measures put in place for students with learning disabilities – most likely because the school lacked the funds for them – and despite their efforts, not every child (or person) can succeed with a standardized education. 

          James received equality in his standardized education because he was exposed to the same instructional conditions, but that didn’t mean he had the same chances as his peers in reaching common goals because his education lacked equity. After developing several ways for James to memorize the material that worked with his learning disabilities instead of against them, I watched him develop a love and excitement for learning rather than the dread of failure and insufficiency he had associated with it before. After one month, James made his first “A” in the class, and I had never seen a child beam with so much joy or be so shocked by his own abilities. It didn’t take me long to realize that I had possibly just changed the direction of this young boy’s education over the course of a few months by simply providing him with the personalization of resources that matched his learning needs. This young boy had been walking away from history lessons with a lesser level of knowledge than his peers in the class due to the nature of standardization and equality. Such a realization sparked change in my outlook on life not only by making me question whether the public education system was doing enough to develop standards that support an equitable education for all students, but also by influencing my understanding of the dangers that standardizations can possess in other spheres of life and the importance of equity in all spheres. 

          Everyone isn’t born with the same abilities or privileges, and yet standardized anything has set the pace for what is ‘good enough,’ adequate, and sufficient. Two artifacts that acknowledge how detrimental standardization can be within society are an essay and website project that I created for a class called “Rhetoric and Composition.” Both the essay and website were about body editor applications and the risks posed by unrealistic media-ideal standards for women’s bodies in western culture. Standardized education isn’t a one-size-fits-all, and neither is standardized beauty (and body). Similar to how promoting only one way of learning can be detrimental to someone’s educational progress who doesn’t fit the norm, it can also be detrimental to promote only one standard of beauty because of how it can negatively affect aspects of a woman’s mental, emotional, and physical health since we do not all share the same equal beauty. 

          Most things that are standardized requires a person to fit into the mold presented instead of making changes so the mold fits the person, and that is what makes equity so different from equality. Getting an equal and standardized education does not guarantee equal success or fairness when students are learning at different levels. Having a standardized beauty ideal does not nurture women’s health or promote diversity and representation when the beauty industry has primarily promoted Eurocentric and heteronormative beauty standards. Instead of having standardizations of beauty that discourage women from embracing their true and authentic selves, there should be equitable standards of beauty for the diversity of physical features around the world. Ultimately, standardizing and equalizing is not necessarily conductive of progress or fairness because of how the combination of the two tend to lack the consideration of equity in different contexts.