The Mythical Average in an Age of Individual Complexity

During the age of innocence in a world that is perceived to have been less complex than the present, I was an undergraduate elementary education major. Most of my professors pontificated that we needed to teach to the average student in our classrooms. In addition, we were led to believe that textbooks were actually written with the average student in mind at that grade level—that is, students who were reading at an average grade level or higher.

The dictum seemed to be stated like this: The performance of an individual can be best understood when it is contextualized and compared with the average performance of a group. In accordance with this line of thinking, a teacher-made test was deemed to be effective if 68% of the students performed in the average range, with a few performing higher than average and—heaven help us—a few performing below average. I have a confession to make: My parents did not want me to be average, which was awfully close to mediocrity in their eyes, albeit they seem to have thought it was acceptable to be normal. Ah, I should be better than average, but it was justifiable to act and be normal—whatever that meant.

When I was a student in a master’s program, the story was different—or, perhaps, had a slight twist to the construct of average (or even normal). With a major in the education of d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students, I was introduced to the mighty world of individualization, which, obviously, is not foreign to our Western culture—but has reached new heights in advertisements and in the social media of our present universe. In short, special education was all about catering to and understanding the individual needs of children and adolescents with disabilities (for examples and discussions, see Birsh, 2011; D. R. Bryant, B. Bryant, & Smith, 2017; Taylor, Smiley, & Richards, 2009). (Note: This was the case even before the passage of PL 94-142 in 1975.)

Ironically, assisting children in special education to perform on at least an average level or even to be or act normal was considered a worthwhile goal—albeit incredibly challenging for a number of these children. Thus, in this case, being average, compared to the performance of typically developing children, was really fantastic; being an above-average person with a disability gave one godlike or goddesslike status. In my situation, I received compliments such as My goodness, you received your master’s degree despite your hearing impairment! Look how far you have come in spite of your impediment! You are going to make a great compassionate understanding teacher of deaf students! In retrospect, the political-correctness police would have been awfully busy if they had been in operation during this period.

With respect to the construct of average, my entrance into a doctoral program is analogous to living in multiple universes. I was exposed to such a variety of mind-bending teaching-learning perspectives on epistemology and research that I thought my brain would implode. My doctoral adviser did not believe in qualitative research methodology, so I had to sit painfully through several quantitative research courses. He also did not fancy single-subject research because, in his view, behaviorism—especially radical behaviorism—was dead. Perhaps he had read some of Friedrich Nietzsche’s work. (Try sinking your teeth into Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil [1886/1966].) Of course, my adviser was influenced by the debate between Skinner and Chomsky, which—according to a number of scholars—precipitated the waning of the popularity of behaviorism in the field of psychology and education (e.g., see historical discussions in Hunt, 1993; Mann & Sabatino, 1985).

I was about to become a hardened group-analyst positivist until I took a reading seminar taught by one of my all-time favorite professors: P. David Pearson (who also participated on my dissertation committee). Now Pearson was and still is a strong, respected literacy research scholar, who has composed and edited mouth-watering, mind-bending works on the history and development of reading research, including reading...