According to commonsense, the definition of a “good” student would be one who listens attentively, follow rules, and achieves good grades. They will have had a good sleep, had a good breakfast and will have come from a home that is stable and where learning is valued. They will be from a culture where the curriculum content is meaningful and viable in their lives. These students aren’t encumbered by conditions that make learning difficult. These students are neurotypical and able-bodied.
Traditionalist curriculum was created to shape students to all be the same so that they could be “functioning” members of society – though that comment is almost an oxymoron in itself. Schools were a way to streamline and assimilate: “It is surely manifest that the greatest agency in racial assimilation is the common or public school. This is the great melting-pot into which must be placed these divers racial groups, and from which will eventually emerge the pure gold of Canadian citizenship.” (qtd. from class slides). White-anglo superiority was the basis of our educational system from its inception. Thus, good students were usually white and wealthy/middle class. Because we live in a country that was colonized in which western ideologies are dominant, the content of the curriculum is only pertinent to children that were from that lineage. These good students would benefit from a curriculum and standardized testing that was written for them. The good student was also usually middle class or wealthy as education would have been tailored to that segment of the population.
Even though there are continual improvements and recognition of these deficits, we still have a long to way to go so that our schools can foster a new definition of “good students” across the board.