A third-grade teacher engages her class in a thought experiment. She asks her eight-year-old students to pretend they got hurt and need a Band-Aid. Kids love Band-Aids. The teacher says to be quiet and only speak when the teacher asks them a question.
The teacher asks the first student where he got hurt and needs a Band-Aid. The student says that he hurt his finger, so the teacher puts a Band-Aid on his finger.
She goes to the next student and asks the same thing. The student replies that she hurt her forehead. The teacher puts a Band-Aid on the second student’s finger.
She goes around the classroom doing this, putting a Band-Aid on each student’s finger, no matter where they say they got pretend-hurt. Finally, the teacher finishes this, and asks the students if she helped them all. The students begin protesting that she didn’t put the Band-Aids on the correct parts of their bodies. The teacher responds, “Well, I helped you all exactly the same as the first student.” The students try to get the teacher to understand that the Band-Aids were not applied to their pretend injuries. The teacher then pretends to finally understand.
The teacher then says, “There might be moments in your life in which some of you get treated differently, because some of you need different things, just like you needed a Band-Aid in a different spot from the first student. A teacher may help one student more than you. You may think this unfair, but remember this time where you didn’t get a Band-Aid applied correctly. You may not need the help as much as another student. Or you may be helped more than another student.”
Is it fair to treat people differently as the teacher suggests, or should everyone be treated the same, no matter what their situation?