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So let’s level the electrical playing field. So we can all be the same. So we can all catch fire evenly. It’s only fair.

Fairness is the essence of the Toronto District School Board’s new plan, starting with Grade 8s, to get underprivileged students without a background in the arts, say, or science, into a small number of much-treasured schools that are built around these subjects.

Normally, applicants are sometimes asked for some minor proof of talent, an audition or interview, a teacher’s letter, and might be admitted. Now all you have to do is express an interest without evidence of such, and apply. Anyone can do it.

And then comes the undefined “random selection.” Maybe the best young painter in Etobicoke in her age range is out of luck. Maybe the next Emily St. John Mandel will miss out.

Maybe a student who likes Drake will win the lottery and meet the first musical instrument she likes the sound of. Hint: it rhymes with “hobo” and it’s tricky and spitty. She will not be happy.

Neither will a budding young oboist who lost the lottery, now playing Albinoni home alone in his Scarborough bedroom.

Lotteries are unfair. Proof? I never win them. And yet every Wednesday night they interest me deeply. Interest isn’t enough.

I rarely write about school issues because the avalanche of jargon and the elaborate skirting around issues that must not be stated clearly or even mentioned has made the board’s publications incomprehensible even to me, paid to translate them into plain English for Star readers.

The board’s director of education, Colleen Russell Rawlins, wrote a Star op-ed aimed at Toronto parents that was so full of circumlocution and coded references to poverty and race — “systemic barriers entrenched in TDSB processes and policies,” “moving to an interest-based model,” “historically underserved,” “geographical and financial constraints” — that it would have baffled most parents.

Imagine what new Canadians make of this, or non-plugged-in parents who just want their kids to get a good education that leads to reliable jobs. In other words, even if the Toronto board wants students to dream of dancing for a living, those parents may not like that dream. Dancing pays badly and you wreck your body.

That said, plugged-in hyperactive arts-loving parents have another view. Journalist Sarah Fulford wrote a Star op-ed describing the Etobicoke School of the Arts where her son studies film.

She dealt briskly with accusations of elitism. “I was also struck by how inclusive the school was. Ethnically diverse kids with a variety of body shapes danced with tremendous skill and confidence. Gender was expressed in all its fluid glory. In one Sondheim number from ‘Sunday in the Park with George,’ kids coupled up various gender configurations.”

Sounds like hell to me but I detest musicals, always have. The word “Sondheim” gives me hives. Dance is the most difficult art form; you can tell instantly who’s great and in high school nobody is.

When my kids were growing up, I’d be invited to school performances. “Do I have to?” Apparently, I am alone in this.

But Fulford gets past teen bliss into something more distressing. “If the proposal is passed, specialty schools will be asked to overhaul their curriculum to make each school more conventional, so kids can’t specialize in their chosen subject as intensely.” That’s dumbing down and it’s fatal.

Many of the kids at specialist schools are brilliant; the board is Tall Poppying them out of existence, a storied Canadian pastime. It’s why Canada can’t have nice things. We destroy them out of Protestant righteousness.

The talented must be sheared. All shall be mediocre. So sayeth a mumble-mouthed school board out to do harm.