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Who's advocating teaching smart kids everyone is the same? It seems that has been the general trend in elementary education since I was a kid. As an example,

Who's advocating teaching smart kids everyone is the same? It seems that has been the general trend in elementary education since I was a kid. As an example, I remember the year that all the talent trophies were changed to be the same size, and everyone got one just for participating. Athletics were an exception, though; it was considered acceptable to be better at sports. It was a noble attempt to try to boost the underprivileged, but just ended up confusing everyone. The once reasonable protesting class are being supplanted by increasingly unreasonable protestors who are rebels searching desperately for a cause. This is an interesting explanation for the phenomenon I had not yet considered. I am not yet convinced it is the right or only one, but I will keep it in mind.

Spooky23 10y ago
In my school, it was in 1993/1994. They went from "tracked" classes that mixed the 20 year old 9th graders with smart kids. Everyone got to suffer together.
- bpchaps 10y ago
  I was a "smart kid" in high school and found myself getting bored in the honors class to point of getting kicked out and pushed into the "normal" class as the only white kid, 90% of the time. It was honestly probably the best thing that happened to me. It helped me build empathy and grounded me to accepting that intelligence is only one piece of the puzzle. I'm now working in a position that gives me huge intellectual freedom. There is a silver lining.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    There's a difference between the "honors" classes with the kid/parent drama and "normal" students. In can see where not being wrapped up with the super achiever people would be a benefit. In my specific case, it was a poor rural district with four 20-25 student sections. Mixing up the barely literate and disruptive kids made things harder. In my senior year my project partner in Civics was a fellow senior who basically couldn't write. The only escape was AP classes -- but we only had AP English, US History and Calc. As part of "raising standards" they started requiring advanced math. We were unable to compete the material, and I learned a lot of math while cramming for the annual exam -- which in my state was standardized and a key to college admissions.
    - bpchaps 10y ago
      Yes, agreed. Though, it's important to note that the number of honor's programs without that class of drama is small without expensive schooling or certain types of homeschooling. Not having to do 'difficult' homework was the catalyst that gave me the freetime to work on programming which is another reason why getting kicked out was great. Not sure why I'm thinking about it or why I'm even mentioning it, but this happened in the same city Ray Bradbury grew up. Everybody in the school was required to read 451, which was treated as a homework with uninterested students' contempt. It's very interesting to be raised in the city that influenced much of his writing.

Spooky23 10y ago

In my school, it was in 1993/1994. They went from "tracked" classes that mixed the 20 year old 9th graders with smart kids. Everyone got to suffer together.

bpchaps 10y ago
I was a "smart kid" in high school and found myself getting bored in the honors class to point of getting kicked out and pushed into the "normal" class as the only white kid, 90% of the time. It was honestly probably the best thing that happened to me. It helped me build empathy and grounded me to accepting that intelligence is only one piece of the puzzle. I'm now working in a position that gives me huge intellectual freedom. There is a silver lining.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  There's a difference between the "honors" classes with the kid/parent drama and "normal" students. In can see where not being wrapped up with the super achiever people would be a benefit. In my specific case, it was a poor rural district with four 20-25 student sections. Mixing up the barely literate and disruptive kids made things harder. In my senior year my project partner in Civics was a fellow senior who basically couldn't write. The only escape was AP classes -- but we only had AP English, US History and Calc. As part of "raising standards" they started requiring advanced math. We were unable to compete the material, and I learned a lot of math while cramming for the annual exam -- which in my state was standardized and a key to college admissions.
  - bpchaps 10y ago
    Yes, agreed. Though, it's important to note that the number of honor's programs without that class of drama is small without expensive schooling or certain types of homeschooling. Not having to do 'difficult' homework was the catalyst that gave me the freetime to work on programming which is another reason why getting kicked out was great. Not sure why I'm thinking about it or why I'm even mentioning it, but this happened in the same city Ray Bradbury grew up. Everybody in the school was required to read 451, which was treated as a homework with uninterested students' contempt. It's very interesting to be raised in the city that influenced much of his writing.