5 ms·

What real argument for age-based grades can there be?

erikpukinskis 10y ago
Another question for me is: what is the argument for a single grade across subjects? Why not let a kid be in Math 7, while still staying in Literature 5, and Physical Education 3, while another kid the same age is in Physical Education 12, Literature 6, and Math 2? If you mixed it up enough you could substantially lessen the stigmas of both being ahead and behind.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Another question for me is: what is the argument for a single grade across subjects? Prior to middle school / junior high (starting usually between 6th and 8th grade, depending on the particular school system), the norm in the US isn't to have distinct subject-matter classes, but classrooms with a single teacher for all subjects for one grade, which may not use a strict fixed allotment of time slots for each subject, and even where they do it may not be the same time slot for the same subject area in different classrooms in different grades in the same school (and even the set of subjects may change somewhat in different grades.) This makes per-subject variations in grade level for a student logistically difficult to accommodate. OTOH, once you get to middle school with per-subject classes being the norm, this is fairly easy to accommodate, and its just a scheduling and resource problem (e.g., in a middle school, do you have enough qualified students to support a Calculus class) at that level.
  - peter303 10y ago
    I reread the Ingall-Wilder Little School House series recently and was impressed with how one room school house operated with kids of all grades in the same room. Villages were not large enough for multiple teachers. Basically education in those days was memorizing and doing all the exercises in various primers. Teachers were often just teenage girls, not much older than the oldest students. Older people were too busy working or running households.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  Except for the kids who'd be ahead in everything - they'd still have a stigma... I suspect uniform testing at 'grade level' becomes harder to use for comparisons against other schools.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    If there's a kid who is ahead at everything, the material is not diverse enough. To some extent competence is a zero-sum game. The likelihood that a student is operating at above-typical levels in sports, art, math, and journalism seems small to me. The early experiences that lead to advanced performance in each of those fields are dramatically different. The only way I would expect to see that is if the school was tailoring all of those subjects to a certain kind of student. Which, admittedly, is common. But I'm talking about a more universal advancement system where Art 12 really is for level-12 artists, not level-12 math students who want to do something that resembles art, and be graded on effort. The nice thing about such a system is you wouldn't have to cater Art-12 to advanced level history students just to keep their GPAs up. Those students could stay in Art 4, and get their A there, while the Art-12 students were subject to the higher standard that really only they could handle. You could expect them to spend 20 hours a week in the studio, which would be unreasonable for a student carrying a full coursework burden in another field. And you could even put that burden on 10-year-olds who were ready for it, of which there are some.
    - zhemao 10y ago
      Art and sports are generally electives in US public schools. It is entirely possible (and in fact very likely) for a student to be ahead in all academic subjects, especially at the lower grade levels when there's not much specialization yet. Probably not equally advanced. But at the very least, a student who is far ahead in math and science is probably also well above average in reading comprehension.
      - mgkimsal 10y ago
        Thank you - that's what I was thinking, but you said it better than I could. I was pushed ahead a grade, and as a result, was always a year or two behind everyone else physically, so, almost by definition, I was always "behind" in gym/phys-ed classes, but there wasn't much I could do about that. Looking back, I was normal/average for my age, but not for my 'grade', and had a tough time with that.
dibujante 10y ago
Socialization. A 10-year-old prodigy going into a calculus class full of seniors is not going to spend much time socializing with their emotional peers.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cperciva 10y ago
  This is a poor argument. Seriously: I didn't spend much time socializing with my chronological peers either. At least with my academic peers we had some shared interests.
  - dibujante 10y ago
    I didn't either, but it's not a poor argument just because you're an exception to it. Socialization is a very important part of human development.
    - cperciva 10y ago
      It's a poor argument because it makes the unsupported assumption that children will socialize better with their chronological peers than with their intellectual peers. I agree that socialization is important - and that's exactly why I think it's entirely unreasonable to surround children with people with whom they share nothing except age.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  A 10-year-old prodigy that could be succeeding in a calculus class full of seniors but who is actually stuck in a class of 10-year-olds struggling with arithmetic is not going to spend as much time socializing with their intellectual peers, and is also probably going to spend as little time socializing with their age peers as if they went to the calculus class -- being forced into a class with them doesn't mean socializing with them. (As for emotional peers, given the correlation between social and general intelligence, their age peers are unlikely to represent their emotional peers, so sticking them with age peers is also crippling their time spent socializing with emotional peers.) Money (for the school) is a more likely explanation, as I argue elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298579
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Another question for me is: what is the argument for a single grade across subjects? Why not let a kid be in Math 7, while still staying in Literature 5, and Physical Education 3, while another kid the same age is in Physical Education 12, Literature 6, and Math 2? If you mixed it up enough you could substantially lessen the stigmas of both being ahead and behind.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Another question for me is: what is the argument for a single grade across subjects? Prior to middle school / junior high (starting usually between 6th and 8th grade, depending on the particular school system), the norm in the US isn't to have distinct subject-matter classes, but classrooms with a single teacher for all subjects for one grade, which may not use a strict fixed allotment of time slots for each subject, and even where they do it may not be the same time slot for the same subject area in different classrooms in different grades in the same school (and even the set of subjects may change somewhat in different grades.) This makes per-subject variations in grade level for a student logistically difficult to accommodate. OTOH, once you get to middle school with per-subject classes being the norm, this is fairly easy to accommodate, and its just a scheduling and resource problem (e.g., in a middle school, do you have enough qualified students to support a Calculus class) at that level.
- peter303 10y ago
  I reread the Ingall-Wilder Little School House series recently and was impressed with how one room school house operated with kids of all grades in the same room. Villages were not large enough for multiple teachers. Basically education in those days was memorizing and doing all the exercises in various primers. Teachers were often just teenage girls, not much older than the oldest students. Older people were too busy working or running households.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mgkimsal 10y ago
Except for the kids who'd be ahead in everything - they'd still have a stigma... I suspect uniform testing at 'grade level' becomes harder to use for comparisons against other schools.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  If there's a kid who is ahead at everything, the material is not diverse enough. To some extent competence is a zero-sum game. The likelihood that a student is operating at above-typical levels in sports, art, math, and journalism seems small to me. The early experiences that lead to advanced performance in each of those fields are dramatically different. The only way I would expect to see that is if the school was tailoring all of those subjects to a certain kind of student. Which, admittedly, is common. But I'm talking about a more universal advancement system where Art 12 really is for level-12 artists, not level-12 math students who want to do something that resembles art, and be graded on effort. The nice thing about such a system is you wouldn't have to cater Art-12 to advanced level history students just to keep their GPAs up. Those students could stay in Art 4, and get their A there, while the Art-12 students were subject to the higher standard that really only they could handle. You could expect them to spend 20 hours a week in the studio, which would be unreasonable for a student carrying a full coursework burden in another field. And you could even put that burden on 10-year-olds who were ready for it, of which there are some.
  - zhemao 10y ago
    Art and sports are generally electives in US public schools. It is entirely possible (and in fact very likely) for a student to be ahead in all academic subjects, especially at the lower grade levels when there's not much specialization yet. Probably not equally advanced. But at the very least, a student who is far ahead in math and science is probably also well above average in reading comprehension.
    - mgkimsal 10y ago
      Thank you - that's what I was thinking, but you said it better than I could. I was pushed ahead a grade, and as a result, was always a year or two behind everyone else physically, so, almost by definition, I was always "behind" in gym/phys-ed classes, but there wasn't much I could do about that. Looking back, I was normal/average for my age, but not for my 'grade', and had a tough time with that.

dibujante 10y ago

Socialization. A 10-year-old prodigy going into a calculus class full of seniors is not going to spend much time socializing with their emotional peers.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cperciva 10y ago
This is a poor argument. Seriously: I didn't spend much time socializing with my chronological peers either. At least with my academic peers we had some shared interests.
- dibujante 10y ago
  I didn't either, but it's not a poor argument just because you're an exception to it. Socialization is a very important part of human development.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    It's a poor argument because it makes the unsupported assumption that children will socialize better with their chronological peers than with their intellectual peers. I agree that socialization is important - and that's exactly why I think it's entirely unreasonable to surround children with people with whom they share nothing except age.
dragonwriter 10y ago
A 10-year-old prodigy that could be succeeding in a calculus class full of seniors but who is actually stuck in a class of 10-year-olds struggling with arithmetic is not going to spend as much time socializing with their intellectual peers, and is also probably going to spend as little time socializing with their age peers as if they went to the calculus class -- being forced into a class with them doesn't mean socializing with them. (As for emotional peers, given the correlation between social and general intelligence, their age peers are unlikely to represent their emotional peers, so sticking them with age peers is also crippling their time spent socializing with emotional peers.) Money (for the school) is a more likely explanation, as I argue elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298579

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]