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Tying students' progress through the curriculum to their age is silly. If you think about it for a single second, the whole thing is totally absurd. Vague pre-p

Tying students' progress through the curriculum to their age is silly. If you think about it for a single second, the whole thing is totally absurd. Vague pre-puberty/tween/teenager distinctions make sense, but within each grouping/building? totally unmotivated. Yearly age-to-competency distinctions continue by sheer force of tradition, and are harmful to all but the totally mythological "average" student.

inanutshellus 9y ago
But it works at-scale, which is where the focus is. Bang-for-the-taxpayer-buck. Further, socially-speaking, being with your actual peers is extremely valuable, obviously. But yes, the ideal would be a tailored-to-each-child education. Personally, having seen the power of a good Montessori education, I think it's frickin' genius and should be the template for all education (specifically the grouping of 3 yrs together -- e.g. 3,4,5-year-olds together), so kids are perpetually working through the cycle of "look up to someone, mimic someone, mentor someone". ... but I digress. Fact is, grouping by age works socially and it's much, much cheaper than a tailored education, which is all we an afford (get taxpayers to pay for). At some point, I expect a software company to make headway in this space and you'd see a bunch of kids staring at iPads all day and a bored teacher playing Minecraft at the front of the room, only engaging when someone gets stuck.
- taco_emoji 9y ago
  Not being argumentative -- is the current system actually cheaper? I'm not enormously familiar with Montessori, but is the student/teacher ratio vastly different, or are the various learning materials any more expensive over time than the books, computers, and reams of paper that traditional schools use?
- dyarosla 9y ago
  Cheaper? I also don't know if that's necessarily true. If it's ineffective for many, is it a cheaper solution or just simply cheaper? Personally, I think Khan Academy is one of the few forward-thinking organizations doing something right in education. It tries to skew learning towards a 'mastery-based' model which keeps kids from falling behind by not advancing them too early. Of course, teachers and parents still need to implement the usage of Khan Academy in this way for it to be effective.
- emilecantin 9y ago
  My kids are homeschooled, and I'm in charge of teaching Math, because my wife is one of those "I suck at math" people. Her parents focused exclusively on memorization when they helped her with homework, and then she got a few bad teachers, so her mental models are completely off. She's getting better, but that's not really my point. The math program I use with my kids is this one: http://www.defimath.ca/ecole-maison/ http://www.defimath.ca/ecole-maison/ (in French) It was developed by two mathematicians who actually studied in classrooms what worked on kids when teaching math. They've come up with a method where kids learn negative numbers and multiplication _before_ learning positional numeration (numbers greater than 10, with units, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.). I've seen first-hand how these concepts just click in my daughter's mind, and how she often comes up with the new concept herself when you introduce the prerequisites in an order that makes sense to her.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    They learn about negative numbers and multiplication before they learn to count past ten? Or they just learn counting without learning how to write the numbers?
    - emilecantin 9y ago
      The latter. My daughter actually learned it because we mixed different learning methods early on (we don't anymore, it confused her), but you have to admit that writing numbers greater than 10 kinda involves multiplication (by powers of ten, but still), so it makes sense to learn multiplication first. Negative numbers were seen while learning addition / subtraction (the concept was basically adding a negative number), which made a lot of sense too.
  - inanutshellus 9y ago
    That sounds wonderful. My kids are about the right age to do this, and I'm curious, are there any English-language versions of this text?
- jacobolus 9y ago
  I went to a public elementary school which had only mixed-grade classes (2–3 grades at a time), and it was just fine, and didn’t cost any more than having one grade per class with kids all precisely the same age.
- lsc 9y ago
  >Further, socially-speaking, being with your actual peers is extremely valuable, obviously. I would disagree... I think that there is huge value to being around a variety of people, and a strong negative value to only being around people in the same phase of life as yourself, especially when you are in the nasty phase. I think I made it through that part of my life because I had an after-school job where I fixed computers for a local office. I even enrolled in the vocational program at my highschool that let me out of school early to go to work (except every second Monday, when we learned how to spot shoplifters, short-change scams, and other hazards of the retail life.) I think the number of people who felt good about their social lives, the things they did socially and the things, socially that were done to them in high school is... small. As far as I can tell, for most people, college is important because it is a kind of recovery from this, and prepares you for a workplace where conflict is muted, where yes, if you are good enough, you can still be an asshole, but where being an asshole has a pretty heavy cost that must be made up in other ways. For me? Being expected to behave like an adult while being treated like an adult around a bunch of adults was amazing. It gave me a reason to keep going in high school, and when I came of age, I was all set to get a really nice job.
coldtea 9y ago
>Tying students' progress through the curriculum to their age is silly. If you think about it for a single second, the whole thing is totally absurd. Sounds quite logical to me. If we assume a gaussian distribution (which tests seem to verify), most kids of the same age will have the same skills/level. So at worse you mismatch what's taught to some kids towards the edges, whose level there are ways to accommodate anyway in most school systems (skipping a class or two for extra smart kids, or staying behind/supplementary teaching for less than average smarts). And it's not just about learning and who can cram more into one's head (akin to e.g. preparation for the Olympics), but also about sharing the same teenager and adult-making experiences as other kids of your age, which is probably even more important that what's actually taught (the majority of which most people will forget anyway).
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > Sounds quite logical to me. If we assume a gaussian distribution In this context, Gaussian is a pretty useless assumption without fixing a variance. Proposed alternatives range from "already implemented" to "totally infeasible" depending on variance. > which tests seem to verify Not really. For each individual subject area, maybe, and again, Gaussian is pretty uninformative. But the odds of a student being "average" in every subject area != the odds of a student being "average" in a given subject area. > whose level there are ways to accommodate anyway in most school systems Except the whole point is that there are not currently ways to accommodate this in most school systems! From GP: >> Schools (at least around here) do not hold kids back anymore. No matter what. Also notice that holding back a student in math is possibly net detrimental if the student is not also behind in English and Science. > but also about sharing the same teenager and adult-making experiences as other kids of your age, which is probably even more important that what's actually taught Again, the prepubescent/tween/teen division is much less granular/restrictive than the competency-by-age-X division.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Sounds a bit circular: when we test kids taught in single age groupings they have "narrowly" grouped grades. Therefore we should teach then in single age groupings because they have narrowly grouped grades. That doesn't really help us to know if the top achievers are being held back, for example. Perhaps we can speculate that lower achievers are being pulled up? Outside school you're almost always going to be in age diverse groups; I think a larger element of that in public schools would be better. IMO it helps to emphasise that children are there to make their own education and not simply to be part of an age defined peer group where it appears you're doing something just because of your age, not because of the educational opportunity.

inanutshellus 9y ago

But it works at-scale, which is where the focus is. Bang-for-the-taxpayer-buck. Further, socially-speaking, being with your actual peers is extremely valuable, obviously. But yes, the ideal would be a tailored-to-each-child education. Personally, having seen the power of a good Montessori education, I think it's frickin' genius and should be the template for all education (specifically the grouping of 3 yrs together -- e.g. 3,4,5-year-olds together), so kids are perpetually working through the cycle of "look up to someone, mimic someone, mentor someone". ... but I digress. Fact is, grouping by age works socially and it's much, much cheaper than a tailored education, which is all we an afford (get taxpayers to pay for). At some point, I expect a software company to make headway in this space and you'd see a bunch of kids staring at iPads all day and a bored teacher playing Minecraft at the front of the room, only engaging when someone gets stuck.

taco_emoji 9y ago
Not being argumentative -- is the current system actually cheaper? I'm not enormously familiar with Montessori, but is the student/teacher ratio vastly different, or are the various learning materials any more expensive over time than the books, computers, and reams of paper that traditional schools use?
dyarosla 9y ago
Cheaper? I also don't know if that's necessarily true. If it's ineffective for many, is it a cheaper solution or just simply cheaper? Personally, I think Khan Academy is one of the few forward-thinking organizations doing something right in education. It tries to skew learning towards a 'mastery-based' model which keeps kids from falling behind by not advancing them too early. Of course, teachers and parents still need to implement the usage of Khan Academy in this way for it to be effective.
emilecantin 9y ago
My kids are homeschooled, and I'm in charge of teaching Math, because my wife is one of those "I suck at math" people. Her parents focused exclusively on memorization when they helped her with homework, and then she got a few bad teachers, so her mental models are completely off. She's getting better, but that's not really my point. The math program I use with my kids is this one: http://www.defimath.ca/ecole-maison/ http://www.defimath.ca/ecole-maison/ (in French) It was developed by two mathematicians who actually studied in classrooms what worked on kids when teaching math. They've come up with a method where kids learn negative numbers and multiplication _before_ learning positional numeration (numbers greater than 10, with units, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.). I've seen first-hand how these concepts just click in my daughter's mind, and how she often comes up with the new concept herself when you introduce the prerequisites in an order that makes sense to her.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  They learn about negative numbers and multiplication before they learn to count past ten? Or they just learn counting without learning how to write the numbers?
  - emilecantin 9y ago
    The latter. My daughter actually learned it because we mixed different learning methods early on (we don't anymore, it confused her), but you have to admit that writing numbers greater than 10 kinda involves multiplication (by powers of ten, but still), so it makes sense to learn multiplication first. Negative numbers were seen while learning addition / subtraction (the concept was basically adding a negative number), which made a lot of sense too.
- inanutshellus 9y ago
  That sounds wonderful. My kids are about the right age to do this, and I'm curious, are there any English-language versions of this text?
jacobolus 9y ago
I went to a public elementary school which had only mixed-grade classes (2–3 grades at a time), and it was just fine, and didn’t cost any more than having one grade per class with kids all precisely the same age.
lsc 9y ago
>Further, socially-speaking, being with your actual peers is extremely valuable, obviously. I would disagree... I think that there is huge value to being around a variety of people, and a strong negative value to only being around people in the same phase of life as yourself, especially when you are in the nasty phase. I think I made it through that part of my life because I had an after-school job where I fixed computers for a local office. I even enrolled in the vocational program at my highschool that let me out of school early to go to work (except every second Monday, when we learned how to spot shoplifters, short-change scams, and other hazards of the retail life.) I think the number of people who felt good about their social lives, the things they did socially and the things, socially that were done to them in high school is... small. As far as I can tell, for most people, college is important because it is a kind of recovery from this, and prepares you for a workplace where conflict is muted, where yes, if you are good enough, you can still be an asshole, but where being an asshole has a pretty heavy cost that must be made up in other ways. For me? Being expected to behave like an adult while being treated like an adult around a bunch of adults was amazing. It gave me a reason to keep going in high school, and when I came of age, I was all set to get a really nice job.

coldtea 9y ago

>Tying students' progress through the curriculum to their age is silly. If you think about it for a single second, the whole thing is totally absurd. Sounds quite logical to me. If we assume a gaussian distribution (which tests seem to verify), most kids of the same age will have the same skills/level. So at worse you mismatch what's taught to some kids towards the edges, whose level there are ways to accommodate anyway in most school systems (skipping a class or two for extra smart kids, or staying behind/supplementary teaching for less than average smarts). And it's not just about learning and who can cram more into one's head (akin to e.g. preparation for the Olympics), but also about sharing the same teenager and adult-making experiences as other kids of your age, which is probably even more important that what's actually taught (the majority of which most people will forget anyway).

throwawayjava 9y ago
> Sounds quite logical to me. If we assume a gaussian distribution In this context, Gaussian is a pretty useless assumption without fixing a variance. Proposed alternatives range from "already implemented" to "totally infeasible" depending on variance. > which tests seem to verify Not really. For each individual subject area, maybe, and again, Gaussian is pretty uninformative. But the odds of a student being "average" in every subject area != the odds of a student being "average" in a given subject area. > whose level there are ways to accommodate anyway in most school systems Except the whole point is that there are not currently ways to accommodate this in most school systems! From GP: >> Schools (at least around here) do not hold kids back anymore. No matter what. Also notice that holding back a student in math is possibly net detrimental if the student is not also behind in English and Science. > but also about sharing the same teenager and adult-making experiences as other kids of your age, which is probably even more important that what's actually taught Again, the prepubescent/tween/teen division is much less granular/restrictive than the competency-by-age-X division.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Sounds a bit circular: when we test kids taught in single age groupings they have "narrowly" grouped grades. Therefore we should teach then in single age groupings because they have narrowly grouped grades. That doesn't really help us to know if the top achievers are being held back, for example. Perhaps we can speculate that lower achievers are being pulled up? Outside school you're almost always going to be in age diverse groups; I think a larger element of that in public schools would be better. IMO it helps to emphasise that children are there to make their own education and not simply to be part of an age defined peer group where it appears you're doing something just because of your age, not because of the educational opportunity.