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Have you read up much on the education system of Finland? As this is more or less the opposite of their approach. They do not stream the education system and t
by OrganicMSG 9y ago
Have you read up much on the education system of Finland? As this is more or less the opposite of their approach.
They do not stream the education system and the quicker children are expected to help explain what they have learned to those still getting to grips with the material. Integrating this method within the lesson structure has the effect of raising the standard of both the slower and quicker kids, for fairly obvious reasons.
- matte_black 9y agoHow do they prevent slower children from slowing down the quicker ones?
- barry-cotter 9y agoNot Finnish, working off memory of a comment on an old message board. They have many theoretically equal voluntary high school subjects and tests. More able students take many more, known harder ones. This allows self segregation, much like AP classes in the US will have few people with reading difficulties. No one particularly cares because if you want to go to a third level institution after high school you can.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoHave you never had the experience of only really getting a deep understanding of something that you are learning, when you take the time to try and teach it to someone else?
- matte_black 9y agoI’m talking about the experience where you are trying to learn but other kids are distracting you with hyperactive nonsense or disruptive behavior.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoStreaming by ability wouldn't solve that. To illustrate why, I am reminded of a quote by Stephen Hawking; “The prevailing attitude at Oxford at that time was very anti-work. You were supposed to either be brilliant without effort or accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. To work hard to get a better class of degree was the mark of a ‘grey man’, the worst epithet in the Oxford vocabulary.” You could stream by behavioural attributes to achieve that if you wanted, but then you would have to accept that the classes would be very wide in ability, unless you stream by both behaviour and ability and then end up with a massive logistical nightmare.
- matte_black 9y agoIt’s not a nightmare, kids that don’t behave can be kicked out of a school to one with less strict standards. Then, simply have every school stream their children based on intelligence.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoMy local high-school was also the wider area's sink-school that kids got expelled into from other schools, though there wasn't any way of particularly escaping, should you just happen to be going there anyway. Anyway, the transport arrangements for some of the kids was a nightmare. edit - also, from my observation, concentrating all the nutters under one roof does not really help, if your aim is educational. It just takes a lot of little problems across a lot of schools and turns them into one big unmanageable problem that can be politely ignored.
- matte_black 9y agoEducation is not a team sport. If kids want to be nutters that’s their problem, not the responsibility of well behaved kids to reform them by proximity.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoNo man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. ---- John Donne - Devotions upon Emergent Occasions - Excerpt from Meditation 17