3 ms·

I think the way you've partitioned the universal set of kids into "smart" and "not smart" to make your case-by-case argument is an insufficiently nuanced breakd

• bugsy 16y ago
  Yeah, you are right, but some sort of manageable grouping is needed to make the point since this is a conversation and not an academic journal so I don't feel it would be appropriate or needed to completely break down every possible combination. "Smart" means kids that would be in gifted programs which don't exist anymore. "Not smart" is kids who go on to be plumbers. This is not sufficient itself since there are smart people that go into plumbing, and there are dumb people that get degrees. But it's the general idea that the current system of training everyone in identical classes using a curriculum created by bureaucrats, politicians and businessmen selling textbooks in order to pass a standardized multiple choice test is not an ideal one. I hope that is clear.
  • pohl 16y ago
    ...some sort of manageable grouping is needed to make the point since this is a conversation and not an academic journal... True, you don't need to be quite so formal here, but can you really say that you've "made the point" if it's based on hand-waving and dubious generalities? I ask because you're trying to undermine why the Gates Foundation would look at dropouts as a metric — a point that you can't make with such a transparently flawed model. At best you can say that you've created an illusion of having made a point.