> By artificially creating social units in which everyone is the same age, the ability of children to help and to learn from each other is greatly reduced Also

> By artificially creating social units in which everyone is the same age, the ability of children to help and to learn from each other is greatly reduced Also, given the huge variation in the ages of puberty and rates at which kids develop, it makes perfect sense that kids would find peers in a variety of age groups. My daughters are homeschooled, and have thus been free to form their own social groups from scratch, and they both gravitate toward age groups not their own. My eldest (high school) hangs out mostly with girls several years her senior, but in their weekly in-person enrichment program she chooses to spend most of her time with the little kids, as sort of a teachers assistant. She doesn't exactly know why, but it's clear that the both the older peers and the little guys feed her soul. She has relatively little interaction with kids in her own grade, and if she were forced to it would clearly rob her of something very important.