4 ms·

Do you have data or anecdata on the effect of repeating an entire year? In many modern Western schools that'd be frowned upon as punitive and as likely to provo

by gnat 5y ago

Do you have data or anecdata on the effect of repeating an entire year? In many modern Western schools that'd be frowned upon as punitive and as likely to provoke a "well screw YOU!" response or ingrain "I must really be stupid" mindset.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
In the ex-Soviet country I am from repeating a year was a shame and admission of idiocy.
extropy 5y ago
As a parent (in Switzerland of all places) I actually consider this a very good option for kids struggling. And took the opportunity for one of our kids and it worked out great. Edit: Switzerland has a different approach where children are segregated by their ability starting from 7th school year. So you go to Gymnasium, A level, B level, C level.
noisy_boy 5y ago
I skipped a class (went from 3rd standard to 5th) because I could clear the entrance exam during changing schools (I also topped the exam, mainly because my tutor made me work hard). In college I failed a paper because I was lazy and didn't work hard. The first incident made me happy but didn't make me think that I was very smart and the latter didn't make me think I was dumb. I knew the reasons exactly. We under-estimate how much we know ourselves.
ardit33 5y ago
You have to fail two classes in order to repeat the whole year. If you fail only one, you'd still could pass (but had to go to additional schooling). But if you had failed two, then there was something wrong going on with with the whole year, and it had repeated. Usually it was kids that had some discipline problems. Perhaps ADHD, etc... but at the time, no-one cared about those aspects as school psychologist were not a thing at all. If you failed more than one year in a row, then the teachers will just give up on you and let you just slide the next year as long as you just showed up.
a-saleh 5y ago
I have seen less than 0.1% in my school fail like this. But yeah, it was punitive and usually did provoke a "well screw YOU!" response or ingrain "I must really be stupid" mindset.
nlclimber 5y ago
In the Netherlands, repeating a year is common. I estimate about a quarter of kids in my year had to repeat a year. If it happened twice, you had to leave school and go to a less exacting school.
nicolas_t 5y ago
Anecdotal but both my parents repeated a year (that was in the sixties in France), they went on to become a teacher teaching primary school teachers how to educate children for one and a headmistress at a relatively large primary school for the other. Both of them looking back thought that repeating a year was a good thing for them, they went from being struggling average/below average students to top of their class and regained their confidence. I think it really depends, in a place and time where repeating classes is more common, it maybe doesn't really destroy confidence as much whereas in areas where it's rare, then the psychological impact is much worse. Also, one thing to note, both of them, in their experience with education, saw much better results when children were separated by level than when classes were mixed together for exactly the reason the OP mentioned. A top student can help bring an average student up but when there are both top students and very below average students, the teacher has to make the choice to either focus on the below average student or the top students and neither of those choices are good. In France, we've had a push toward lowering the overall level and removing any elitism at schools. This has increased the amount of kids who graduate from high school with the Baccalauréat which is needed for university but has lowered the level of kids actually going to university (especially at engineering schools and elite institutions) and reduced the value of a university degree. It's a bit similar to what's happening in the US in STEM and I think it's a bad calculation for the long term competitiveness of the country.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  > but has lowered the level of kids actually going to university (especially at engineering schools and elite institutions) Come on, of course it hasn't. Entry requierements haven't changed. The highschools providing the largest contingents of students to these elite institutions respect neither the national curriculum nor the ban of sorting students by ability without any consequences. Unsurprisingly the two most famous of these highschools are also exempt from the French purely geographical students draft and the places most politician children attend. As usual in France, the rule for all is not the rule for the elite. In effect, the dumbing down of the national curriculum has just made a system which was already one of the most unequal in Europe even more unequal. But everything is fine. The French system only uses entrance exams and entrance exams are always fair, aren't they?
saberdancer 5y ago
My father repeated a year, bounced back from it and became a teacher later in life. But usually it did not happen that often. When it did happen, it usually meant someone will change schools to a less demanding one (if in high school). So for example you may leave a gymnasium and go to a school for mechanics. In elementary school it did not happen except for serious disciplinary problems. People with mental problems were able to have special programmes that tailored to their needs, so this did not result in repeating a year. Teachers did not really like the idea of having someone repeat a year, so if you had a decent attitude you could get a passing grade but you had to put in the effort. This "effort" part is what is in my opinion biggest different, Eastern Europe schooling required you to put in a lot of work, if you were talented you didn't need to use so much time, but if you weren't natural at math, you had to put in plenty of hours to get decent grades. Problems usually were not of the sort that can't be learned through "brute force". I've done some teaching on the side and when I was teaching a guy in a "US" school for children of diplomats, difference was that their problems were usually much more freeform and required deeper understanding but once understood, used primitive math or physics methods. Our normal schooling was different, it used advanced math or physics but the problems were often times many variants of the same problem (which allowed for brute force learning). Honestly I think that it would be the best to have both, as many of my fellow students did not really understand the material we studied but they could brute force it.

by gnat 5y ago

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago

In the ex-Soviet country I am from repeating a year was a shame and admission of idiocy.

extropy 5y ago

As a parent (in Switzerland of all places) I actually consider this a very good option for kids struggling. And took the opportunity for one of our kids and it worked out great. Edit: Switzerland has a different approach where children are segregated by their ability starting from 7th school year. So you go to Gymnasium, A level, B level, C level.

noisy_boy 5y ago

I skipped a class (went from 3rd standard to 5th) because I could clear the entrance exam during changing schools (I also topped the exam, mainly because my tutor made me work hard). In college I failed a paper because I was lazy and didn't work hard. The first incident made me happy but didn't make me think that I was very smart and the latter didn't make me think I was dumb. I knew the reasons exactly. We under-estimate how much we know ourselves.

ardit33 5y ago

You have to fail two classes in order to repeat the whole year. If you fail only one, you'd still could pass (but had to go to additional schooling). But if you had failed two, then there was something wrong going on with with the whole year, and it had repeated. Usually it was kids that had some discipline problems. Perhaps ADHD, etc... but at the time, no-one cared about those aspects as school psychologist were not a thing at all. If you failed more than one year in a row, then the teachers will just give up on you and let you just slide the next year as long as you just showed up.

a-saleh 5y ago

I have seen less than 0.1% in my school fail like this. But yeah, it was punitive and usually did provoke a "well screw YOU!" response or ingrain "I must really be stupid" mindset.

nlclimber 5y ago

In the Netherlands, repeating a year is common. I estimate about a quarter of kids in my year had to repeat a year. If it happened twice, you had to leave school and go to a less exacting school.

nicolas_t 5y ago

Anecdotal but both my parents repeated a year (that was in the sixties in France), they went on to become a teacher teaching primary school teachers how to educate children for one and a headmistress at a relatively large primary school for the other. Both of them looking back thought that repeating a year was a good thing for them, they went from being struggling average/below average students to top of their class and regained their confidence. I think it really depends, in a place and time where repeating classes is more common, it maybe doesn't really destroy confidence as much whereas in areas where it's rare, then the psychological impact is much worse. Also, one thing to note, both of them, in their experience with education, saw much better results when children were separated by level than when classes were mixed together for exactly the reason the OP mentioned. A top student can help bring an average student up but when there are both top students and very below average students, the teacher has to make the choice to either focus on the below average student or the top students and neither of those choices are good. In France, we've had a push toward lowering the overall level and removing any elitism at schools. This has increased the amount of kids who graduate from high school with the Baccalauréat which is needed for university but has lowered the level of kids actually going to university (especially at engineering schools and elite institutions) and reduced the value of a university degree. It's a bit similar to what's happening in the US in STEM and I think it's a bad calculation for the long term competitiveness of the country.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago
> but has lowered the level of kids actually going to university (especially at engineering schools and elite institutions) Come on, of course it hasn't. Entry requierements haven't changed. The highschools providing the largest contingents of students to these elite institutions respect neither the national curriculum nor the ban of sorting students by ability without any consequences. Unsurprisingly the two most famous of these highschools are also exempt from the French purely geographical students draft and the places most politician children attend. As usual in France, the rule for all is not the rule for the elite. In effect, the dumbing down of the national curriculum has just made a system which was already one of the most unequal in Europe even more unequal. But everything is fine. The French system only uses entrance exams and entrance exams are always fair, aren't they?

saberdancer 5y ago

My father repeated a year, bounced back from it and became a teacher later in life. But usually it did not happen that often. When it did happen, it usually meant someone will change schools to a less demanding one (if in high school). So for example you may leave a gymnasium and go to a school for mechanics. In elementary school it did not happen except for serious disciplinary problems. People with mental problems were able to have special programmes that tailored to their needs, so this did not result in repeating a year. Teachers did not really like the idea of having someone repeat a year, so if you had a decent attitude you could get a passing grade but you had to put in the effort. This "effort" part is what is in my opinion biggest different, Eastern Europe schooling required you to put in a lot of work, if you were talented you didn't need to use so much time, but if you weren't natural at math, you had to put in plenty of hours to get decent grades. Problems usually were not of the sort that can't be learned through "brute force". I've done some teaching on the side and when I was teaching a guy in a "US" school for children of diplomats, difference was that their problems were usually much more freeform and required deeper understanding but once understood, used primitive math or physics methods. Our normal schooling was different, it used advanced math or physics but the problems were often times many variants of the same problem (which allowed for brute force learning). Honestly I think that it would be the best to have both, as many of my fellow students did not really understand the material we studied but they could brute force it.