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OTOH, when I was a kid, I never did homework at home and I always got straight As in math and science. I was just naturally good at those subjects and was able

OTOH, when I was a kid, I never did homework at home and I always got straight As in math and science. I was just naturally good at those subjects and was able to not only listen to the lecture in class and learn, but also do my homework for that same day in that same time period. And I retained the knowledge for the quizzes and tests, too. If that isn't "naturally gifted" I don't know what is. I definitely watched other students struggle to maintain a B average with lots of studying and effort. I suffered in other subjects, and others excelled at them with little effort. They were the naturally gifted ones there. It was a constant source of stress to me that they would treat everyone the same when it came to those subjects, to the point that in 6th grade, when reviewing multiplication tables that I'd learned years before, I refused to do my homework. I ended up with an F that semester in math because I was so good at it. Luckily they moved on to harder subjects in the next semester and my grades returned.

bllguo 5y ago
rejecting natural aptitude is ridiculous for sure. It needs to be recognized but it also does not necessarily need to be segregated. People learn from being around smart peers. The important thing imo is to hold _all_ students to a higher bar so that concepts like multiplication tables are drilled in the same year they are taught, not being reviewed in 6th grade
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  The slower students slow down the faster students, the disruptive students disrupt the less disruptive students. This is why there are accelerated classes, to allow each student to reach their potential, as well as why disruptive students need to be removed from the classroom. If you are morally outraged by accelerated classes because they don't have your preferred racial mix, then that's fine, but understand it means that the faster students have their potential held back. If that's an acceptable price for equality of outcomes, then at least say that and don't pretend that somehow you can have your cake and eat it -- that faster students benefit from being taught slower paced material, and that well-behaved students benefit from being in a class with disruptive students, or that math education is improved when calculus and other challenging topics are removed. That's just doublespeak. Have whatever values you want to have, but don't fool yourself into thinking there isn't a price, and that faster or well-behaved students aren't the ones paying the price. What will happen is that wealthy students will pay for extra tutors or private school, and we will be back to a less meritocratic system in which you need to be both rich and smart in order to get the good education, as the state is now focused on making sure the best students don't learn too much to upset the ideals of "equality". This the logical endgame for a state that believes Harrison Bergeron is a utopian work.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    I believed what you said for a long time and still kind of do. But this is how our system has operated for a long time and we see today the effects on our society. Some high performers, but many many people who lack even basic principles of mathematics. Do you think this is okay, or should things change? Is it okay to "sacrifice" some potential to raise the floor for everyone else? (I don't even think that a "sacrifice" is necessarily involved, and there's always self-study - the route all the _truly_ gifted prodigies of history take - but let's operate under that assumption) I think dismissing the whole concept out of hand is just as dogmatic as the caricatured liberal views you seem to have assumed I hold. There are education systems in the world, like in East Asia, that follow these principles, so I think they are worth exploring. This is a weakly held position for me.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      > Do you think this is okay, or should things change? This is not the result of accelerated classes, it's the lack of accelerated classes. Really it's the result of insufficient sorting. If we had good sorting, we'd be routing half our kids into trade schools where they learn useful skills, and route the other half of our kids into real college prep high schools where the slow track would do calculus and the fast track would do differential equations. But instead, we send everyone to the same school, pretend that everyone should go to college, and then slow things down so that the slowest student in the room sets the pace. Then we don't remove disruptive students, hire social crusading teachers who themselves don't have a passion for the subjects they teach, and end up with our current outcomes. Most US high school teachers wouldn't even be qualified to teach at a gymnasium in Europe because even our standards for teachers are so low. Yes, you have to do heroics to learn anything in a U.S. school. The solution to that is not to do more of the same that got us here. The U.S. used to have high schools with college-preparatory ("prep") emphasis that existed side by side with vocational high schools where you could learn a useful trade. High schools even used to have entrance exams. We've fallen a long way in the name of pretending everyone is equal - just in the last 60 years - and the end result is that we have a shortage of both skilled tradesmen and skilled engineers - now we need to import both, and immigrants come from all over the world and earn much higher salaries than the native born because they got a better education. For example many systems in Europe still do good sorting, managing to give a good education to both fast and slow students by sending one to a gymnasium and the other to a vocational school, and the result is high paying careers for both. So what's happening in California is merely the continuation of dumbing things down in the name of equality, an ideological process that has been happening for many decades, but taking it to such a level of absurdity and doublespeak that more people are starting to recognize how foolish it all is.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  But in the pedagogical literature, children who are ahead in math don't substantially benefit in the reverse direction. In this case, holding everyone to a higher standard specifically means disallowing children from taking Calculus even if they are ready, and de-emphasizing Algebra in middle school.
fatnoah 5y ago
I had a healthy and stable home life, but also parents who pretty much left me to my own devices when it came to school work. In elementary school, I mostly did my homework and never, ever studied for a test. In high school, I did about 50% of my homework and probably studied for a grand total of 3-4 tests over that four years. All the while, I aced tests with nearly straight As. In school (elementary school especially), I'd finish tests and other work well before other students, would be bored as they asked questions with "easy" answers, etc. When I got to college, I had zero healthy study habits, and got a good six months of getting my ass kicked until I sorted things out. It wasn't until then that I actually felt challenged and engaged. Until then, I expected to get As and didn't have to work for it. Once in college, where I was challenged, EARNING As was so satisfying. I still remember the feeling of accomplishment of getting As in two chemistry classes, which was a subject I didn't like and I had to work HARD for those grades.

bllguo 5y ago

rejecting natural aptitude is ridiculous for sure. It needs to be recognized but it also does not necessarily need to be segregated. People learn from being around smart peers. The important thing imo is to hold _all_ students to a higher bar so that concepts like multiplication tables are drilled in the same year they are taught, not being reviewed in 6th grade

rsj_hn 5y ago
The slower students slow down the faster students, the disruptive students disrupt the less disruptive students. This is why there are accelerated classes, to allow each student to reach their potential, as well as why disruptive students need to be removed from the classroom. If you are morally outraged by accelerated classes because they don't have your preferred racial mix, then that's fine, but understand it means that the faster students have their potential held back. If that's an acceptable price for equality of outcomes, then at least say that and don't pretend that somehow you can have your cake and eat it -- that faster students benefit from being taught slower paced material, and that well-behaved students benefit from being in a class with disruptive students, or that math education is improved when calculus and other challenging topics are removed. That's just doublespeak. Have whatever values you want to have, but don't fool yourself into thinking there isn't a price, and that faster or well-behaved students aren't the ones paying the price. What will happen is that wealthy students will pay for extra tutors or private school, and we will be back to a less meritocratic system in which you need to be both rich and smart in order to get the good education, as the state is now focused on making sure the best students don't learn too much to upset the ideals of "equality". This the logical endgame for a state that believes Harrison Bergeron is a utopian work.
- bllguo 5y ago
  I believed what you said for a long time and still kind of do. But this is how our system has operated for a long time and we see today the effects on our society. Some high performers, but many many people who lack even basic principles of mathematics. Do you think this is okay, or should things change? Is it okay to "sacrifice" some potential to raise the floor for everyone else? (I don't even think that a "sacrifice" is necessarily involved, and there's always self-study - the route all the _truly_ gifted prodigies of history take - but let's operate under that assumption) I think dismissing the whole concept out of hand is just as dogmatic as the caricatured liberal views you seem to have assumed I hold. There are education systems in the world, like in East Asia, that follow these principles, so I think they are worth exploring. This is a weakly held position for me.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > Do you think this is okay, or should things change? This is not the result of accelerated classes, it's the lack of accelerated classes. Really it's the result of insufficient sorting. If we had good sorting, we'd be routing half our kids into trade schools where they learn useful skills, and route the other half of our kids into real college prep high schools where the slow track would do calculus and the fast track would do differential equations. But instead, we send everyone to the same school, pretend that everyone should go to college, and then slow things down so that the slowest student in the room sets the pace. Then we don't remove disruptive students, hire social crusading teachers who themselves don't have a passion for the subjects they teach, and end up with our current outcomes. Most US high school teachers wouldn't even be qualified to teach at a gymnasium in Europe because even our standards for teachers are so low. Yes, you have to do heroics to learn anything in a U.S. school. The solution to that is not to do more of the same that got us here. The U.S. used to have high schools with college-preparatory ("prep") emphasis that existed side by side with vocational high schools where you could learn a useful trade. High schools even used to have entrance exams. We've fallen a long way in the name of pretending everyone is equal - just in the last 60 years - and the end result is that we have a shortage of both skilled tradesmen and skilled engineers - now we need to import both, and immigrants come from all over the world and earn much higher salaries than the native born because they got a better education. For example many systems in Europe still do good sorting, managing to give a good education to both fast and slow students by sending one to a gymnasium and the other to a vocational school, and the result is high paying careers for both. So what's happening in California is merely the continuation of dumbing things down in the name of equality, an ideological process that has been happening for many decades, but taking it to such a level of absurdity and doublespeak that more people are starting to recognize how foolish it all is.
threatofrain 5y ago
But in the pedagogical literature, children who are ahead in math don't substantially benefit in the reverse direction. In this case, holding everyone to a higher standard specifically means disallowing children from taking Calculus even if they are ready, and de-emphasizing Algebra in middle school.

fatnoah 5y ago

I had a healthy and stable home life, but also parents who pretty much left me to my own devices when it came to school work. In elementary school, I mostly did my homework and never, ever studied for a test. In high school, I did about 50% of my homework and probably studied for a grand total of 3-4 tests over that four years. All the while, I aced tests with nearly straight As. In school (elementary school especially), I'd finish tests and other work well before other students, would be bored as they asked questions with "easy" answers, etc. When I got to college, I had zero healthy study habits, and got a good six months of getting my ass kicked until I sorted things out. It wasn't until then that I actually felt challenged and engaged. Until then, I expected to get As and didn't have to work for it. Once in college, where I was challenged, EARNING As was so satisfying. I still remember the feeling of accomplishment of getting As in two chemistry classes, which was a subject I didn't like and I had to work HARD for those grades.