3 ms·

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 aro

by 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.
    - causi 5y ago
      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. I mean that's also a world in which the humanities don't seem to exist at all.
- causi 5y ago
  Not to mention the converse-racism. If I as a child was raised racist or otherwise-inclined to be racist toward black students, that perception might be challenged by seeing them alongside me in a gifted course. If I as that child believe the reason there is no gifted class for me to attend because it would hurt the black students' feelings, then that will heavily reinforce my racism.
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.

by bllguo 5y ago

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.
  - causi 5y ago
    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. I mean that's also a world in which the humanities don't seem to exist at all.
causi 5y ago
Not to mention the converse-racism. If I as a child was raised racist or otherwise-inclined to be racist toward black students, that perception might be challenged by seeing them alongside me in a gifted course. If I as that child believe the reason there is no gifted class for me to attend because it would hurt the black students' feelings, then that will heavily reinforce my racism.

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.