7 ms·

How is it misdirection if most of the people really pushing this are “woke”?

mhb 5y ago
Because the root cause is that the government has a monopoly on public schools. It is only a recent development that the indoctrination of the captive audience has become enticing for woke proselytizers.
- simplestats 5y ago
  The issue with gifted children isn't about indoctrinating them to whatever beliefs. It's the destructive belief that high academic achievement is the result of some unfair "privilege" which they seek to counter by limiting opportunities for advancement.
  - faeriechangling 5y ago
    Being able to attain high academic achievement IS privilege itself, a far far more real one than most privileges people jaw on about. Your standardized test scores to a large extent determine your quality of life. On some level it’s positively shocking that gifted classes have lasted as long as they have. Looked at from a thousand mile out view a TON of the woke agenda is direct and indirect attacks on those that perform well on standardized tests.
    - avar 5y ago
      Why would having "gifted" classes detract from other students? In the case of OP's daughter giving her permission to simply skip math class and self-tutor in an empty classroom (by e.g. self-studying a more advanced textbook) would probably be an improvement over having to sit through a class that's below her level. Once you do that less "privileged" students also benefit, since the teaching resources being spent on that bored student will be freed up to focus on the smaller class of students that need more assistance. I don't see why it's a given that this is guaranteed to result in worse outcomes by any measure, even "woke" ones that might consider it a loss if OP's daughter pulls ahead further from the median grade, even if the median also goes up as a result of better spent teaching resources.
      - csa 5y ago
        > Why would having "gifted" classes detract from other students? Note that I am a fan of gifted classes, but to answer your question: 1. If you pull out gifted kids from classes with simply “above average” kids, you lower the ceiling of what it means to be “the best”. As a result, the above average kids may not push themselves as hard/far. This concept is common in sports as well — the competition yields higher results. 2. The class that is left, usually an honors class, ends up moving much more slowly. A dirty little secret of teaching is that the pace of a class is limited to roughly the ability level of the bottom third of the class. Any faster, and you have lost so many people that the class can’t self-correct via peer interaction. Any slower, and you cause so many of the high performers to lose interest that motivation becomes an issue. When you pull the gifted kids out of, for example, an honors class, the level of the bottom third of that class often drops precipitously. I personally don’t think that these are good reasons to eliminate gifted classes. I think it points to the need for more effective/efficient differentiated instruction. But that would require good teachers and good administration, and imho those things are extremely difficult to have at scale.
        mhb 5y ago
        For 2, in the honors class, the bottom third is closer to the top once the gifted kids have left. So aren't they all able to move faster as a percentage of their capability without the gifted kids? And isn't that what should be optimized?
        csa 5y ago
        Maybe. What usually happens, due to student teacher ratios being a thing, is that the honors class is replenished with lower ability students from the “regular” (i.e., non-honors) class, so the average is brought down fairly substantially. Note that all of this is a non-issue if you are only pulling a few kids out of a school to go to a magnet high school or something similar. An example of this can be seen in Japan where the gifted and motivated students are moved into magnet schools for high school, but there is relatively little negative impact on the regular high school, while the magnet high school students get an eduction that pushes their intellectual boundaries.
    - csa 5y ago
      > Your standardized test scores to a large extent determine your quality of life. This is largely untrue unless one defines quality of life with a very narrow set of criteria and/or lives in a relatively small echo chamber. I know tons of people with very high scores who have very low QoL, and I know many multiples of that with mediocre scores who have very high QoL. The skill (or maybe luck) to find a way to use the abilities one does have in order to provide high utility seems to be the common thread in the high QoL folks.
  - mhb 5y ago
    Yes, of course. Evangelists are happy to use all the tools at their disposal - both overt preaching and structural changes that conflate equality of outcome with fairness regardless of the means of achieving it. If parents had a way of avoiding government schools, it would be far less enticing for those with an agenda to capture them.
  - LocalH 5y ago
    This is the root of the problem. They saw Harrison Bergeron as a roadmap, not as a cautionary tale
- yuliyp 5y ago
  In most large cities, there is not a single government which has a monopoly on public schools: there are generally multiple individual school districts which each try to compete for the wealthiest students. That results in some school districts being more amenable toward a focus on gifted programs and some being less so. School boards are subject to elections, which does mean that the priorities of the schools are not homogeneous. Of course there are lots of layers of laws and bureaucracies above school districts that can apply curricula or regulations to temper this, but unlike state governments, where representatives are elected on a slate of issues and tied to political parties, school boards are elected on just 1 issue: how are they going to run the schools.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  Not true. Most of European schools are govt-run, yet there are pretty good programs for "gifted" people, mainly centered around competitions, culminating in the international IMO and IOI.
  - Viliam1234 5y ago
    A lot of education for gifted people happens outside of school: clubs, correspondence competitions (these days probably all online). Also, gifted people often learn from books.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  Some governments do hold competitions between public schools. Like https://www.ipho2021.lt/ https://www.ipho2021.lt/ but on a local scale.
- mlac 5y ago
  The government will always have a monopoly on public schools, that are, by definition, publicly funded by the government.
profunctor 5y ago
What do you mean by woke?
- google234123 5y ago
  Social media-fueled, very leftwing ideologues. Typically also trying to “cancel” those they disagree with.

mhb 5y ago

Because the root cause is that the government has a monopoly on public schools. It is only a recent development that the indoctrination of the captive audience has become enticing for woke proselytizers.

simplestats 5y ago
The issue with gifted children isn't about indoctrinating them to whatever beliefs. It's the destructive belief that high academic achievement is the result of some unfair "privilege" which they seek to counter by limiting opportunities for advancement.
- faeriechangling 5y ago
  Being able to attain high academic achievement IS privilege itself, a far far more real one than most privileges people jaw on about. Your standardized test scores to a large extent determine your quality of life. On some level it’s positively shocking that gifted classes have lasted as long as they have. Looked at from a thousand mile out view a TON of the woke agenda is direct and indirect attacks on those that perform well on standardized tests.
  - avar 5y ago
    Why would having "gifted" classes detract from other students? In the case of OP's daughter giving her permission to simply skip math class and self-tutor in an empty classroom (by e.g. self-studying a more advanced textbook) would probably be an improvement over having to sit through a class that's below her level. Once you do that less "privileged" students also benefit, since the teaching resources being spent on that bored student will be freed up to focus on the smaller class of students that need more assistance. I don't see why it's a given that this is guaranteed to result in worse outcomes by any measure, even "woke" ones that might consider it a loss if OP's daughter pulls ahead further from the median grade, even if the median also goes up as a result of better spent teaching resources.
    - csa 5y ago
      > Why would having "gifted" classes detract from other students? Note that I am a fan of gifted classes, but to answer your question: 1. If you pull out gifted kids from classes with simply “above average” kids, you lower the ceiling of what it means to be “the best”. As a result, the above average kids may not push themselves as hard/far. This concept is common in sports as well — the competition yields higher results. 2. The class that is left, usually an honors class, ends up moving much more slowly. A dirty little secret of teaching is that the pace of a class is limited to roughly the ability level of the bottom third of the class. Any faster, and you have lost so many people that the class can’t self-correct via peer interaction. Any slower, and you cause so many of the high performers to lose interest that motivation becomes an issue. When you pull the gifted kids out of, for example, an honors class, the level of the bottom third of that class often drops precipitously. I personally don’t think that these are good reasons to eliminate gifted classes. I think it points to the need for more effective/efficient differentiated instruction. But that would require good teachers and good administration, and imho those things are extremely difficult to have at scale.
      - mhb 5y ago
        For 2, in the honors class, the bottom third is closer to the top once the gifted kids have left. So aren't they all able to move faster as a percentage of their capability without the gifted kids? And isn't that what should be optimized?
        csa 5y ago
        Maybe. What usually happens, due to student teacher ratios being a thing, is that the honors class is replenished with lower ability students from the “regular” (i.e., non-honors) class, so the average is brought down fairly substantially. Note that all of this is a non-issue if you are only pulling a few kids out of a school to go to a magnet high school or something similar. An example of this can be seen in Japan where the gifted and motivated students are moved into magnet schools for high school, but there is relatively little negative impact on the regular high school, while the magnet high school students get an eduction that pushes their intellectual boundaries.
  - csa 5y ago
    > Your standardized test scores to a large extent determine your quality of life. This is largely untrue unless one defines quality of life with a very narrow set of criteria and/or lives in a relatively small echo chamber. I know tons of people with very high scores who have very low QoL, and I know many multiples of that with mediocre scores who have very high QoL. The skill (or maybe luck) to find a way to use the abilities one does have in order to provide high utility seems to be the common thread in the high QoL folks.
- mhb 5y ago
  Yes, of course. Evangelists are happy to use all the tools at their disposal - both overt preaching and structural changes that conflate equality of outcome with fairness regardless of the means of achieving it. If parents had a way of avoiding government schools, it would be far less enticing for those with an agenda to capture them.
- LocalH 5y ago
  This is the root of the problem. They saw Harrison Bergeron as a roadmap, not as a cautionary tale
yuliyp 5y ago
In most large cities, there is not a single government which has a monopoly on public schools: there are generally multiple individual school districts which each try to compete for the wealthiest students. That results in some school districts being more amenable toward a focus on gifted programs and some being less so. School boards are subject to elections, which does mean that the priorities of the schools are not homogeneous. Of course there are lots of layers of laws and bureaucracies above school districts that can apply curricula or regulations to temper this, but unlike state governments, where representatives are elected on a slate of issues and tied to political parties, school boards are elected on just 1 issue: how are they going to run the schools.
H8crilA 5y ago
Not true. Most of European schools are govt-run, yet there are pretty good programs for "gifted" people, mainly centered around competitions, culminating in the international IMO and IOI.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  A lot of education for gifted people happens outside of school: clubs, correspondence competitions (these days probably all online). Also, gifted people often learn from books.
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
Some governments do hold competitions between public schools. Like https://www.ipho2021.lt/ https://www.ipho2021.lt/ but on a local scale.
mlac 5y ago
The government will always have a monopoly on public schools, that are, by definition, publicly funded by the government.

profunctor 5y ago

What do you mean by woke?

google234123 5y ago
Social media-fueled, very leftwing ideologues. Typically also trying to “cancel” those they disagree with.