3 ms·

Might be anecdotal, but I have noticed in the recent years that there is a lot of push to set education levels as low as possible, to make most students pass th

Might be anecdotal, but I have noticed in the recent years that there is a lot of push to set education levels as low as possible, to make most students pass their education, while failing the ones who are above average. "back in my days", we had some medium level of education, had additional classes (in some subjects) for the gifted ones (extra stuff) and for the almost-failing ones (repeating the stuff from normal classes), and it was still perfectly normal, that in a class of ~25, one or two students failed enough classes to repeat that year, especially in higher elementary-school years (elementary is ~7-15yo, so last 3 years of that) and in high school. Now it really seems that they went the "no student left behind" way. This might be different in countries and areas where you can just enroll your kid into a "better" school (as we can do with highschools here, but not elementary ones). I was one of the better students in my elementary school class, but when I went to a "better" highschool, the learning environment was A LOT better, mostly because the half-illiterate uninterested students (that somehow didn't fail enough times) didn't get enough points to get accepted to that school, and didn't cause problems those four years, even though grading on a curve meant a bit worse grades than before.

Brian_K_White 5y ago
Eh, I think if the troublemakers are in the world, then you might as well have to learn about dealing with them as part of school too. This "the learning environment was better without the riffraff" just doesn't sit well with me. It's too easy of an excuse to justify segregation and classification, and self serving. I'm sure everyone there likes it and agrees with each other that it's reasonable, and I'm also sure that's not a good enough reason to do something. I overheard teachers making hay about my iq tests and was put into my school's g&t programs too, so, I don't say this from an opposite but equally self serving position. If we're so smart, then we should be able to figure out a good way to let the gifted grow without seperating and classifying everyone, and making some people too-aware how special they are over everyone else, and making other people who never did anything wrong, aware under no uncertain terms that they are limited and the cone of possibility for their life is already prescribed and small. If we're actually as smart as we tell ourselves, then why do we accept such a poor solution to that problem? The answer is smart people are not better people, but they will never tell themselves that, and they don't respect anyone else's opinion. The only counter to that is the exposure that comes from mixing.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I'm not saying that smarter people are better people, but if 20% of the class can't multiply properly, learning integrals will be a pain for them, and instead of learning more, the teachers will be occupied by the 20%, while the smarter ones will be bored, and a portion of class time (opportunities to learn more) will be wasted, since they'll be bored by the stuff they already know.

Brian_K_White 5y ago

Eh, I think if the troublemakers are in the world, then you might as well have to learn about dealing with them as part of school too. This "the learning environment was better without the riffraff" just doesn't sit well with me. It's too easy of an excuse to justify segregation and classification, and self serving. I'm sure everyone there likes it and agrees with each other that it's reasonable, and I'm also sure that's not a good enough reason to do something. I overheard teachers making hay about my iq tests and was put into my school's g&t programs too, so, I don't say this from an opposite but equally self serving position. If we're so smart, then we should be able to figure out a good way to let the gifted grow without seperating and classifying everyone, and making some people too-aware how special they are over everyone else, and making other people who never did anything wrong, aware under no uncertain terms that they are limited and the cone of possibility for their life is already prescribed and small. If we're actually as smart as we tell ourselves, then why do we accept such a poor solution to that problem? The answer is smart people are not better people, but they will never tell themselves that, and they don't respect anyone else's opinion. The only counter to that is the exposure that comes from mixing.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
I'm not saying that smarter people are better people, but if 20% of the class can't multiply properly, learning integrals will be a pain for them, and instead of learning more, the teachers will be occupied by the 20%, while the smarter ones will be bored, and a portion of class time (opportunities to learn more) will be wasted, since they'll be bored by the stuff they already know.