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that’s not at all true. as a data point, i can certainly accept that some students have more aptitude in one subject or another than some other students. the r

that’s not at all true. as a data point, i can certainly accept that some students have more aptitude in one subject or another than some other students. the reason i have problems with GATE is that it supposes than only those students benefit from or should have access to these opportunities, even in fact all students can benefit from them, depending somewhat on the program. for example, when i was in one of these programs, our overwhelmingly White class (in a school that was about 60% Black) got to learn about the stock market by simulating a working exchange. There’s nothing about the notion of buying and selling that can’t be understood by any student—yet this was part of the curriculum only for the small number of students deemed intellectually worthy of the extra attention. That said, many GT programs today are based on differentiated instruction, where students are not pulled out of the classroom but given different assignments depending on their demonstrated ability, such as maths worksheets/assignments that are a bit more difficult than the “normal” one, and i think these programs are significantly more equitable.

scarmig 4y ago
There's plenty about the notion of buying and selling that can't be understood by any student. An appalling number of kids in public school aren't able to answer questions like "how do you make change for $5.67 if you're given a $10 bill." Differentiated instruction is a crock; a teacher who fails to be able to teach a classroom of roughly equal abilities is going to fail even harder to teach a classroom of mixed abilities. Giving extra worksheets with slightly harder problems doesn't cut it, when a significant minority of kids are one or more grade levels above grade (and a significant majority of kids are one or more level below grade).
QuarterReptile 4y ago
>for example, when i was in one of these programs, our overwhelmingly White class (in a school that was about 60% Black) got to learn about the stock market by simulating a working exchange. There’s nothing about the notion of buying and selling that can’t be understood by any student—yet this was part of the curriculum only for the small number of students deemed intellectually worthy of the extra attention. It's all well and good to point out that buying and selling are fundamentally simple concepts, but that's not the same as saying that the instruction could be given universally. First, students have to be stable enough personally and in their lives that they can show up and pay attention for all the instruction that makes the exercise get off the ground at all. Then, students need to care about the material and believe that there is justification to learn it, or it's casting pearls before swine. In my public school experience, you've just lost 80-90% of the student body with those two factors. Then, if you have all that, you need teachers who are confident enough with stock markets to teach the material and go beyond a narrow track of reciting facts, and that goes way further than just 'buying and selling'. On top of that, the teacher needs to be able to make or facilitate a simulation that moves at the right pace and adjusts as necessary, including getting all the students to work well together. From the perspective of a school administration, you only get a few teachers who will have those skills and personality, and it's pretty important to have them doing work like that, because teaching-as-remedial-fact-recitation for a standardized test will get rid of those good teachers pretty quickly, and now you have no one left to teach the kids who could have benefitted from the differentiated curriculum. Source: I went to public school and now teach and manage at a school that focuses on a lot of simulations and role-playing.

scarmig 4y ago

There's plenty about the notion of buying and selling that can't be understood by any student. An appalling number of kids in public school aren't able to answer questions like "how do you make change for $5.67 if you're given a $10 bill." Differentiated instruction is a crock; a teacher who fails to be able to teach a classroom of roughly equal abilities is going to fail even harder to teach a classroom of mixed abilities. Giving extra worksheets with slightly harder problems doesn't cut it, when a significant minority of kids are one or more grade levels above grade (and a significant majority of kids are one or more level below grade).

QuarterReptile 4y ago

>for example, when i was in one of these programs, our overwhelmingly White class (in a school that was about 60% Black) got to learn about the stock market by simulating a working exchange. There’s nothing about the notion of buying and selling that can’t be understood by any student—yet this was part of the curriculum only for the small number of students deemed intellectually worthy of the extra attention. It's all well and good to point out that buying and selling are fundamentally simple concepts, but that's not the same as saying that the instruction could be given universally. First, students have to be stable enough personally and in their lives that they can show up and pay attention for all the instruction that makes the exercise get off the ground at all. Then, students need to care about the material and believe that there is justification to learn it, or it's casting pearls before swine. In my public school experience, you've just lost 80-90% of the student body with those two factors. Then, if you have all that, you need teachers who are confident enough with stock markets to teach the material and go beyond a narrow track of reciting facts, and that goes way further than just 'buying and selling'. On top of that, the teacher needs to be able to make or facilitate a simulation that moves at the right pace and adjusts as necessary, including getting all the students to work well together. From the perspective of a school administration, you only get a few teachers who will have those skills and personality, and it's pretty important to have them doing work like that, because teaching-as-remedial-fact-recitation for a standardized test will get rid of those good teachers pretty quickly, and now you have no one left to teach the kids who could have benefitted from the differentiated curriculum. Source: I went to public school and now teach and manage at a school that focuses on a lot of simulations and role-playing.