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A counterpoint: I was accelerated by three year levels, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Otherwise I would have been intensely bored in

by bradrn 2y ago

A counterpoint: I was accelerated by three year levels, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Otherwise I would have been intensely bored in high school for six years straight, with all the problems that would inevitably have brought. Of course, this depends so much on the person in question. Acceleration can be great for some people and awful for others. But it’s not about ‘enjoying being a kid’ — that’s something I hear a lot, but I enjoyed myself a lot more in the higher grades where I was actually learning material I found interesting.

smeej 2y ago
Can confirm: My parents made me go through the grades one at a time, despite the principal's recommendation that I start in 1st grade, move to 2nd mid-semester, do 3rd grade in the spring, and do two a year after that. It was intensely boring. I can see why they thought a bunch of teens and young adults wouldn't want to be friends with a much younger child, but I've always wondered if they would have been more willing to overlook the age difference than the other young children were willing to overlook the fact that the only thing we had in common was our age. Ironically, I found it decent preparation for life, though, which seems to be occasional bursts of furious activity punctuated by long stretches of repetition, which could easily become boring. I ended up becoming very good at taking responsibility for making my own life interesting.
- bradrn 2y ago
  > I ended up becoming very good at taking responsibility for making my own life interesting. Oh yes… I also spent considerable time teaching myself interesting topics. It’s a good skill to have. But I was still bored a lot of the time, and being able to do the interesting stuff in school too was a much better experience for me.
  - smeej 2y ago
    Ultimately I've had to get to a point where I realize I'm grateful for the life I live now, and accelerating through school would have changed a lot of it, such that I probably wouldn't have met some of the people most important to me, so I'm grateful for it in the long run. But I don't know that I'll ever stop wondering, and it's not a comparative gratitude, because I'm sure my life could have become beautiful like this in other ways. It's more a practice of radical acceptance with gratitude. I will say one of the things that always made me laugh was that at each milestone, like finishing elementary school and starting middle school, my parents would try to tell me now it would be different, because I was at a higher level. I remember pointing out to them all the same doofuses from the previous years were moving up right along with me, and it wasn't just that I was ahead of them, but that I was faster, so this didn't seem to help. I never did understand why they thought that would work!
WillAdams 2y ago
It is unfortunate that this is not a core principle of education. The best school system I ever attended rigorously divided classes between social and academic --- for social classes (gym, health, social studies, homeroom) one attended at one's grade level, while for academic classes, (English, other languages, science, math) one worked at one's grade level (but with a cap of 4 grade levels through 8th grade, so a 4th grader couldn't take high school classes) --- after 8th grade this cap was removed, and students could take any classes which they could qualify for academically. To facilitate this, some teachers were also accredited as faculty at a nearby college, and if necessary arrangements were made either for college professors to come to the school and teach, or students travelled to the college. Most students graduated with at least a little college credit, and many received a college degree along with their high school diploma --- until the Mississippi State Supreme Court decided that it was illegal because it conferred an unseemly advantage on some students with no corresponding compensation for students who were unable to avail themselves of it academically.
- bradrn 2y ago
  > The best school system I ever attended rigorously divided classes between social and academic This is such a great idea! And it sounds like it works well in practise, too. I’ve often pondered the idea of separating classes by ability rather than age, and this is a really practical method of achieving it.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    It worked quite well --- helped that it was a small, cohesive school system with all grades in the same building/complex. A similar idea is to group children by reading level which makes classes function more smoothly since students finish reading assignments in similar periods of time.
  - smeej 2y ago
    Ironically I think a version of this had to happen in the one-room schoolhouses of yore. If you're the only teacher, you can't afford to split everyone by age. You kind of have to roll people into whatever lessons they can handle and do your best. It was "innovative," in a way I think we're coming to regret, to suggest that all 8-year-olds (for example) must be at the same level across every subject, and none of them should ever be taught alongside a group of mostly 6- or 10-year-olds.
dhosek 2y ago
When I was in kindergarten, I was one of a handful of kids who were invited to come back to the school after lunch (this was in the days of half-day kindergarten being the norm) to learn math with the first graders. I got kicked out for being disruptive. My mom, annoyed at not having her afternoons free, gave me math learning materials to keep me busy. Since she wasn‘t a teacher, she didn’t really know what she was doing and I ended up entering first grade reading at a fifth-grade level and doing math at a third-grade level. I really should have been skipped ahead at least a year, if not two. The first-grade teacher had me teach the gifted kids in the back of the room while she taught the rest of the class, the second-grade teacher didn’t really know what to do with me and I was bored out of my skull as a result (first and second grade swapped between the two teachers at lunch time with the first-grade teacher focusing on reading and writing, the second-grade teacher focusing on math and science).
- smeej 2y ago
  One of the last times my parents moved, they sent me this big box they had of papers from my childhood. One of the ones that fascinated me was dated from when I was in 2nd grade. It was a big printout with rows and columns. Some of them contained numbers, but most of them just said "PHS." It was an oddly folded poster-size thing, and once I finally got it open, I found out the numbers were grade levels, and "PHS" stood for "Post High School." I had been 8 when I sat for this test. My parents had staunchly refused to accelerate my education. And they continued to refuse for ten. more. years. I might recommend that parents not send their children proof if they went out of their way to stymie them.
euroderf 2y ago
> I was accelerated by three year levels And you avoided being bullied ? Nice!
vidarh 2y ago
I was handed math textbooks a few years above my grade when I was in 5th grade, and it kept me interested longer. I think I overall preferred that, to being moved. Socially I was definitely not ready for being moved into higher grades etc. In highschool my maths teachers mostly let me do my own thing, other than asking if I'd be interested in helping others on occasion, and frankly, that was probably more valuable to me than advancing faster in the subjects. Not trying to contradict you, btw., just another option.
- bradrn 2y ago
  This is completely valid. Like I said, acceleration isn’t right for everyone! I also started out by reading more advanced maths textbooks, and it’s a great thing to do for students where acceleration isn’t a good option.

by bradrn 2y ago

smeej 2y ago

Can confirm: My parents made me go through the grades one at a time, despite the principal's recommendation that I start in 1st grade, move to 2nd mid-semester, do 3rd grade in the spring, and do two a year after that. It was intensely boring. I can see why they thought a bunch of teens and young adults wouldn't want to be friends with a much younger child, but I've always wondered if they would have been more willing to overlook the age difference than the other young children were willing to overlook the fact that the only thing we had in common was our age. Ironically, I found it decent preparation for life, though, which seems to be occasional bursts of furious activity punctuated by long stretches of repetition, which could easily become boring. I ended up becoming very good at taking responsibility for making my own life interesting.

bradrn 2y ago
> I ended up becoming very good at taking responsibility for making my own life interesting. Oh yes… I also spent considerable time teaching myself interesting topics. It’s a good skill to have. But I was still bored a lot of the time, and being able to do the interesting stuff in school too was a much better experience for me.
- smeej 2y ago
  Ultimately I've had to get to a point where I realize I'm grateful for the life I live now, and accelerating through school would have changed a lot of it, such that I probably wouldn't have met some of the people most important to me, so I'm grateful for it in the long run. But I don't know that I'll ever stop wondering, and it's not a comparative gratitude, because I'm sure my life could have become beautiful like this in other ways. It's more a practice of radical acceptance with gratitude. I will say one of the things that always made me laugh was that at each milestone, like finishing elementary school and starting middle school, my parents would try to tell me now it would be different, because I was at a higher level. I remember pointing out to them all the same doofuses from the previous years were moving up right along with me, and it wasn't just that I was ahead of them, but that I was faster, so this didn't seem to help. I never did understand why they thought that would work!

WillAdams 2y ago

It is unfortunate that this is not a core principle of education. The best school system I ever attended rigorously divided classes between social and academic --- for social classes (gym, health, social studies, homeroom) one attended at one's grade level, while for academic classes, (English, other languages, science, math) one worked at one's grade level (but with a cap of 4 grade levels through 8th grade, so a 4th grader couldn't take high school classes) --- after 8th grade this cap was removed, and students could take any classes which they could qualify for academically. To facilitate this, some teachers were also accredited as faculty at a nearby college, and if necessary arrangements were made either for college professors to come to the school and teach, or students travelled to the college. Most students graduated with at least a little college credit, and many received a college degree along with their high school diploma --- until the Mississippi State Supreme Court decided that it was illegal because it conferred an unseemly advantage on some students with no corresponding compensation for students who were unable to avail themselves of it academically.

bradrn 2y ago
> The best school system I ever attended rigorously divided classes between social and academic This is such a great idea! And it sounds like it works well in practise, too. I’ve often pondered the idea of separating classes by ability rather than age, and this is a really practical method of achieving it.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  It worked quite well --- helped that it was a small, cohesive school system with all grades in the same building/complex. A similar idea is to group children by reading level which makes classes function more smoothly since students finish reading assignments in similar periods of time.
- smeej 2y ago
  Ironically I think a version of this had to happen in the one-room schoolhouses of yore. If you're the only teacher, you can't afford to split everyone by age. You kind of have to roll people into whatever lessons they can handle and do your best. It was "innovative," in a way I think we're coming to regret, to suggest that all 8-year-olds (for example) must be at the same level across every subject, and none of them should ever be taught alongside a group of mostly 6- or 10-year-olds.

dhosek 2y ago

When I was in kindergarten, I was one of a handful of kids who were invited to come back to the school after lunch (this was in the days of half-day kindergarten being the norm) to learn math with the first graders. I got kicked out for being disruptive. My mom, annoyed at not having her afternoons free, gave me math learning materials to keep me busy. Since she wasn‘t a teacher, she didn’t really know what she was doing and I ended up entering first grade reading at a fifth-grade level and doing math at a third-grade level. I really should have been skipped ahead at least a year, if not two. The first-grade teacher had me teach the gifted kids in the back of the room while she taught the rest of the class, the second-grade teacher didn’t really know what to do with me and I was bored out of my skull as a result (first and second grade swapped between the two teachers at lunch time with the first-grade teacher focusing on reading and writing, the second-grade teacher focusing on math and science).

smeej 2y ago
One of the last times my parents moved, they sent me this big box they had of papers from my childhood. One of the ones that fascinated me was dated from when I was in 2nd grade. It was a big printout with rows and columns. Some of them contained numbers, but most of them just said "PHS." It was an oddly folded poster-size thing, and once I finally got it open, I found out the numbers were grade levels, and "PHS" stood for "Post High School." I had been 8 when I sat for this test. My parents had staunchly refused to accelerate my education. And they continued to refuse for ten. more. years. I might recommend that parents not send their children proof if they went out of their way to stymie them.

euroderf 2y ago

> I was accelerated by three year levels And you avoided being bullied ? Nice!

vidarh 2y ago

I was handed math textbooks a few years above my grade when I was in 5th grade, and it kept me interested longer. I think I overall preferred that, to being moved. Socially I was definitely not ready for being moved into higher grades etc. In highschool my maths teachers mostly let me do my own thing, other than asking if I'd be interested in helping others on occasion, and frankly, that was probably more valuable to me than advancing faster in the subjects. Not trying to contradict you, btw., just another option.

bradrn 2y ago
This is completely valid. Like I said, acceleration isn’t right for everyone! I also started out by reading more advanced maths textbooks, and it’s a great thing to do for students where acceleration isn’t a good option.