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> I had the direct comparison when I went to university. It became very clear that I was learning much more and faster. Sure, but this should be expected. If y

> I had the direct comparison when I went to university. It became very clear that I was learning much more and faster. Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out all children with low interest/performance/support in preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning rate could also be much faster in school for the rest. But if you want a solid baseline of reading/writing/math/general education for everyone in society, those twelve years are already barely enough. I'm very confident that early discrimination/segregation ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks in school) is a net negative for society and encourages unethical outcomes on top. Optional programs for faster/more targetted learning are much better and can be very positive IMO, but even there you need to be careful with how you set things up to avoid problems.

andrepd 1y ago
> I'm very confident that early discrimination/segregation ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks in school) is a net negative for society and encourages unethical outcomes on top. I'm curious about this, can you elaborate more? My feeling is that in a class of 25 kids grouped by age being taught by 1 single teacher, it's basically impossible that the teaching pace and style is adequate for more than a handful of them. You're going to have kids bored out of their minds learning nothing and being unengaged, and you're going to have kids that can't keep up and would need extra support / a different kind of support. You're not doing either of those any favours.
- myrmidon 1y ago
  My view is that schools purpose is teaching everyone not only a common baseline in language/math, but also how to deal with expectations/responsibilities and other people (teachers and classmates). By doing "early segregation" you make this more difficult because that "common baseline" no longer exists; you'd expect to get significantly more people that struggle with language and basic math as a result (in exchange for better outcomes in your "gifted" track). Furthermore, you are sorting people into social buckets in a way that is really bad for social cohesion (inevitable, all the white kids with rich parents are gonna end up in the "gifted" schools). Everyone is gonna grow up in a echochamber, basically. Finally, this is going to lead to restrictions on a young adults options, that I find really unpalatable to blame on the affected children: Can you honestly argue that people don't deserve the chance to study medicine at university just because their parents did not tutor, push and mentor them sufficiently? Equality of opportunity as a principle is gonna be nigh impossible to preserve in such a system. I do not dispute that you could teach children faster and better with individual tutoring and customized programs, but that would be cost-prohibitive, and I see currently no realistic way to get there without above consequences. Maybe AI will solve it :P
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Don't forget that kid that was 1 point off from making the gifted track that now gets stuck with much worse options for the rest of their life even though they could probably pass the gifted track as well (at the bottom of the class, but still a pass).
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    I would expect everyone at all levels to do better under a more highly segregated model. In the desegregated model, faster students are artificially held back and slower students are left behind (unless the class operates at the level of the absolute slowest student). In a segregated model, you are better able to approximate a mastery learning approach, which is known to create vastly better outcomes for everyone. The mechanism AI would use to solve the problem is to give everyone individualized education, which would effectively be maximal segregation. For socialization, another commenter here wrote a few months back about their experience at a school where they had more academic classes segregated by ability and more social classes segregated by age[0], which sounds to me like an excellent solution. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42117313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42117313
    - myrmidon 1y ago
      I'm quite skeptical about the improved performance for everyone from earlier segregation; this neglects the negative feedback effects from sticking low performers together I feel, and I dont see how you preserve any semblance of "common baseline", meaning that counting on a kid knowing some prerequisite concept is gonna be a complete gamble (especially after school transfer). Your outcomes as child are also likely to plummet if you ever get sorted into the wrong bucket, which I feel is super unethical. Personally I also really question the whole concept of pushing a grade schoolers "performance": What do you hope to gain from it? Looking e.g. at asian english tests I can see a likely worst-case outcome: Genuinely difficult and stressful tests (that even native speakers would struggle with) that just test some meaningless grammatical minutiae. I fully agree that having optional programs and learning opportunities for talented/interested children is a very good thing, but I don't think dismantling the current system would really help at providing those (and they are always gonna be an additional cost, just like more segregation would be in practice). I also think that attempting to railroad children into (or out of!) those options is not desirable at all.
constantcrying 1y ago
>Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out all children with low interest/performance/support in preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning rate could also be much faster in school for the rest. In Germany you have schools for students targeting university. I was in such a school. Every student there was there to get into university.
- myrmidon 1y ago
  > In Germany you have schools for students targeting university. I was in such a school. Every student there was there to get into university. Yes, but if half the class was not smarter than you (by whatever standard), then that segregation was too low to really hit the spot anyway. My personal experience was the completely opposite: I learned more useful knowledge in school than in university, despite wasting like a year of math on trigonometric sum formulas and similar nonsense; but the baseline for physics/electronics, programming and math was much more applicable and necessary than anything I learned in university (frequently overspecialized and barely useful). Sure, I also learned a lot during university on my own, but mostly thanks to sufficient free time and personal interest; university itself did not contribute too much there, and this was somewhat similar during school already anyway (most specifically with programming). To me, it sounds like you suffered from mediocre teachers in school and learn better on your own-- but neither is universal enough to draw system-wide conclusions IMO.

andrepd 1y ago

> I'm very confident that early discrimination/segregation ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks in school) is a net negative for society and encourages unethical outcomes on top. I'm curious about this, can you elaborate more? My feeling is that in a class of 25 kids grouped by age being taught by 1 single teacher, it's basically impossible that the teaching pace and style is adequate for more than a handful of them. You're going to have kids bored out of their minds learning nothing and being unengaged, and you're going to have kids that can't keep up and would need extra support / a different kind of support. You're not doing either of those any favours.

myrmidon 1y ago
My view is that schools purpose is teaching everyone not only a common baseline in language/math, but also how to deal with expectations/responsibilities and other people (teachers and classmates). By doing "early segregation" you make this more difficult because that "common baseline" no longer exists; you'd expect to get significantly more people that struggle with language and basic math as a result (in exchange for better outcomes in your "gifted" track). Furthermore, you are sorting people into social buckets in a way that is really bad for social cohesion (inevitable, all the white kids with rich parents are gonna end up in the "gifted" schools). Everyone is gonna grow up in a echochamber, basically. Finally, this is going to lead to restrictions on a young adults options, that I find really unpalatable to blame on the affected children: Can you honestly argue that people don't deserve the chance to study medicine at university just because their parents did not tutor, push and mentor them sufficiently? Equality of opportunity as a principle is gonna be nigh impossible to preserve in such a system. I do not dispute that you could teach children faster and better with individual tutoring and customized programs, but that would be cost-prohibitive, and I see currently no realistic way to get there without above consequences. Maybe AI will solve it :P
- bluGill 1y ago
  Don't forget that kid that was 1 point off from making the gifted track that now gets stuck with much worse options for the rest of their life even though they could probably pass the gifted track as well (at the bottom of the class, but still a pass).
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  I would expect everyone at all levels to do better under a more highly segregated model. In the desegregated model, faster students are artificially held back and slower students are left behind (unless the class operates at the level of the absolute slowest student). In a segregated model, you are better able to approximate a mastery learning approach, which is known to create vastly better outcomes for everyone. The mechanism AI would use to solve the problem is to give everyone individualized education, which would effectively be maximal segregation. For socialization, another commenter here wrote a few months back about their experience at a school where they had more academic classes segregated by ability and more social classes segregated by age[0], which sounds to me like an excellent solution. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42117313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42117313
  - myrmidon 1y ago
    I'm quite skeptical about the improved performance for everyone from earlier segregation; this neglects the negative feedback effects from sticking low performers together I feel, and I dont see how you preserve any semblance of "common baseline", meaning that counting on a kid knowing some prerequisite concept is gonna be a complete gamble (especially after school transfer). Your outcomes as child are also likely to plummet if you ever get sorted into the wrong bucket, which I feel is super unethical. Personally I also really question the whole concept of pushing a grade schoolers "performance": What do you hope to gain from it? Looking e.g. at asian english tests I can see a likely worst-case outcome: Genuinely difficult and stressful tests (that even native speakers would struggle with) that just test some meaningless grammatical minutiae. I fully agree that having optional programs and learning opportunities for talented/interested children is a very good thing, but I don't think dismantling the current system would really help at providing those (and they are always gonna be an additional cost, just like more segregation would be in practice). I also think that attempting to railroad children into (or out of!) those options is not desirable at all.

constantcrying 1y ago

>Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out all children with low interest/performance/support in preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning rate could also be much faster in school for the rest. In Germany you have schools for students targeting university. I was in such a school. Every student there was there to get into university.

myrmidon 1y ago
> In Germany you have schools for students targeting university. I was in such a school. Every student there was there to get into university. Yes, but if half the class was not smarter than you (by whatever standard), then that segregation was too low to really hit the spot anyway. My personal experience was the completely opposite: I learned more useful knowledge in school than in university, despite wasting like a year of math on trigonometric sum formulas and similar nonsense; but the baseline for physics/electronics, programming and math was much more applicable and necessary than anything I learned in university (frequently overspecialized and barely useful). Sure, I also learned a lot during university on my own, but mostly thanks to sufficient free time and personal interest; university itself did not contribute too much there, and this was somewhat similar during school already anyway (most specifically with programming). To me, it sounds like you suffered from mediocre teachers in school and learn better on your own-- but neither is universal enough to draw system-wide conclusions IMO.