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Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating stu

Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. Totally agree. However, while there were no hard numbers in the article, it seems to me that these places may be successful because of the high "teacher" to "student" ratio. It sounds like the adults are peers and are in sufficient numbers that the children encounter enough "mature peers" with a wealth of experience to share. If you think about it, school is ridiculously out of place relative to pretty much every other institution in the world. Where else can you go and be surrounded by 15 to 30 people all within +1 and -1 year of the same age. To me it's crazy to expect learning to come out of an environment where you have 15-30 or more people equally ignorant on a topic expected to learn socially. Basically, you have one individual (the teacher) and if you're lucky 1-2 precocious students, that have much of value to add to any discussion. Furthermore, such an environment doesn't really appeal well to human desires for competition and admiration since the only person with knowledge possesses oodles more knowledge than you. "I can be as good as that person at X" isn't a thought that enters your head and motivates you when the only person good at X is orders of magnitude better at X and has many many years experience at X. I definitely see value in an environment where those n years old can also expect to learn from those n plus 1 or more years older with experience to share. Take that environment where there is peer learning and peer sharing and introduce some "seeds of knowledge" (i.e. the adults with subject matter expertise) and you've got a promising recipe for success. The expectation that the "students" also teach each other is doubly reinforcing, since teaching is one of the best ways to better master a subject. It forces you to consider the knowledge of the pupil and find a way to express what you know in terms the pupils can understand.

brc 12y ago
I agree that the schooling system, for most schools, is optimised for many things other than learning. Organised childcare would seem to be the primary goal for many classrooms, learning a secondary goal. Grouping by age instead of ability and interest is a poor idea in my observation. I think streaming and do grouping by level should be done much earlier. The goal should be to get talented kids to work together and in competition and achieving their learning as early as possible, and only mix them with the less talented kids occasionally. The least achieving kids should be prepared for life with an education in good solid skills and common sense, rather than making them try and fail at topics they can't do, which just turns them off learning for life. Anyway, I'd redesign the whole thing if you gave me the job. That's all.

brc 12y ago

I agree that the schooling system, for most schools, is optimised for many things other than learning. Organised childcare would seem to be the primary goal for many classrooms, learning a secondary goal. Grouping by age instead of ability and interest is a poor idea in my observation. I think streaming and do grouping by level should be done much earlier. The goal should be to get talented kids to work together and in competition and achieving their learning as early as possible, and only mix them with the less talented kids occasionally. The least achieving kids should be prepared for life with an education in good solid skills and common sense, rather than making them try and fail at topics they can't do, which just turns them off learning for life. Anyway, I'd redesign the whole thing if you gave me the job. That's all.