Comment by ajsnigrutin

For me, it wasn't the "stay away from average people" but "remove the bottom percenters", and that made schooling much better.

Out here, in my schooling, the first stage of schooling was an elementary school, from ~7-15yo (8 years), and by default, you're enrolled into the nearest school to your home. Sometimes there are ways to choose other schools, but all the other pupils there, are there, because it's their nearest school.

What that means is, that you have, in a same class group (~25 people) a wide distribution of capabilities but also mental states, behaviours, etc. From geniuses that contribute to the whole schooling experience, to kids who somehow manage to stay basically illiterate even after 8 years of schooling, and just cause problems for everyone else. What that means is, that many of the lectures are based around trying to get the lower percentiles to learn at least enough for a minimum passing grade, and the top percentiles are either bored or lose interest. + all the behavioural issues.

After you finished elementary school, your grades of the last few years (2? i forgot) are calculated, you do some standardized testing, the numbers are calculated by some formula, and you get a numeric score, that is then used to enroll into high schools (and in most cases, the top X candidates by that score get accepted to a school, depending on how many apply, and how many open spots (X) there are.

There are many high school options, but most of the smarter kids enroll to 'general' high schools (gymansiums) for the next 4 years (and then college), and even those have reputations for some being better, and others worse, even though they technically teach by the same teaching programme (same courses, same subjects,...). Why are some better? Because smarter kids apply, and you get a high school where ALL of the students are from the "top 20%" of elementary schoolers. That means that teachers don't have to waste their time on "illiterate" kids, there are less behaviour problems, if everyone in class understands the lecture relatively quickly, the teacher can add some extra "college level" lectures, etc. This, for better students, is a much better learning experience, both from school lecture experience, to general interactions with classmates (where you're not the only smart one in the class and have noone to help).

Add to this that smarter kids usually have smarter, more involved parents, and that means that also the teachers have to bring out their A-game, and not just bare minimum to get the kids a passing grade, because the grades and (another) standardized testing is then used to apply to colleges.

So yeah... some separation is not a bad thing.

TLDR: "staying away from averages" might sound stupid, but "removing the 'worst' students lets others perform better" is IMHO true.