Comment by StableAlkyne
2 days ago
> no one left behind == no one allowed ahead
It's like this in the US (or rather, it was 20 years ago. But I suspect it is now worse anyway)
Teachers in my county were heavily discouraged from failing anyone, because pass rate became a target instead of a metric. They couldn't even give a 0 for an assignment that was never turned in without multiple meetings with the student and approval from an administrator.
The net result was classes always proceeded at the rate of the slowest kid in class. Good for the slow kids (that cared), universally bad for everyone else who didn't want to be bored out of their minds. The divide was super apparent between the normal level and honors level classes.
I don't know what the right answer is, but there was an insane amount of effort spent on kids who didn't care, whose parents didn't care, who hadn't cared since elementary school, and always ended up dropping out as soon as they hit 18. No differentiation between them, and the ones who really did give a shit and were just a little slow (usually because of a bad home life).
It's hard to avoid leaving someone behind when they've already left themselves behind.
I'm gonna add another perspective. I was placed, and excelled, in moderately advanced math courses from 3rd grade on. Mostly 'A's through 11th grade precalc (taken because of the one major hiccup, placing only in the second most rigorous track when I entered high school). I ended that year feeling pretty good, with a superior SAT score bagged, high hopes for National Merit, etc.
Then came senior year. AP Calculus was a sh/*tshow, because of a confluence of factors: dealing with parents divorcing, social isolation, dysphoria. I hit a wall, and got my only quarterly D, ever.
The, "if you get left behind, that's on you, because we're not holding up the bright kids," mentality was catastrophic for me - and also completely inapplicable, because I WAS one of the bright kids! I needed help, and focus. I retook the course in college and got the highest grade in the class, so I confirmed that I was not the problem; unfortunately, though, the damage had been done. I'd chosen a major in the humnities, and had only taken that course as an elective, to prove to myself that I could manage the subject. You would never know that I'd been on-track for a technical career.
So, I don't buy that America/Sweden/et al. are full of hopeless demi-students. I was deemed one, and it wasn't true, but the simple perception was devastating. I think there is a larger, overarching deficit of support for students, probably some combination of home life, class structure, and pedagogical incentives. If "no child left behind" is anathema in these circles, the "full speed ahead" approach is not much better.
> The, "if you get left behind, that's on you, because we're not holding up the bright kids," mentality was catastrophic for me
Your one bad year doesn't invalidate the fact that it was good to allow you to run ahead of slower students the other 9 years. It wasn't catastrophic for you, as you say yourself you just retook the class in college and got a high grade. I honestly don't see how "I had a bad time at home for a year and did bad in school" could have worked out any better for you.
> So, I don't buy that America/Sweden/et al. are full of hopeless demi-students. I was deemed one.
A bad grade one year deemed you a hopeless demi student? By what metric? I had a similar school career (AP/IB with As and Bs) and got a D that should have been an F my senior year and it was fine.
They seem to lament ending up in humanities instead of a technical path. The fact that the humanities is just categorized as for less smart people and technical people are all smart is a problem in itself.
Many bright people end up in humanities and end up crushed by the societal pressure that expects them to be inferior, a huge waste.
> if you get left behind, that's on you, because we're not holding up the bright kids
Please note the differentiation I made between kids who were slow and didn't give a shit, and kids who were slow but at least tried
But you aren't supposed to choose either or. Instead, you split the students in different groups, different speeds.
So it works ok for everyone. You when you're in a good shape, and also works ok for you when you're in a bad life situation.
I hope everything went mostly okay in the end for you
This is probably the right solution. It seems in reality nobody does this since it is expensive (more teachers, real attention to students, etc). Also if there is an explicit split there will be groups of people who "game" it (spend disproportional amount of time to "train" their kids vs actual natural talent - not sure if this is good or bad).
So, it feels to me ideally within the same classroom there should be a natural way to work on your own pace at your own level. Is it possible? Have no idea - seems not, again primarily because it requires a completely different skillset and attention from teachers.
5 replies →
>But you aren't supposed to choose either or. Instead, you split the students in different groups, different speeds.
This answer is from the US perspective. I've lived in several states now, and I know many of teachers because my partner is adjacent to education in her work and family. This is what I've learned from all this so far:
This is an incredibly easy and logical thing to both suggest, conceptualize, and even accept. In fact, I can see why alot of people don't think its a bad idea. The problem comes down the following in no specific order:
- Education is highly politicized. Not only that, its one of the most politicized topics of our time. This continues to have negative affects on everything to proper funding of programs[0]
- This means some N number of parents will inevitably take issue with these buckets for one reason or another. That can become a real drain of resources dealing with this.
- There's going to be reasonable questions of objectivity that go into this, including historical circumstances. This type of policy is unfortunately easy enough to co-op certain kids into certain groups based on factors like race, class, sex etc. rather than educational achievement alone, of which we also do not have a good enough way to measure objectively currently because of the aforementioned politicized nature of education.
- How to correct for the social bucketing of tiered education? High achieving kids will be lauded as lower achieving ones fall to the background. How do you mitigate that so you don't end up in a situation where one group is reaping all the benefits and thereby getting all the social recognition? Simply because I couldn't do college level trig when I was in 8th grade doesn't mean I deserved limited opportunities[2], but this tiered system ends up being ripe for this kind of exploitation. In districts that already have these types of programs you can already see parents clamoring to get their kids into advanced classes because it correlates to better outcomes.
[0]: I know that the US spends in aggregate per student, approximately 15,000 USD per year, but that money isn't simply handed to school districts. If you factor specialized grants, bonds, commitments etc. the actual classroom spending is not working with this budget directly, its much smaller than this. This is because at least some your local districts funding is likely coming from grants, which are more often than not only paid out for a specific purpose and must be used in pursuant of that purpose. Sometimes that purpose is wide and allows schools to be flexible, but more often it is exceedingly rigid as its tied to some outcome, such as passing rates, test scores etc. There's lots of this type of money sloshing around the school system, which creates perverse incentives.
[1]: Funding without strict restrictions on how its used
[2]: Look, I barely graduated high school, largely due to alot of personal stuff in my life back then. I was a model college student though, but due to a different set of life circumstances never quite managed to graduate, but I have excelled in this industry because I'm very good at what I do and don't shy away from hard problems. Yet despite this, some doors were closed to me longer than others because I didn't have the right on paper pedigree. This only gets worse when you start bucketing kids like this, because people inevitably see these things as some sort of signal about someones ability to perform regardless of relevancy.
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> I was placed, and excelled, in moderately advanced math courses from 3rd grade on.
In the school district I live in, they eliminated all gifted programs and honors courses (they do still allow you to accelerate in math in HS for now, but I'm sure that will be gone soon too), so a decent chance you might not have taken Calculus in HS. Problem solved I guess?
I'm not sure when this changed, but in school for me in the 1970s and early '80s the teachers (at least the older ones) were all pretty much of the attitude that "what you get out of school depends on what you put into it" i.e. learning is mostly up to the student. Grades of "F" or zero for uncompleted or totally unsatisfactory work were not uncommon and students did get held back. Dropout age was 16 and those who really didn't care mostly did that. So at least the last two years of high school were mostly all kids who at least wanted to finish.
> It's like this in the US (or rather, it was 20 years ago. But I suspect it is now worse anyway)
I'm sure it's regional, but my oldest kid started school in SoCal 13 years ago, and it is definitely worse. Nearly every bad decision gets doubled-down on and the good ones seem to lack follow-through. I spent almost a decade trying to improve things and have given up; my youngest goes to private school now.
We are experimenting with our daughter this year: Our school system offers advanced math via their remote learning system. This means that during math class, my kid will take online 6th grade math instead of the regular in-person 5th grade math.
We will have to see how it goes, but this could be the advanced math solution we need.
Schools my kids attended encourage getting ahead by offering advanced math classes, some being online