Comment by h2zizzle
2 days ago
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.
> should be a natural way to work on your own pace at your own level
Analogous to the old one-room-school model where one teacher taught all grade levels and students generally worked from textbooks. There were issues with it stemming from specialization (e.g., teaching 1st grade is different than teaching 12th). They were also largely in rural areas and generally had poor facilities.
The main barrier in the US to track separation is manpower. Public School teachers are underpaid and treated like shit, and schools don't get enough funding which further reduces the number of teachers.
Teachers just don't have the time in the US to do multiple tracks in the classroom.
You can have a multi-track high-school system, like in much of Europe. Some are geared towards the academically inclined who expect to go to university, others hold that option open but focus on also learning a trade or specialty (this can be stuff like welding, CNC, or hospitality industry / restaurants etc.), while others focus more heavily on the trade side, with apprenticeship at companies intertwined with the education throughout high school, and switching to a university after that is not possible by default, but not ruled out if you put in some extra time).
Or you can also have stronger or weaker schools where the admission test scores required are different, so stronger students go to different schools. Not sure if that's a thing in the US.
This was the way all schools worked in my county in florida, at least from middle school on. Normal/Honors/AP split is what pretty much every highschool did at the time. You could even go to a local community college instead of HS classes.
> 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).
The idea of tracking out kids who excel due to high personal motivation when they have less natural aptitude is flat out dystopian. I'm drawing mental images of Gattaca. Training isn't "gaming". It's a natural part of how you improve performance, and it's a desirable ethical attribute.
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>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.
Yeah, all that stuff in the end boils down to: rich parents will find a way to have it their way. Whether private schools or tutors or whatever.
Every ideological system has certain hangups, depending on what they can afford. In the Soviet communist system, obviously a big thing was to promote kids of worker and peasant background etc., but they kept the standards high and math etc was rigorous and actual educational progress taken seriously. But there was Cold War pressure to have a strong science/math base.
Currently, the US is coasting, relying on talent from outside the country for the cream of the top, so they can afford nonsense beliefs, given also that most middle-class jobs are not all that related to knowledge, and are more status-jockeying email jobs.
It will likely turn around once there are real stakes.
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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?