I think it happens more frequently at lower grade levels, especially Kindergarten through 3rd. Usually, by the time they reach higher grade levels, they will have been placed at a class with which they can keep pace.
> Smart people generally learn easier and an hour of teaching them creates a bigger difference than an hour of teaching someone less smart.
While in principle I agree with this, I think there are many other factors that figure into a student's success in school that his "intelligence." Students may have different aptitudes for different subjects, care more about certain things than others, or have access to better resources.
> So, if we allocate the same resources to the smart and the less smart, we're creating inequality.
This assumes that both the smart and less smart students both pay attention diligently for the one hour session.In reality, when confronted with a topic that is trivial for them, a smart student will often learn the concept in twenty minutes and spend the next forty minutes sitting there bored. In contrast, the less smart student, assuming they care, will have the full hour to learn the material and ask any questions they have. In the end, they will both have learned the same amount. For this reason, education can be said to be equalizing.
> Is a smart person slighted by getting less attention in school? I would argue no.
I would argue that there's no moral distinction between paying more attention to a less smart person or slighting a smarter person. Are you punishing them for being born smart? Restraining the potential of smart kids in order to make society "more equal" seems quite unfair to me.
> In this case, "advantaged people" doesn't mean economically advantaged, but intellectually advantaged
Except that there's a remarkably strong correlation between the two.
Do note the difference between "giving someone less free stuff" and "punishing someone". Schools do not prevent students from seeking other educators.
Any mass-production or limited-resource system will be relatively more beneficial to someone than someone else, and there are many incompatible but defensible ways to measure benefit.
Yes, I agree, there is an important distinction between those two things. However, schools still aren't providing each student an opportunity to reach what their potential allows. From my personal experience as a student, I learn new things in many of the classes that I take, yet the information is taught at such a slow pace that it become mind numbingly boring. By forcing smart students to be in classes with their less intelligent peers, schools are imposing a ceiling on what level these students can reach. Even after being a year ahead in nearly all of my subjects, I still feel like I could be so much further than where I am today if I had had better, faster-moving instruction in elementary and middle school.
>Schools do not prevent students from seeking other educators.
Except to the extent that locking the student in a jail for 6.5 hours every weekday would be considered preventing the student from seeking other educators.
Schools do not prevent students from seeking other educators.
Being a farmer now, I feel I missed out on a lot of education because of school. Planting and harvest season in my part of the world is May and September/October. Having grown up on a farm, there were lots of opportunities to learn, and I took in what I could, but many years of learning were wasted because of the requirement I be in the classroom during these key times of year.
On the other hand, I spent my summers and weekends learning about technology, how to program, etc. It didn't come with the same timeframe limitations so I was able come away with a much greater understanding. With that, you are right that you can always seek education, but sometimes school gets in the way. That is a problem.
This is absolutely true. As a current sophomore in high school, I can say that this is how it has been for my entire educational career. It was more of a problem in elementary and middle school, where I bored to tears by how slow the classes were moving. It has gotten somewhat better since I've entered high school, where I have been able to test out of classes so that I'm now a year ahead in mostly everything. However, even in my honors and AP classes, the struggling students get the majority of the attention, and I have to make a point to ask thoughtful questions to expand my learning that the teacher may not have covered.
What's really sad about this is that what it has done to the motivation of some of my friends. Being in classes with lower performing students also means that you are surrounded by their attitudes, which are usually not too favorable towards learning, and by extension, school. This creates a sort of stigma around learning that its something that you "have to" do and it's very uncool to do on your own.
I have channeled my frustrations about school towards learning programming and other topics outside of school, but it's sad to see many of my friends, equally as capable as me, become totally turned off from learning by being in clases with people who don't care. They barely resemble the curious and inquisitive children they used to be.
What I like about this is that by writing it the wrong way round you have collected plenty of evidence that your intended meaning is indeed well known!
As a high schooler, it has become a mandatory part of the social experience. I can count on one hand the people in my grade without a Facebook, and many real life conversations will start with "so did you see X on Facebook last night?" Although its for the most part a large waste of time and I don't really want one, I use it because I would like to have a social life. Its sad, however, that many of my friends fail to see how superficial it is.
I wouldn't say that it's seen as a replacement, but I definitely think it's become and integral part of the social life. For example, a lot of the time if someone is hanging out with another person, they will make a status announcing it. There's really no real reason for this, other than to boost social currency by saying "I was with Person X." I don't think its really replacing hanging out and doing stuff with people, but its making it so much more real-time, since all of your friends know what you're doing literally as you're doing it.
However, one thing that Facebook is good for is coordinating groups. I'm in a class council group as well as groups for a few AP classes. Since everyone is always on Facebook, it makes setting up and coordinating things while getting feedback super easy. For example, a couple days ago, someone posted after school in the AP Stats group about getting together for a study session. A few hours later, around seven of us got together at Barnes and Nobles.
"All children—clever or less so—were to be taught in the same classrooms, with lots of special teacher help available to make sure no child really would be left behind."
I imagine this would be very frustrating for a child who is considered "clever". By lumping everyone together in the same classroom, the kids who are ahead of the others could quickly grow bored and lose interest. I live in America, and I know that I was bored as hell until 6th grade, where classes started to be filtered based on abilities. While this article focuses on standardized test scores for all students, I would be interested to see data on "gifted" education in Finland using this one-size fits all approach.
As a 15 year old programmer myself, I would much rather have some constructive criticism than another "oh, you're so smart for your age" comment. I think this type of feedback would be infinitely more valuable for him.
I think he means that he feels like any person that is "reasonably intelligent" person should be able to do it, and because he can't, he feels incompetent. He's not talking about the accomplishments in particular.
EMAIL deserves to be TIER 1 in the regards that if one breaks this layer of security, they are often able to gain access to most anything, including financial institutions.
I agree. I toyed with putting it in Tier 2, but ended up just leaving it in 3 (since it logically makes sense there) and using the security trick I use for Tier 2 to make it safer.
