The way I see it, you’re probably freest from the ages one to four
Around the age of five you’re shipped away for your body to be stored
They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores
And they predictin’ prison population by who scoring the lowest
Comment on Anon does well in school
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In my experience, if you’re the smartest kid in your class, you’re not smart. You’re just in the wrong class.
Also, if you’re the dumbest kid.
But I’ll spot one further. Standardized testing exists to place students on a curve. You don’t want everyone failing. You don’t want everyone acing the exam. You want to be able to point and say “These are the good schools/students and the bad ones”.
Coincidentally, the wealth, the politics, and the ethnic composition of the districts tend to speak far louder to exam performance. Schools that are targeted for privatization can suddenly find their students doing very poorly, year to year. Schools that have a partisan administrator with friends at Pearson can find themselves doing amazingly well, practically overnight.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Eh, my kids are the smartest in their class, and the only real option is to put them a year ahead, where they’re likely the “dumbest”. They’re still in elementary school, so I would really rather they spend their time enjoying their childhood instead of trying to catch up in school.
I was the same way as a kid. I did all the extras, was in “honors” classes, did “AP” (college credit) classes, and even went to the local community college while in high school and got a 2-year degree simultaneously with my high school diploma. I’m not some savant or anything, and if I skipped a grade at the wrong moment, I might have merely graduated a year early and not gotten that 2-year degree. My friend group also would’ve been impacted since I’d be a year different from everyone my age.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 day ago
And with homework, grades are an approximation of how much your parents can help you.
thedarkfly@feddit.nl 1 day ago
If there really were a single dimension axis of smartness, won’t there be a “smartest” and a “least smart” in every classroom? And if they’re in the wrong class and they leave, won’t there be two new pupils at the extremes? This argument of “you’re in the wrong class” always sounded elitist to me.
The important is that the teacher tailors the teaching to the students. Spend more time on the ones who struggle, give extra stuff to do to the quickest (e.g. help teaching to other pupils).
I’ve also always been against separating children by “intelligence”. Having a “smart” class and a “dumb” class is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That being said, there are children who have special needs and who require a teacher who has the proper formation to help them.
Comrade_Spood@quokk.au 1 day ago
As someone currently in college for a degree in secondary education, yes this is exactly it. Putting the underachieving students in the “dumb class” reinforces low self esteem and crushes motivation, causing them to continue to underperform or even perform worse than before.
Individualizing lessons in the classroom is what helps students. However I have found teachers are typically pretty bad at doing this, and in my opinion, its because they are afraid of giving up control.
thedarkfly@feddit.nl 1 day ago
In my country (and in many othets I suspect), the number of pupils per teacher keeps increasing. It’s really hard to individualize teaching when you have 30 pupils :(
Comrade_Spood@quokk.au 1 day ago
That is fair. I also think it depends on the subject. Math I think would be particularly hard to individualize lessons. However english and social studies I think would be far easier. Thankfully I am studying to be a history teacher. Will update in 2 years how my experimentation with decentralizing the classroom goes lol
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Moment to moment, presumably. But your cognitive ability waxes and wanes for a host of reasons - mood, exhaustion, calorie consumption, experience on the problem set. If you test ten kids over ten iterations, and each testing gives you a different permutation of rank, which kid is the smartest? If you have four kinds of intelligence exams and four different kids all place 1st in one of them, who is the smartest? Is the kid who aces Numeric Problems but flunks Word Problems smarter or dumber than the kid who middles in both?
Sure, which is why you want to cluster kids by current ability rather than some holistic but ambiguous attribute like IQ score or head shape. But you don’t really see this sorting by ability until upper-end high school elective classes (sorting the Bio 1 kids from the Bio 2 kids or the Honors musicians from the fuck-offs).
Sure sure. But we’re defunding all that under the current administration, so its a moot point.
thedarkfly@feddit.nl 1 day ago
Just a quick comment that I am not american ;)