[HN Gopher] The war on gifted education
___________________________________________________________________
The war on gifted education
Author : paulpauper
Score : 148 points
Date : 2022-03-03 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| rr808 wrote:
| My daughter goes to accelerated high school. Its great for her
| and her friends.
|
| The main problem for society is that 50 years ago you didn't need
| to have great grades to get into great courses, or colleges. Now
| you have to be in the top 5-10% whatever. There are lots of
| people who are in the regular schools that could be
| doctors/engineers/lawyers but wont get in because its an arms
| race. If you have to be in the right elementary/middle/high
| school to be a doctor its too hard for regular people.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They don't have to go to "great" colleges that highly restrict
| admissions. You can be a lawyer, engineer, pre-med or nursing
| at state schools which are much easier to get into. Med school
| itself has some issues around things like residency programs,
| which are more a healthcare system and policy issue than a
| prerequisite education issue.
|
| Edit: why downvote?
| nemothekid wrote:
| Both Law and Medicine are famously exclusive to "great"
| colleges. Like you mentioned, it's already tough as it is it
| to complete residency even if you attended a good school, but
| Law has revolved around the T14 for a while now.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It depends on what you want to do with the law degree. If
| you want to be in some highly coveted position, then you
| need a big name. Otherwise, there are plenty of state
| schools.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| We have too _few_ great colleges around for the potential
| population. Should really be building more colleges and
| expanding the existing ones. MOOC 's and open educational
| content are an inefficient band-aid, in-person instruction
| should always be preferred.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Aren't these schools seen as good _because_ they are
| exclusive?
| recursive wrote:
| The colleges we have are too expensive. They tend to bundle
| up sports/research/culture/medicine/whatever/education.
| Students have to pay tuition to support all that. If you're
| strapped for cash, there's not really a way to opt out of all
| the bonus content and just get the education.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Artificial constraint of supply by elite colleges.
|
| With Endowments well into the tens of $Billions there is no
| reason schools like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Etc.
| can't have freshman classes of 10,000 instead of 2,000.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| We moved a lot when I was a kid in the 70s. Most places seemed to
| have a 3-tiered system then: TAG (talented and gifted), the
| middle track, and the remedial track. In one state (CA) I'd be in
| the talented-and-gifted classes for pretty much every subject.
| Then we moved to TX and I was in the middle track for most
| subjects and even in a remedial track for some. We moved between
| the two states a couple of times as my dad would be transferred.
| I preferred CA because of the prestige, but then get to TX and
| find myself behind in certain subjects - it was kind of
| confusing.
| jwkane wrote:
| Perhaps not a popular opinion, but the overwhelming majority of
| "gifted" kids seem to be near the middle of the bell curve with
| parents that are convinced little George is the next Einstein.
|
| It is kind of fascinating since it does seem plausible that
| treating a child as gifted with high expectations and then
| providing focused, advanced instruction may be a self-fulfilling
| sort of situation.
| rr808 wrote:
| I used to think "gifted" implies there is some natural high
| intelligence, where in reality its the children of well
| educated and/or motivated parents. Honestly now I think both
| benefits from segregated education so I dont really care about
| the distinction.
| chemeng wrote:
| I have thought that selection for "giftedness" in young
| children is multi-factored with a combination of "exposure"
| and innate aptitude and curiosity of the child at the very
| least.
|
| If you take "exposure" to mean the child has been introduced
| to a multitude of concepts and experiences both at their age-
| appropriate levels and grades above, the conjectured
| distribution starts to make sense. Wealthy children or those
| of highly educated parents tend to have incredibly high
| "exposure" increasing their representation in gifted
| programs. Those not from such a background will necessarily
| need to be highly curious and/or have high innate aptitude.
|
| For the lower grades, gifted kids regardless of background
| will be in the upper decile of scores. As they grow older and
| "exposure" differences across the entire population minimize,
| those who were gifted only due to "exposure" will fall to the
| middle of the curve. Those with high curiosity/aptitude will
| continue to be in the upper decile, with those who had early
| and continued high exposure (usually a result of wealth or
| parent motivation) in the top percentile.
|
| To your point, if you believe the goal should be to meet
| children where they are and advance them, this model isn't
| horrible. What it does point out is that there may be a fair
| amount of top percentile talent that is unrealized due to
| lack of "exposure" and resources.
| bjornlouser wrote:
| or put another way, you can't fix the low expectations of
| families in the bottom half with policy
| Kharvok wrote:
| Establish cohorts in schools by academic ability. People want to
| be grouped with peers and they are more successful when doing so.
|
| We shouldn't have children at vastly different ability levels in
| the same classroom. Struggling kids are made no better, and the
| exceptional are dragged down.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Struggling kids are made no better, and the exceptional are
| dragged down.
|
| I disagree
|
| I've been terrible student (think of passing subjects, but
| pretty close to the "edge") until last two years of HS
|
| where I actually started putting effort into math/english and
| then I looked at the best students after working with them for
| a while and I was like "why can't you do better, just like
| them? are you worse or something?"
|
| that was huge motivation, just awarness that you could do
| better itself
|
| it works in other things in life too - internet, programming,
| hackernews.
|
| If I were in a group with people similar to me, then I don't
| know how it'd end, honestly and it pretty scares me to think
| where I'd be now in life
| randomsilence wrote:
| With IQ tests identifying you as intelligent, you could be in
| a small class with other terrible students and a teacher who
| knows how to reach and motivate you. After some weeks you
| could rejoin the best students and learn at a much higher
| pace.
|
| Where would you be if you had the best education?
| tester756 wrote:
| >With IQ tests identifying you as intelligent, you could be
| in a small class with other terrible students and a teacher
| who knows how to reach and motivate you.
|
| Actually I've been in such a class in elementary school for
| students that performed worse. For me, they focused mostly
| on improving writing and probably something else that I
| don't remember
|
| I'm unable to say now how much it actually gave me, I still
| cannot write (handwriting), but that's mostly because I
| never care about that, I felt like that was useless skill
| and nowadays I rarely use pen.
|
| >Where would you be if you had the best education?
|
| That's hard to answer, I don't know, especially that "best
| education" varies by person, but assuming the one that fits
| my preferences, then probably... I don't know.
|
| The only thing that I still haven't done in my career that
| I find really interesting is going for a year or two to US
| and working in CPU Fab or some compilers job, but I'm not
| sure whether with better edu I'd have it already done,
| especially that those require a lot of "non-school" effort
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The reason why this is a really bad idea from an efficiency
| _and_ an equity POV is that it leads to royally screwed-up
| incentives for _teachers_. No self-respecting teacher really
| wants to teach a class of "struggling, low-achieving"
| students. So the _lowest_ quality teachers end up teaching
| those classes, and the struggling students are basically
| trapped with no prospect for real improvement. It 's awful.
|
| It would be very different if teachers _could_ meaningfully
| specialize towards providing effective instruction for these
| lower-achieving students. But we barely manage to do this for
| actual "special" ed, and then only at huge cost.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| What seems to happen from what I've seen is not quite that.
| Junior teachers work in low-performing schools and classes,
| while experienced teachers are are the better ones. But, and
| this is a big bug, unlike many professions, seniority doesn't
| reliably correspond to performance and may in fact be
| negatively correlated! Young teachers are often more
| enthusiastic and capable of engaging easily-distracted kids
| while experienced teachers have a clearer understanding of
| the syllabus and content so it actually seems like a good fit
| for everyone.
| throwaway73838 wrote:
| An alternative perspective is that the lower performing
| teachers will relate more to the lower performing students,
| and the higher performing teachers will relate more to the
| higher performing students.
|
| And, from a pure efficiency standpoint, we should absolutely
| seek to give every possible opportunity to those gifted
| students. For the lower performing kids, focus on teaching
| values and ethics, along with realistic and practical goals,
| to make up for any issues in their upbringing. I think
| attitude is as important as aptitude for the middle and lower
| end spectrum kids.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| > No self-respecting teacher really wants to teach a class of
| "struggling, low-achieving" students.
|
| That doesn't ring true to me. Why wouldn't a good teacher
| take pride in taking kids below the curve up to Average? I
| would wager that this probably has a better net impact than
| pushing the elite kids that much further.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Partly it's because their own educational background
| doesn't let them develop this kind of pride in their work.
| Modern education schools' doctrine is that kids don't even
| need to be taught anything because they can simply "learn
| everything by themselves" with just a few hints about what
| sort of 'inquiry' they should undertake. This can seem to
| "work" well enough for high-achieving students who can
| always rely on someone (either themselves or family) to
| pick up the slack; it's invariably a dismal failure for
| everyone else.
| diordiderot wrote:
| 8 classes ranked. 4 teachers
|
| A: 1&8
|
| B: 2&7
|
| C: 3&6
|
| D: 4&5
|
| The ole Catan split
| Kharvok wrote:
| I agree with your concerns but we already do this somewhat
| informally with public education in much of the country with
| college prep, advanced, honors, and AP courses.
|
| I'm just advocating we act with more purpose and honest
| intention about what we're already doing.
| thelettere wrote:
| "The problem of educating the educators is a problem which the
| democrat forgets in his enthusiasm for educating the pupils."
|
| When's the last time a single person on hn dared to look at the
| curriculum of the average degree in education? It consists of
| courses that any person with the slightest degree of intelligence
| would run from screaming. I'm interested in education but you
| couldn't pay me to attend one - it's 99% fluff and nonsense.
|
| Because the bigger problem is not the existence or nonexistence
| of exclusive institutions but of the kind of people that would
| render such an education educational. Because neither the gifted
| nor the wise - particularly if male - go into education today.
|
| Perhaps a reason for the poor track record of modern education in
| producing any geniuses on par with those of the past and the
| long-standing dry spell of great works. And the larger trend of
| exclusive education producing little but "really excellent
| sheep".
|
| "Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are
| smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and
| lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of
| purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the
| same direction, great at what they're doing but with no idea why
| they're doing it."
|
| In which case perhaps it's best it's done away with. It appears
| past fixing, the rot infiltrating to the core of the bureaucratic
| machinery.
|
| Edit: fixed/clarified/extended ending.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Well the best and brightest going into finance are helping
| "discover value"
| motohagiography wrote:
| Even though I am ambivalent about gifted programs, when you
| consider the difference between an average person and someone who
| for various reasons is one sigma below average intelligence, and
| then consider the difference between someone who is two or three
| sigmas above average and the majority of people near the average,
| it makes sense to separate them somehow.
|
| As a thought experiment, if your IQ were measured at above two
| standard deviations from the average (~100), it may be worth
| asking whether meeting someone with an IQ below 110-115 on Tinder
| could raise ethical questions because of the relative
| intelligence differences.
|
| It's provocative, but when groups of outlier intelligence people
| can now find each other and co-ordinate online, you're into
| mutant powers risk, where someone could, for example, create a
| new world currency they alone controlled the value of out from
| under central banks, build a total surveillance panopticon in
| their dorm room, forge a conspiracy that infiltrated the cabinets
| of world governments and subordinate them to a single agenda,
| encircle the planet with a million cryptographically sovereign
| network nodes in space, enslave millions using a credit system,
| etc. We should have gifted programs to integrate these people
| socially and elevate the people around them, because otherwise
| you're just going to get super villains.
| bell-cot wrote:
| A Modest Proposal: Replace some of the "Gifted" schools with
| "Mature" schools. The former implies higher-than-average per-
| pupil spending. For the Mature schools, spend substantially
| _below_ average per pupil. Only admit students who rate well in
| some combination of maturity, self-motivation, good behavior,
| etc. _Increase_ the student /teacher ratio, and expect the
| brighter ones (in a given subject) to spend part of their time
| tutoring the less-bright. Have student government play a non-
| token role in running the school.
|
| In other words, set up a new sort of school - which tags its
| graduates as mature, responsible adults. Not top-percentile test-
| takers, nor elite pampered princelings. Then see which type of
| graduate is preferred by colleges and employers.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| > For the Mature schools, spend substantially below average per
| pupil
|
| This is already the case for gifted schools, though the critics
| may not say it out loud. Stuyvesant High School has a lower
| budget per student than the average NYC high school, and Lowell
| High School has a lower budget per student than the average San
| Francisco high school.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| At the age where my, and my friends' kids are in schools, I've
| discovered that a big advantage that private schools have is
| that they educate the kids "at will."
|
| Many private schools make it very clear to the parents, as well
| as the kids, that there are plenty of other students that want
| the slot the child has, which gives them leverage to educate
| how they want.
|
| Public schools, at least in California, are beholden to the
| loudest, worst-behaved parents. There was a serious
| disciplinary issue recently at a local school that resulted in
| a multi-day suspension, which pretty much everybody involved
| agreed probably wasn't going to change the behavior. After
| digging a bit and having some frank conversations, the
| administration wouldn't pursue any other form of consequence
| because of fear of being sued by the parents. If expulsion were
| a legitimate option it would have given the administration
| bargaining power, but for anything which defending an expulsion
| is not a slam-dunk win in court, the only 3 "safe" options for
| teachers and administrators are:
|
| 1. Loss of playtime during recess/lunch
|
| 2. Detention
|
| 3. Suspension
|
| I don't know how big of an actual problem torts are, but I see
| a lot of bad policies (in education and elsewhere) enacted due
| to fear of torts.
| brimble wrote:
| Public schools are also bound to serve special needs kids,
| which is _incredibly_ expensive. Private schools don 't have
| the same responsibility (even if they're under any similar
| legal obligation, they can and surely do try to minimize that
| through various means)
|
| That's part (part!) of why per-pupil spending in public
| schools seems so high for the outcomes they produce, and part
| of why private schools have an advantage.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Even when they separate the special education vs regular
| spending it's still expensive in my opinion.
|
| At least in my area there seems to be a huge preference for
| new or fancy infrastructure. Many of the buildings are only
| built to last 20 years or so. The new middle school around
| here has a 2 story by 100 foot glass front to it. The glass
| panes are massive. Who thought that was a good idea
| (hearing/cooling, cost, possibly safety)?
|
| I went to school in buildings that were 50+ years old and
| made out of cinder block. No artificial turf fields or
| fancy stuff.
|
| Edit: why downvote?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Right. Public schools are chartered to provide "Universal
| compulsory education" private schools only have to worry
| about the last word in that phrase. There's a patchwork of
| laws that try to ensure private schools provide some sort
| of equal-opportunity, but the success of that is very hit-
| or-miss.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If you think private schools actually punish the kids whose
| parents directly pay them, I have a bridge to sell you.
| MaulingMonkey wrote:
| Sufficiently misbehaving kids, not being properly handled,
| will drive away paying customers when their peers want to
| transfer out - or if they stop short of transfering out,
| merely shit talk the institution and it's failures, driving
| down it's reputation and turning away future business.
|
| If you think private schools won't act on those pressures -
| either by getting the kids the help they need, or by
| kicking them out - I have a tunnel to sell you.
| brimble wrote:
| There's paying, and then there's "paying... and a donor".
| They absolutely kick out the former if they feel like it,
| or, in lesser cases, simply fail to invite them back. The
| latter, I dunno, maybe not.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| This is quite true; I was also speaking to selective
| private schools. Around here the admissions ratio for
| many private schools is crazy low, indicating that they
| are turning away plenty of qualified students and that
| they can recoup the lost tuition by admitting another
| pupil at will.
|
| In that situation it starts to approach "is there
| something on campus with your last name on it" levels of
| donations if you want to avoid getting kicked out...
| msds wrote:
| Can confirm, went to a school like that but without a
| namesake building. They can either always admit someone
| else, or more often, just not bother because educating
| kids is an expensive loss leader for the endowment even
| with full tuition. It definitely seemed like there needed
| to have already been a family building or two before you
| got to campus if you expected much immunity because of
| that...
| brimble wrote:
| Yeah, the ones around here have wait lists, and they're
| not impressed by daddy and mommy Mr. and Mrs. VP and MD,
| paying list tuition price. There are a dozen more where
| they came from. If they think a kid might make a few
| other families think twice about enrolling next year, and
| some reasonable attempt to make things work out falls
| through, that kid's _gone_. Maybe not immediately
| (though, sometimes), but they won 't be back next Fall.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It depends. They have more discretion in most cases. The
| public schools are stuck with more stringent adherence to
| procedures, specifically about getting police involved.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Exactly. I've seen chronically tardy students be "not
| invited back" at the end of the school year at private
| schools, which is a de-facto expulsion.
| Gigachad wrote:
| From my experience, they would still punish sufficiently
| disruptive misbehavior. But they would let minor things
| slide like ignoring uniform policy or poor grades if you
| were a high donator. One incident I remember was someone
| bringing a camera in to the change rooms which resulted in
| the student being immediately expelled. That kind of stuff
| they still punish because its harmful enough to outweigh
| the benefits of the donations.
| Kharvok wrote:
| What would this select for? All you would be doing is
| establishing a poor proxy for general intelligence though you
| would likely select for general intelligence on the whole by
| grading "maturity".
| Kalium wrote:
| Also "good behavior" is a proxy for a healthy home life,
| which is to a great extent a measure of social and economic
| class.
| Kharvok wrote:
| and household economic prosperity is generally corollary to
| what?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Inherited wealth?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yes - but how many high-class (social or economic) parents
| would fight hard to get their kids into schools with
| bottom-percentile per-pupil funding?
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Did you mean this as an absurdist satire? If not, calling it a
| "Modest Proposal" is a misstep.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Are you really going to get maturity or just superficial signs
| of maturity from immature kids? I think kids that more boldly
| explore social interactions (ie. naughty) at a young age may
| end up more mature as adults. Someone who's polite and well-
| behaved may doing that because they're too emotionally immature
| to know how to do anything more risky and are just performing
| "professional behavior" which is a kind of lowest-common-
| denominator for getting along with others.
| Kalium wrote:
| I'm legitimately uncertain if this is a bad idea presented as
| satire or a sincere idea.
| no-s wrote:
| heheh..."A Modest Proposal". Kids, stay away from the free
| lunch, it's made of people...
|
| I think it might be in the genre of HaHaOnlySerious.
| trackstar wrote:
| Why would you feel it's a bad idea and or satire?
| Kalium wrote:
| "A Modest Proposal" is the name of famous satirical essay:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal It involved
| selling children for cannibalism.
|
| As Wikipedia notes:
|
| > In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now
| conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced
| satire.
|
| Opening with that title, complete with correct
| capitalization, reads like an allusion. It's enough to make
| me think exceptionally skeptically about a proposal to turn
| gifted students into what is sometimes euphemistically
| termed peer educators.
| [deleted]
| trackstar wrote:
| We used to have such a concept in my school system, it was
| called "tracking." Sadly, they did away with it midway through
| my sentence. We had AP / IB track courses, but also so many
| students that we had a second, more mature level in terms of
| both behavior and intellectual pursuit (at least for AP, I only
| took one IB course).
|
| This track was cancelled (10+ years ago) in the modern
| progressive fashion, being derided as some blend of
| discrimination. The end-result was students who were into
| school being put into the same pot of students in the rest of
| the courses (non-AP, AP - your choice). Unfortunately for the
| tracked students, we were hit with a one-two punch of the end
| of tracking and the administration's pursuit of glory and State
| recognition. Our guidance counselors aggressively recommended
| or, in some cases, forcibly placed students in AP courses for
| which they had neither the interest nor the proclivity.
|
| Personally, I was forced into a high-tier Spanish course my
| third (and final) year of high-school, despite having no
| aptitude and lower-end grades (80-85%) for the language despite
| three years of study. Resulted in my skipping all courses and
| writing my "Kiss My Ass" in another foreign language I pursued
| during my free time. I rode into the sunset with a grade of 30%
| or so, a job waiting for me in the city as an apprentice
| software engineer and a full-ride to university.
|
| Frankly, schools in the US just don't seem to exist to put out
| good, well educated thinkers but like many government
| institutions (and I say this as a former government worker) -
| to continue their own existence, find glory for those at the
| top, and if good things happen for the citizens this is a nice
| side-effect and typically at the expense of the soldiers in the
| trench rather than good, altruistic stewardship.
| VictorPath wrote:
| > meritocracy...children compete to get into the best nursery
| school
|
| If the round hole is the mythical meritocracy, the comical square
| peg is wealthy parents having their kids "compete" to get into a
| nursery school and declare the entrants got in by "merit". What a
| farce.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I see a lot of comments on the outcomes of gifted kids and others
| in their cohorts depending on whether or not the gifted kids are
| separated out. I'd like to add a dose of Realpolitik:
|
| Already a disproportionate number of gifted kids are from wealthy
| families, and if gifted education goes away, those kids aren't
| going to be in the "regular" public classes, they are going to
| private school. The clear losers in that situation seems to be
| the remaining gifted kids from less wealthy backgrounds.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| 'those kids aren't going to be in the "regular" public classes,
| they are going to private school'
|
| Most private schools aren't set up to cater to gifted kids. If
| you don't believe me, ask the folks running a private school
| how they deal with kids who are 2-3 grade levels ahead in math.
|
| Then ask them for concrete examplea of what they actually mean.
| And concrete examples of the outcomes this differentiated
| instruction has achieved for those kids.
|
| Private schools often have smaller class sizes, nicer physical
| environment, better equipment and higher expectations. But the
| curriculum is still aimed at the average kid in that school,
| with little consideration for the outliers.
|
| EDIT: I should have mentioned, that I interpret 'gifted' to
| mean something like top 3% by ability (corresponding to an IQ
| of about 130). Back when SFUSD used to identify kids at gifted
| and talented, they were talking about the top ~30%, which is
| totally different.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Private schools often have smaller class sizes, nicer
| physical environment, better equipment and higher
| expectations
|
| Which covers about 75% of what parents expect out of a gifted
| program.
| hibikir wrote:
| Nobody claims that most private schools are set up to cater
| to gifted kids: What you get is a whole lot of different
| schools, catering to different backgrounds and socioeconomic
| statuses, some of which will cater mostly to gifted kids.
|
| This is easy to see in metro areas with a balkanized public
| education system, like Saint Louis. Your typical child has
| access to one public school, which could be quite good, or
| horrible, depending on where it is: The better the school,
| the more expensive it is to get a house that can sends kids
| to it. If you don't want to move for your favorite school,
| you go into one of hundreds of private schools. The
| differences amongst them are so wide, locals ask others where
| they went to high school as a shortcut to get a lot of
| information about them. On the gifted end, you will find
| private schools where less than 15% of the class is stuck
| "only" at grade level in math, and that's probably because
| they are way ahead somewhere else. Those schools tend to be
| so interested in high performers that there's a great chance
| there's quite a bit of financial aid for those with blue
| collar parents.
|
| So yes, most private schools are definitely not better: Hell,
| I'd argue that in a city like this, most private schools are
| worse academically. But when there are enough private
| schools, self-assortment surrounds kids with others that are
| more like them, whether it's athletic focus, qualifying as
| gifted, following Christian Science, or making sure most
| girls are rich enough to own horses. Whether this is good or
| bad for the city is a different story, but I suspect the
| gifted kids come out ahead.
|
| And yes, all of this will only happen in large enough metros
| with enough children. A gifted child in a small town is
| probably served more or less equally badly by public and
| private schools.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "And yes, all of this will only happen in large enough
| metros with enough children."
|
| Yes. I should explain my perspective. I live in San
| Francisco, which has ~900k people, and maybe 80k school-age
| children.
|
| So perhaps 180 (80000/13*0.03) kids per grade are gifted.
| Enough to fill 7 to 10 classrooms.
|
| Even so, as far as I'm aware, San Francisco has _no_
| elementary schools focused on gifted kids. The nearest
| gifted-only elementary school is private, pricey, a 30+ min
| drive away, and has way more qualified applicants than
| places.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| One thing to consider is that the average at academic private
| schools is probably better to begin with. So all the kids
| might be 1-2 years ahead of the average student overall.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is exactly the theory that landed people like me in
| measurably the worst and most dangerous urban public schools in
| the USA
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Can you clarify what you mean?
| euroderf wrote:
| I skipped second grade and was still bored out of my skull, and
| became the class clown. Teachers got fed up and in sixth they put
| me in with the Sweathogs. The bullying went to 11 and it broke
| me. So yeah, I'd say it's OK for a kid to skip grades in
| particular subjects, but to skip a whole grade in toto puts a
| target on a kid. My 0,02EUR, YMMV.
| pacbard wrote:
| My impression of what makes the debate about gifted education and
| (to an extent) the new California math standards is the issue of
| the negative externalities in the decision to segregate high
| achieving students from the general population of students.
|
| The linked articles cites some evidence that moving high
| achieving/gifted students have a positive effect on their math
| and ELA achievement. I don't believe that anyone is contesting
| that having a classroom for gifted students has a positive effect
| on their learning.
|
| On the other hand, there is a growing concern of the negative
| externality of this decision on the other students in the larger
| school community. In other words, we know that having high
| performing peers have a positive effect on students learning
| (this is a positive externality of having a desk mate that is
| gifted). The theory goes that removing these gifted students from
| regular classrooms has a negative effect on everyone else that
| remains. Again, this is a process that makes intuitive sense.
|
| The tough sell in this argument is that, at the end of the day,
| this remains an externality for gifted students. Helping your
| desk mate does not directly impact you and, in all honesty, might
| even hurt your chances for a perfect SAT score or of admission at
| a top university because you took a lower division courses than
| your peers that were scooped away to a gifted classroom.
| Parents/families need to make the decision to give up on the
| positive returns of gifted education in favor of potential
| learning outcomes for other students or even more remote, long
| term outcomes of (maybe) less crime or increased tax base 20
| years after graduation. I am not sure if this is a viable demand
| to place on parents/families given how competitive society at
| large is.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Parents/families need to make the decision to give up on the
| positive returns of gifted education in favor of potential
| learning outcomes for other students
|
| You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
|
| We know a big part of education success is home environment.
| You can surround a kid with Einstein schoolmates but if he's
| getting beat daily and not getting fed, it doesn't matter. Add
| in unsafe living conditions and no access to books and you have
| a disaster nobody but the kids parents can solve.
|
| Why then should we harm the gifted? Why should we allow them
| worse outcomes because someone's parents are garbage? You
| aren't going to make a shitty parent into a capable one when
| they fundamentally don't care to begin with, no matter how many
| high performing students you drag down in the process.
|
| On an individual basis my duty is to do the best I can do for
| my kids, and that is all I can do.
| chasd00 wrote:
| >Parents/families need to make the decision to give up on the
| positive returns of gifted education in favor of potential
| learning outcomes for other students or even more remote, long
| term outcomes of (maybe) less crime or increased tax base 20
| years after graduation. I am not sure if this is a viable
| demand to place on parents/families given how competitive
| society at large is.
|
| It's a hard, if not impossible, sell to ask any parent to
| sacrifice their child on that altar no matter how competitive
| they are.
| brummm wrote:
| In Germany they have a three track school system which is great:
|
| - The first track is the high school degree that includes 13
| years of school and afterwards allows people to attend
| university. Generally the students with the best grades attend
| this track. Everybody learns English as a first foreign language
| starting grade 3 nowadays in all tracks, but starting grade 7
| students in this track have to pick either French or Latin as
| their second (and then in 9th grade have the choice to pick the
| other one as a third language). Further, math and science
| education are much faster and better compared to the other
| tracks. - The middle track starts learning French as a second
| foreign language in grade 9 and the whole track only includes 10
| years. It is geared towards people that will do an apprenticeship
| afterwards, for example in business or some other non-university
| subjects. - The third track is the lowest track for the worst
| performing students and does not include any second foreign
| languages. It's only 9 years of school and these are the people
| that often go into trades jobs like car mechanics, contractors,
| etc.
|
| Personally I think this is a great systems. Students that can
| learn more and faster get to learn with students similar to them
| and are not slowed down by students that can't keep up. Students
| in the other tracks afterwards can continue on to eventually get
| the higher degrees through various different ways if they want
| and are able to.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Smart kids mean smart adults, thus a threat to people in power.
| That is why education in the US is failing people. I think this
| has been going of for over 40 years with public school funding
| being cut over and over. Now people with some means are getting
| to see what inner city schools have been like for well over 40
| years.
|
| This only helps people who can afford sending their kids to
| exclusive private schools. Thus in a way, increasing racism
| because most of the rich are in a specific race.
| zaroth wrote:
| You're only half right. Public school funding has not been cut
| over and over. We spend more and more to achieve less and less,
| while the curriculum is destroyed, and teaching methods
| degrade.
|
| The goal has shifted to equality of outcomes, not equality in
| inputs / resources. The least capable are lavished with the
| greatest resources while the most capable are ignored and held
| back.
|
| I think this is based on the fundamentally flawed assumption
| that every human is equally capable given the same
| opportunities and resources, and somehow the school district is
| the place to compensate for perceived "equity" gaps.
|
| I'd expect the macro level effect is a dumbing down of society
| to the least common denominator. Or to put it another way, the
| bottom half of IQ adolescents may do marginally better in the
| next 30 years in terms of quantifiable contributions to society
| such as lifetime earnings or degrees obtained or patents filed,
| etc., whereas the top half of IQ adolescents will do
| dramatically worse.
| qwerpy wrote:
| I'll confirm part of this. I have some means, and am seeing
| signs of my school district reducing investment in
| accelerated/gifted programs in favor of more "inclusion". When
| it comes time to choose a school for my kids, I may opt to send
| them to private schools. Not everyone has this option. I'd much
| rather public schools provide this for everyone, but if they
| choose not to I will simply pay to get it just for my kids.
| [deleted]
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You're arguing that 60 year old politicians are intentionally
| keeping 10 year olds dumb so they don't replace them in the
| power structure 20+ years later?
| jwiz wrote:
| I don't think OP means "politicians" when they said "people
| in power".
|
| I think they meant people with (lots of) money.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I still don't buy it. I've interacted with people with
| (lots of) money. Their viewpoint on education is that they
| want highly-educated people who know how to do math and
| program computers and design rockets to mars that they can
| pay to work in their factories. They're not "afraid" of an
| educated populace, but they don't want to pay for one
| either.
| e-dt wrote:
| I went to the best high school in Australia, James Ruse. At that
| level gifted education is not really a question of 'gift' anymore
| but a question of outside tutoring. I was pretty much the only
| person in my grade that did not do tutoring. Some of my friends
| essentially had a second school that they would attend for the
| same length of time as actual school. This is also the reason
| that Ruse is 99% Asian and selective schools more generally
| overrepresent Asians; it seems like it's much more likely,
| culturally, for Asians to send their kids to tutoring than other
| groups. That's why can't I take seriously any of the hysteria
| about China taking over because of their 'superior work ethic'
| that you sometimes see; I've seen these kids, and a) they all did
| their assignments at the last minute and b) it wouldn't be that
| bad if they did take over because they are all perfectly normal
| people, not robots. Their parents just pay a man to lock them in
| a dungeon until they're able to integrate by parts at age 13.
| gkop wrote:
| Polemics gonna polemic. Yes, we should invest in gifted students.
| But, ignoring the larger context of how public education is
| funded in the United States and the consequential giant gaps
| between school districts, where many poor ones don't even
| competently provide fundamental baseline services to their
| students, is not going to elevate the discourse.
| giantg2 wrote:
| In most places, the majority of the funding is at the state and
| federal level. And that generally uses policies that give a
| larger share of funds to underserved schools.
| [deleted]
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon
| money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly. I have
| seen piles of new computers in a locked room with my own eyes,
| assisting a well-meaning engineer who placed the equipment.
| Meanwhile, I heard two middle-aged men talking on the bus alone
| at night, one was the driver. They both gave up as public
| school teachers due to lack of effort and interest by the
| students, year after year. The level of complacent sloth within
| administration is not to be underestimated, and outright graft
| does occur from time to time.
| Kharvok wrote:
| It's because there is almost nothing that can be done. IQ is
| largely genetic, with a few social levers that can be pulled.
| We shouldn't expect from people what they are not capable of
| doing.
|
| This applies to everyone.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| The rationalist gwern-types once again overestimating the
| predictive power of IQ. Also coming in with assumptions
| that people in poorer districts cannot have members of
| "remarkable enough" IQ that warrant distinction and
| treatment.
|
| Disappointing thread all around. Enough HN for today.
| Kharvok wrote:
| You aren't trying. We know IQ is predictive of success.
| No one is saying an individual from a poorer community
| can't be intelligent/academically successful.
|
| What we're saying is that we shouldn't hold someone born
| without the ability to be academically successful to
| unreasonable standards.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > What we're saying is that we shouldn't hold someone
| born without the ability to be academically successful to
| unreasonable standards.
|
| How does this relate to improving performance at schools
| in poor or de-stabilized districts? There are "high IQ"
| individuals there that merit attention.
|
| Yes we should address the amount of waste that these poor
| performing districts generate, but there is idea of a
| zero sum game in this thread between poorer and richer
| districts that encourages dismissal of solutions.
|
| Nobody has talked about intergenerational poverty yet in
| this thread. Just wild.
| imbnwa wrote:
| The usual idea is to suggest that ADOS are stupid by
| 'heritable IQ' (and how did that IQ get there?), and yet,
| somehow, the children of people who immigrate to America
| from the very same places the ancestors of ADOS came from
| are one of the top performing demographics, hmmmmm....
| slothtrop wrote:
| The success of given schools has nothing to do with IQ.
| veganhouseDJ wrote:
| This is basically an argument against education in general.
|
| No one learns anything useful. "Education" is just a set of
| credentials that prove your IQ test wasn't a fluke.
|
| To me, that is just an absurd view of reality.
| Kharvok wrote:
| I don't think people are advocating that education itself
| is just a signaling of inherent ability. This would be
| like saying it's pointless for an athlete to train
| because their maximum athletic ability is pretty much
| determined.
| gkop wrote:
| You know what else ain't gonna elevate the discourse? Use of
| phrases like "ultra-ghetto".
| dmpk2k wrote:
| And yet replacing it with something that sounds harmless
| will not change the underlying reality.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| Coming with the right attitude and perspective definitely
| helps in coming with solutions and not complaints.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| 1788 - Retarded
|
| 1846 - Simpleton
|
| ~1876 - Feeble-minded
|
| 1910 - Moron
|
| 1900s Special Ed
|
| 1900s Intellectually Disabled
|
| The label is useful. The condition is lamentable.
| Changing the label every few years doesn't make children
| not use the new one as an insult.
|
| Using a new or old label doesn't positively imply that
| you hate the group or person you're applying the label
| to.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| The context of this discussion was kids in "ultra ghetto
| urban districts"
|
| Not sure why we are talking about intellectually disabled
| kids. Someone else did this juxtaposition, and it is
| quite concerning that people tie poverty with lack of
| ability in this thread.
|
| > The label is useful.
|
| The labels have changed for a reason.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| after you have a gun pointed at you, or a crowd of young
| men chasing you alone, you can correct my grammer
| thelock85 wrote:
| > the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon
| money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly
|
| Any statistics or citations to back this up? In my
| experience, one cannot characterize thousands of schools this
| way because they have different governance and spending
| formulas across states, county lines, city limits, and even
| multiple districts within cities (which is especially true in
| urban cities).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yes, plenty of statistics.. the school administration is
| required to collect statistics.
| Lascaille wrote:
| >plenty of statistics
|
| I think you know very well that you're being asked to
| cite them, not merely say they exist.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > ultra-ghetto urban public schools
|
| It is always disappointing, to come from one of these
| districts and then having obtained social mobility through
| talent and luck, to see what my new peers (since I assume
| most of us here have gone to a top tier school and work
| somewhere in tech/finance) think of my neighborhood. No care
| for how these situations happened.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| my advanced placement programs were evaporated and replaced
| with "no child left behind".. there were more than forty
| languages spoken at home in this school district. You can
| read for yourself the other parents' comments about the
| results. Good on you for getting the benefits of this
| society and escaping the slums and their ways.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I can see that. The language choice is certainly
| distracting and inappropriate.
|
| I would hope that people discussing the issues in education
| would be some evidence that they do care. Maybe misguided
| in some instances, but at least trying to identify root
| causes and solutions. If we don't talk about the problems,
| then they won't get fixed.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| my language choice is specific and well-earned; the city
| I am describing is consistently top ten in murder rates
| in the general population, and has some of the lowest
| graduation rates in the USA.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Ghetto is generally derogatory. You could easily use
| other words to describe it.
| brimble wrote:
| The very worst schools in my city pay significantly better
| than the ones out in the "good" districts. They can do that
| because they get a ton of extra funding from the state and (I
| think) feds. I think the only schools that pay better than
| them are a _small minority_ of the private schools.
|
| It doesn't help much, because working conditions are so bad
| that anyone with options still doesn't want to work there.
| More funerals for kids. More 2nd-graders threatening
| teachers. More lockdowns over gun threats and such. More drug
| problems. More chronically-absent kids. More turnover among
| students. More horror-stories about home life. Most teachers
| who can afford to turn it down decide that their sanity &
| safety is worth more than an extra $8-12k/yr. Idealists who
| go in hoping to make a difference get their attitude adjusted
| _fast_. It 's brutal, and money--at least, money spent on
| education _per se_ --does not seem to be the solution.
|
| > The level of complacent sloth within administration is not
| to be underestimated, and outright graft does occur from time
| to time.
|
| Heh, yeah, and that's in _most_ districts, not just the poor
| ones :-(
| Gigachad wrote:
| For the absolute worst of schools, perhaps extending online
| learning might be best. That way disruptive students can
| just be muted. And then provide some physical location
| where students can do online classes when they don't have a
| suitable home environment.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Idealists who go in hoping to make a difference get their
| attitude adjusted fast."
|
| I have a friend who completed his teaching degree. He said
| the policies at the school where he student-taught were so
| bad that he decided not to apply to teaching jobs. Stuff
| like you weren't allowed to give less than a 50% as long as
| they put their name on the paper, and ineffective
| discipline options. Basically, the school was just passing
| kids through the grades without the kids really learning
| and some kids wouldn't even try. I guess if you just
| graduate them, they're no longer the school's problem...
| brimble wrote:
| Yeah, kids don't fail grades anymore but are just passed
| ever upward, and many schools have incompetent admin (of
| all the things I was wrong about as a kid, turns out
| school administrators are, on average, _even dumber_ than
| I thought they were back then--it 's shocking, really)
| who insist on completely worthless discipline schemes,
| among other bad ideas. Can confirm all that's true.
|
| So then you're a teacher with a bunch of 6th graders,
| say, 2/3 of whom are one or more grade levels behind on
| at least one subject, but that material's not what will
| be on the test that'll be used to evaluate your
| performance. The right thing to do is to go back and fill
| in the gaps for those kids, but you don't have the time,
| and showing them enough of this year's material that they
| might at least get a few answers on the standardized test
| correct is safer for your career anyway.
|
| It sucks.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Regressing the mean and shrinking the margins between high
| performers and low performers doesn't elevate the performance
| of the bottom. It just lowers the performance of the entire
| system. You could even argue it disenfranchises the lower but
| forcing more top tier talent into their employment tiers.
| zaroth wrote:
| I think you said it better than me.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30546204
| gkop wrote:
| Yes! 100%. The argument in the article isn't wrong, but the
| way it's made is highly unlikely to win people over to the
| cause (and could actually deepen the disagreement).
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I was a kid who coasted through school and got by on smarts
| alone. I don't care how we push kids, we just need to not let
| them coast too long. If that means enrichment or acceleration or
| whatever else the comments are debating, it's pretty much all
| better than the status quo.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i went to a small HS out in the backwoods of North Texas (
| graduating class had 20 people in it). I was told how smart i
| was over and over and started to believe it. Then went to
| college and found out exactly how much BS was fed to me the
| previous 4 years. I really suffered for it taking a long time
| to graduate and almost getting kicked out a couple times.
|
| Now I have two kids and prioritize learning how to learn with
| them. If you can develop the skills in a child required to work
| hard, find the answers, find the understanding, and teach
| themself then you've put them in a good spot to have at least a
| fighting chance when faced with the unknown.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I was too. all the AP classes. a grade ahead. and then I got to
| college and I had no idea how to actually study and learn real
| things
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Public school was the same for me. It wasn't until doing poorly
| in college that I realized that I actually needed to study to
| do well. Unfortunately, I had never developed study habits as I
| hardly had to crack a book to do well before. It was quite a
| struggle for me to teach myself how to learn when I couldn't
| just pick up the material from class.
|
| To me that illustrates the general failure of public school is
| not teaching children how to learn.
| zzzeek wrote:
| I read this extraordinary quote:
|
| > When California's Instructional Quality Commission adopted a
| new mathematics framework in 2021 that urged schools to do away
| with accelerated math in grades one through 10, it explained the
| move this way: "We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents."
|
| I clicked the link and could find no such language or even any
| suggestion that high achieving students don't exist, and it had a
| lot of verbiage discussing the need for "high achieving" students
| to be challenged more than others. How a student became "high
| achieving", like if they were somehow born that way or otherwise
| gained such skills in early development, was not discussed, nor
| does it make much difference.
|
| therefore I dont understand the point of this article if it's
| going to start out with claims that dont seem to be true.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| It's right in the introduction [0]: "All students deserve
| powerful mathematics; we reject ideas of natural gifts and
| talents (Cimpian et al, 2015; Boaler, 2019) and the "cult of
| the genius" (Ellenberg, 2015)."
|
| [0]
| https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/documents/mathfwchapter1.doc...
| rizkeyz wrote:
| I switched from a normal school to a gifted school at age 12. The
| biggest plus was that when all your peers have measured iq 130 or
| more, you do not have to feel ashamed to be "just curious" -
| which I believe most kids there were, albeit on very different
| levels.
|
| People there really hacked themselves into all kinds of things,
| be it making your own PCB, learning six different languages,
| caring for paedomorphic salamanders, writing lyric, or building
| your "own" copies of popular software products. None of that
| seemed particularly strange to us young teenagers.
| [deleted]
| antiterra wrote:
| As someone who was put in a reading class five grades above my
| actual grade, I disagree with the idea that acceleration should
| be the primary benefit of gifted education.
|
| What I needed was not just higher level reading, but content
| catered to someone 5 years younger than the usual age group for
| that reading. I needed help writing fast enough to keep up.
|
| Because grade school curriculum came easily and I could 'figure
| out' everything, I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult
| or required significant work. What I needed was to learn how to
| put forth effort to do things that were hard or required work for
| desired output. I needed help socializing because I didn't relate
| to people my age and was too inexperienced to engage people who
| were on my intellectual level as peers.
|
| I needed help creating because the standards for myself were so
| high. Not exceeding those standards always felt like failure
| citilife wrote:
| I'd argue this is why many kids are successful when home
| schooled.
|
| The idea that you should interact so much with your peers is
| kind of strange to be honest. Is it really healthy for kids to
| interact regularly with their peers? I'd argue it's much better
| for children to interact with adults. Historically, kids would
| learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see
| other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from
| adults how to act and strive for.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Can't agree. Unless parents make a specific effort to get
| them out with other similar aged group of kids (maybe other
| home schoolers) then the kid is going to most likely have
| stunted social and emotional intelligence even if their
| academic intelligence is off the chart. Even as a kid who
| spent most breaks reading something several grade levels
| higher than my current one, I still liked to wander off and
| hang with the other kids in public school. I still enjoyed
| comic books, flag football at recess, and cartoons.
| djrogers wrote:
| > the kid is going to most likely have stunted social and
| emotional intelligence
|
| You're either ignoring history, or assume that people who
| lived >150 years ago were all emotionally damaged in some
| way... Sure kids can learn from each other, and in a
| healthy way, but the structures that we have in place to
| foster that (universal public school) are fairly new in the
| grand scheme of things...
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| For context, I'm a former educator with a lot of
| experience with homeschooled kids. I've also read a lot
| of literature on early childhood development and
| socialization.
|
| I think the phrase "[the kid has] stunted social and
| emotional intelligence" hides a lot of nuance. The more
| useful rephrasing might be: "this person's ability to
| relate to people and navigate complex social
| interactions, particularly in the culture in which they
| were raised, is below average".
|
| The important takeaway is what matters most is your
| ability to handle social interactions with peers.
|
| > people who lived >150 years ago were all emotionally
| damaged in some way
|
| "Emotionally damaged" is a very culturally relative term.
| If you transported people from 150 years ago to the
| present day many would be considered "emotionally
| damaged" by modern standards even though they were
| functional people in their own time. This is because
| social intelligence is measured against a person's lived
| context.
|
| Coming back to homeschool - many home schooled kids have
| not had the same level of socialization as their peers in
| schools. That lack of socialization causes a negative
| feedback loop where more socialized kids don't want to
| interact with the homeschooled kids leading to the
| homeschooled kid being even more under socialized. The
| window of opportunity to effectively intervene when this
| process starts is short and when parents fail to act I
| have seen it cause decades of suffering for their kids.
| ericd wrote:
| What age range would you say makes up that window?
| [deleted]
| slothtrop wrote:
| Historically, kids played with other kids and families didn't
| generally live far from others. On farms, families are larger
| so it's a moot point.
|
| Infrequent contact with other kids can open the door to
| social anxiety and awkwardness as they grow. Not to mention,
| it's cruel. Kids are social beings too and they don't get
| their rocks off listening to adults talk down to them.
| qiskit wrote:
| Ideally, the basics ( reading, writing, arithmetic, etc )
| should all be done at home with their stay at home moms ( or
| dads ). Once they reach a certain level, then schooling
| should start ( maybe 7th grade or high school even ). Not
| only would that be better for the kids, it would be better
| for family bonding and community building.
|
| But the modern education system was created for the exact
| opposite. To limit family bonding in favor of allegiance to
| the state and teach them enough to be drones for the
| factory/work force/military. Children are resources to be
| processed by the state via their factory-like schools into
| products to be consumed by corporations, government, etc.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >But the modern education system was created for the exact
| opposite. To limit family bonding in favor of allegiance to
| the state and teach them enough to be drones for the
| factory/work force/military. Children are resources to be
| processed by the state via their factory-like schools into
| products to be consumed by corporations, government, etc.
|
| I always see takes like this but it just strikes me as a
| Conspiracy theory. We can easily get to the modern US
| education system via poorly thought out incentives and
| incompetence. You don't need malicious actors to get there.
| I would be curious if you had evidence to support a claim
| like this?
|
| To the downvoters: Do you honestly believe there is a Cabal
| in the US Government who sit in a room and say "Yes we must
| crush gifted students and make sure our education system is
| terrible so we have more drones for the factory/work
| force/military??
| bendbro wrote:
| Based and tedpilled
| milkytron wrote:
| > Children are resources to be processed by the state via
| their factory-like schools into products to be consumed by
| corporations, government, etc.
|
| When the word "resource" gets thrown around at companies
| and they obviously mean a human being, it peeves me. I will
| never use that word when referring to a person. When I'm
| involved in a conversation where someone uses it, I always
| ask for clarity that they mean a person, employee,
| contractor, candidate, etc.
|
| I know it's just a word, but calling people resources makes
| it seem like they are nothing more than something to be
| expended and used. And maybe that is the case, but I don't
| think it should be encouraged and perpetuated.
| pjbeam wrote:
| I agree with you but in this case I think the word choice
| fir the tenor of that parent's comment well--whether you
| agree or not is a different story but children as
| "resource" makes sense in the factory metaphor.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the more people-centric ones either,
| since they still are super abstract. Like "headcount".
|
| It's Bob. You mean Bob. You want to change the project
| Bob is on. Have we talked to Bob about it?
| wilkommen wrote:
| I was homeschooled until 7th grade. If your parents aren't
| monsters maybe it can be good. But many if not most parents
| who choose to homeschool their kids are zealots of some
| kind or another, or have serious control/paranoia/narcissim
| issues. Exposure to people outside the home, who aren't
| hand-picked by the child's parents can go a long way
| towards teaching the child that there are people in the
| world who are different from their parents. I think that
| would have helped me a lot.
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, home school kids are not massively more succesfull.
| Some are, but others have troubles.
|
| And historically, kids were cared for in quite large variety
| of setting. And quite a lot of those were not romantic at
| all.
| quartesixte wrote:
| > Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend
| church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the
| time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive
| for.
|
| They'd also have a fair amount of siblings and cousins, the
| children of hired help, and entire village's worth of other
| children to interact with. And depending on the era, a fair
| amount of absenteeism when it comes to actual parenting. So
| having peers of your age was both common, historically
| encouraged (stories of childhood friends abound), and
| important in establishing your place inside your community.
|
| That being said, they were exposed to more adults on a daily
| basis, and integrated more into the life of adults.
| Particularly, they were exposed to the daily lives of adults
| _at work_. Which I think is a large part of helping to
| influence a child's growth.
|
| Childhood as we know it now is also a modern concept -- the
| switch from childhood to adult was more child > young adult
| who doesn't really know what they're doing, rather than our
| modern child > adolescent > young adult path. (Edit because I
| hit submit too early). Childhood as also being an experience
| of being sequestered from the outside world is also modern.
| rr808 wrote:
| 10 brothers & sisters was pretty normal, not just your
| house but the neighbors all around you too. Children
| everywhere.
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I was a kid, one's first job was as a teenager. Today,
| one's first job is as a college graduate. I sometimes read
| accounts of what a shock it is to make that transition.
| celim307 wrote:
| As someone who interacted mainly with adults growing up, I'd
| disagree. Being an adult isn't a great filter of good
| character. As a kid I was exposed to some backwords
| ideologies and toxic attitudes from adults, exasterbated by
| the fact that since they were adults they came with a
| position of authority. This also made it difficult to make
| friends and socialize with peers when I got into my teens, I
| felt like I missed out on a lot by not smoothly integrating
| into teen culture.
|
| Having a handful of solid adult role models is key, but a lot
| of social skills are learned by trial and error, and it's way
| more helpful when you're learning those alongside others who
| are also figuring it out, that's also how new ideas and new
| cultural zeitgeists are created, by challenging old concepts
| and not having the baggage of the old way of doing things.
|
| Obviously there's pitfalls with taking all your social cues
| from hormone riddled peers, but it's a trial I think everyone
| needs to go through to prepare them on how to socialize with
| the world at large.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I've known a bunch of homeschooled folks, and I know this is
| definitely coming from a place of confirmation bias,
| but...all of them were especially bad at code-switching. I
| think there's plenty of ways one _could_ have wider
| socialization as a kid among adults, but it 's much easier to
| imagine it coming to fruition in _play_ with peers. I don 't
| think exact age-matching is really necessary, but being
| around people that are at a similar life-stage certainly
| can't hurt in establishing "peering" where it matters.
| imbnwa wrote:
| What does code-switching mean in this context?
| delecti wrote:
| Code-switching is the way people act differently in
| different contexts. So you're more likely to be formal
| and polite with your boss or grandparents and around your
| friend group you'll be more casual, maybe swear more.
| xxr wrote:
| Code switching originally was a term in linguistics to
| refer to the same speakers using multiple languages (or
| multiple registers of the same language, etc.) in a
| single conversation, which is probably why imbnwa is
| confused about the application here. In the last few
| years it's been picked up by the broader social science
| world to describe people using different modes of speech
| in _different_ situations, which is how you 're using the
| term--e.g., using a "white" voice, using a "straight"
| voice, etc.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Was homeschooled, can confirm that I am terrible at code
| switching.
|
| Although it seems to have stopped mattering once I got to
| the "adult" world, where whether one is 30 or 80, there is
| a fairly standard template for treating and dealing with
| people.
|
| It was a relief to stop being in a stratified age driven
| hierarchy.
| drBonkers wrote:
| what is code switching?
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Changing how you present yourself to match the social
| environment you're in. Formal vs informal speech,
| mannerisms, what is appropriate behavior in context, all
| of that sort of thing.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| The rules of interaction depending on context and
| demographics, to put it roughly.
|
| Youth examples:
|
| - You may swear in conversations with peers, but you
| should not in conversations with people higher in the
| hierarchy.
|
| - When people ask "how are you?", they are not genuinely
| asking in most cases. It is just a greeting. But there
| are exceptions like your grandmother and a teacher you
| have not seen in years, but are close to.
|
| Adult examples:
|
| - You can tell a rich person about your great vacation,
| but not a poor person. If you have a high paying job, you
| are expected to be happy when talking to a person who
| earns less than you do.
|
| - Random men (I am also a man) will find it completely
| appropriate to start a conversation with you discussing
| the body parts of a nearby woman. It has happened enough
| times that otherwise successful people view it as an
| appropriate way to start a conversation on a train.
| Pretty sure they do not do that with non-peers/women as
| it is pretty creepy.
|
| - For a more comic take:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tms0yk9kqVM. Basically
| the war should not be mentioned by a Brit to a German,
| but you can mention the war to another Brit.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I was public schooled k-9th grade, homeschooled 10-12th
| (though doing college courses, some in person at
| colleges).
|
| I am also terrible at code switching (I fit in better in
| the college classes while homeschooled than I ever did in
| public school, for whatever that is worth). And always
| have been. And I don't see it as a problem, since the
| implication that it's beneficial in a given context
| implies that context isn't diverse or inclusive, and thus
| I want out of it, not to conform to it.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| In what way? Most homeschooled kids that I've met have been
| painfully unaware of how the world actually works. They're
| slightly better at trivia because their parents try to
| surround them with "fun" things that they also like, but
| they're way worse at understanding advanced concepts. They
| also tend to be poor at behavioral adaptation.
| gowld wrote:
| Schools traditionally were mixed age, because there weren't
| enough people in the same area for single-age classrooms.
|
| This is hugely missing nowadays.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Well, those farm kids were 1 of 8 or so. So they socialized
| with each other.
| irrational wrote:
| This is a good point. Children from large families have the
| opposite problem of being lonely or needing socialization.
| They struggle to find time to themselves. And then all the
| siblings often have friends, so your actual socialization
| group ends up quite huge.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| If you want them to socialize, then yeah they should be with
| their peers.
| lief79 wrote:
| Sure, but also note that those peers may be a few years
| above or below their biological age.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required
| significant work.
|
| I hit that wall my freshman year at Caltech. What a disaster.
| All my strategies of effortless A's blew up in my face. I'd get
| comments like "I really should fail you, but I'm going to give
| you a break." At the end of first semester of sophomore year, I
| had to come to grips with solving this or leaving.
|
| After that, each semester came easier and easier, as I learned
| how to learn.
|
| I'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail, as my execrable
| performance that year did not affect my final GPA. I also am
| indebted to several people who freely gave the gift of their
| time to help me out.
|
| (I never would have succeeded with remote learning.)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I 'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail_
|
| MIT had the same policy when I was there, and I felt the same
| way about it: I needed that year to at least get started
| developing the study habits I didn't have to develop in high
| school.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required
| significant work.
|
| The thing is that _everyone_ hits that wall at some point. Some
| just hit it later than others. But I agree that acceleration
| should only ever occur in a context of learning for mastery -
| if complete mastery is not attained in the "easy" subjects,
| pushing through the 'wall' of the actually challenging ones is
| way too difficult.
| jacinda wrote:
| > I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required
| significant work.
|
| This was, to me, the greatest benefit of being put in a gifted
| program in 3rd grade. I was so used to everything being easy
| that I cried at home that I had homework taking longer than 10
| minutes that I actually had to concentrate on. I asked my dad
| to go back to the regular program, and he said I should stick
| it out for at least another month. I did, and learned how to
| work through things that seemed challenging at first.
|
| The experience of having to put forth effort early(ish) in my
| life set me up far better for dealing with life later, because
| I learned how to push past things that were uncomfortable
| instead of giving up (i.e. "grit" became a part of my psyche
| when it was still pretty flexible).
|
| I probably could have learned this lesson in other ways, but
| the fact that it's one of my clearest childhood memories
| certainly speaks to the impact it had on my life. And I know
| plenty of friends whose first experience needing to put effort
| happened in college, and things seemed a lot harder for them
| emotionally.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| Personally, that's why I liked AP courses in high school. After
| my AP Chem class, most of my college courses were straight
| forward, because my AP Chem class established and pushed good
| study and work habits because you needed those to do well and
| my teacher designed our course to help build them. Maybe in
| this case acceleration should mean challenging and building up
| students without overwhelming them?
| hellisothers wrote:
| This is where my 8yo is at now and it's infuriating. He is in
| class all day at 2nd grade level and is given homework at 4th+
| grade level but that means we our effectively his actual
| teachers. This also results in, as you say, everything is
| trivially easy or all of a sudden hard which has in general
| given him a complex around mildly difficult things and practice
| in general.
| brimble wrote:
| For kids who are behind, they solve this by throwing _a lot_
| more personnel at the problem, to the point that some kids
| have one-on-one assistants /tutors follow them around all
| day. Good luck getting budgets increased enough to do the
| same for gifted kids, though.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I guess it depends upon exactly what you mean. But based upon
| my 2nd grader, and from what I've heard from other 2nd grade
| parents, this is pretty normal for a 2nd grader, regardless
| of how gifted they are or aren't.
|
| My 2nd grader can burn through material from the first half
| of the year. But current material... good luck getting her to
| do it. Difficult work makes people uncomfortable, and most
| young kids don't like being uncomfortable.
| [deleted]
| brightball wrote:
| My 7th grader is in 9th grade math and I feel this. The
| homework load is the killer and I end up being the teacher. I
| like it.
| dam_broke_it wrote:
| First and foremost problem is selecting teacher(s) that are
| easily 30-60 IQ lower than the gifted kids....
| plandis wrote:
| Honestly I just wish I had classes which only allowed students
| who wanted to be there.
|
| So much of my public school education was wasted on teachers
| having to deal with some subset of students who wanted to do
| nothing but disrupt everyone else.
|
| It got better when I could choose AP classes since generally by
| that point everyone wanted to be in those classes.
| westcort wrote:
| This: acceleration, not enrichment, is the most promising way to
| serve gifted students
| thethirdone wrote:
| Excessive acceleration can be an issue for students. Being in a
| class with only people much older than you can be very
| challenging. Accelerating 1 or 2 years ahead (over the entirety
| of schooling) of the rest of the students is probably better
| than what enrichment can do. However, accelerating 5 years is
| probably worse than accelerating 2 years and doing a lot of
| enrichment.
|
| Additionally, I think that jumping past a grade and succeeding
| in the higher one is rather difficult unless you are very
| gifted. Enrichment can make the eventual acceleration easier.
|
| Disclaimer: I am not an education professional though; just
| someone who once was a gifted student.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think kids need to be kids but there should be accelerated
| classes at least a portion of the day to satisfy them
| intellectually (math, science, literature). They are (most
| likely) still mentally the same age and enjoy most of the same
| playtime activities as other kids. It's not likely that an 8year
| old is gonna have a good time hanging with a clique of 12 year
| olds and vice versa.
| geebee wrote:
| My big problem with GATE programs, as they were implemented at
| SFUSD, is the question of what happens to the kid at the 89%ile.
|
| I am not at all against elite education, nor do I believe
| everyone should proceed roughly at the same pace. But I am very
| wary of an approach that imposes a bimodal solution onto what is
| almost certainly a more normally distributed population.
|
| There are various ways this was implemented over the last 50
| years. When I was in the SFUSD gifted program in the late 1970s,
| I believe it was done by some kind of IQ assessment. When my own
| kids were in SFUSD in the late 2000s, they took the top 10% of
| each class, as defined by test scores on the STAR test, which is
| an academic test. There were a few ways to test in (both verbal
| and reading in the top 10%, or one or the other in the top 10%
| two years in a row, or nominated by a teacher - there may have
| been a few others).
|
| Ok, but then what happens to the kid who scored 89%ile
| consistently? Are we getting behind a solution that takes the top
| 10% off into a class which is taught at the 95%ile, and then
| leaves the 89%ile student to now be taught at the 45%ile?
|
| Even people who support more advanced learning for more advanced
| students must see a problem here. Seems like we need a better
| solution. The top 10% isn't the only group that may benefit from
| a specifically tailored curriculum.
| DelaneyM wrote:
| Speaking as a former "gifted" kid, acceleration is a horrible
| idea.
|
| I skipped a bunch of grades, got into MIT but went to a local
| college at 13 (who lets their 13-year-old live in a college
| dorm?), ended up working for a bit then going back to school with
| my peers.
|
| If I could do it again I'd have taken _breadth_ instead of depth.
| Finished high school math? Good for me, now grab a third
| language. Bored in school? Off to a foreign country to learn by
| immersion. No courses left undone? Take six months and see if I
| can realize my dream of making the national team in my sport,
| etc.
|
| Going deep is very risky. Eventually you end up at the end of the
| easy path of coursework and classes and are in the same place as
| everyone else (just a year or two earlier). Unless you're
| absolutely, positively sure that that specific area is where you
| want to spend the rest of your life, that head start wins nothing
| enduring.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "went to a local college at 13 (who lets their 13-year-old live
| in a college dorm?),"
|
| Sounds like the premise for an American Pie movie.
| brimble wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius
|
| Though it looks like he's 15, not 13.
| MereInterest wrote:
| You might enjoy the movie "Real Genius", where one of the
| main characters is a early high school graduate, accepted
| into "Pacific Tech", and struggling to adapt to the different
| social expectations. Amid the standard shenanigans, there are
| several conversations on how being smart isn't everything,
| and how there is a social responsibility to use your
| intelligence responsibly.
| emacsen wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, did you live in the Philadelphia area?
|
| I knew a 13 year old going to a local college in Bryn
| Mawr/Haverford, but I don't think he was attending either of
| those prestigious colleges.
|
| I don't recall his name (this was nearly 30 years ago) and I
| wondered what happened to him.
|
| Reading these comments it sounds like a lot of people feel like
| you do about acceleration being an issue.
|
| For me, I was both Gifted and Learning Disabled, and both
| programs were unprepared for the issues of someone who was both
| very smart but also had significant learning issues.
|
| It was very difficult. :(
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I was also both Gifted and Learning Disabled (although I
| prefer to list them in the opposite order). I think it's
| likely that there's a lot more neurodiversity than
| acknowledged generally, but we're just sort of stuck with the
| very human condition of balancing the needs of the group with
| the needs of the individual.
|
| Honestly I don't think any "program" is truly prepared to
| meet the needs of anybody at all. It was difficult for me,
| too, but I think striving, suffering, etc are all human
| conditions that we all experience regardless of how we get
| there. "Gifted" and "Learning Disabled" programs exist for
| the benefit of normalizing behavior and capabilities that are
| farther outside the curve. That they existed when we were
| young is merely a testament to a collective desire for
| general cohesiveness.
| veganhouseDJ wrote:
| It is really strange to me that we can't figure this out.
|
| I almost think it is because our entire view of education is
| conflated with a type of sporting event. You were one of the
| grand champions of this sporting event even though obviously it
| would have just made sense to learn more. Instead it is this
| weird sporting event race and the concept of learning more just
| isn't part of objective of the game.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Leaning on the sporting event analogy, the goal is
| cohesiveness. You value your star players, but you also need
| to be a part of the team. We're not sure what the game is,
| but we're a social species.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| There's also a lot more to life than studying. But the argument
| is that you and other kids on that path will maybe someday be
| exceptionally productive to society in some field.
|
| I only skipped one grade and still felt isolated from other
| kids sometimes. I can't imagine how you'd feel! As a parent I'd
| personally rather let my kid have a somewhat normal childhood
| than maximize their intellectual potential if that meant
| sending a 13yr old to college.
| jessriedel wrote:
| You've given an argument for more gifted education, not less.
|
| The fundamental issue is that some kids learn faster than
| others, so that if you want gifted kids to be around other kids
| their own age while still being challenged, you need to draw
| from a large region and cluster them together in one place. The
| most gifted children will have to be the most clustered. If you
| needed to go to MIT to be challenged, that is because of a lack
| of gifted education.
|
| Separately, I think we should be very skeptical of the idea
| that a good default path for kids is to spend most days
| surrounded by kids within 12 months of their age. This sort of
| schooling has only been widespread for roughly a century; for
| the vast majority of history kids grew up with a much broader
| range of ages around them. I agree that getting thrown into a
| college dorm at 13 might be very bad, but I find spending all
| day with other 13 year olds to also be very bad.
| heurist wrote:
| If I hadn't been able to attend a "gifted" program, which has
| since been shut down, I would have been stuck in a rural D-class
| system that would not have served me at all. Instead I was able
| to be around peers with my interests and comparable learning
| abilities. It was a big early and positive influence on my life.
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