Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Should gifted students go to a separate school?

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 390 posts

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#71

Post by brightball »

dijit wrote: post #2

Absolutely. I'm going to sound very self-centered and certainly not humble but when I was enrolled in mandatory education I was doing so under Tony Blair's Labour government. This government was elected under premises such as nationalisation and additionally "Education, Education, Education"[0]. As such no child was allowed to fail school. This had the opposite affect in my primary school, instead of segregating the…

You just described why so many people support school choice and voucher policies. It is absolutely mind boggling to me how anyone can consider more options to be worse than a one size fits all model.

EDIT: In keeping with the trend, took about 30 seconds to get downvoted.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#72

Post by chrisabrams »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #4
dijit wrote: post #2

Absolutely. I'm going to sound very self-centered and certainly not humble but when I was enrolled in mandatory education I was doing so under Tony Blair's Labour government. This government was elected under premises such as nationalisation and additionally "Education, Education, Education"[0]. As such no child was allowed to fail school. This had the opposite affect in my primary school, instead of segregating the…

Funny that I had very nearly the same experience in Texas. I had even been moved into a "Gifted and Talented" program which segregated us from the regular kids. While we did occasionally get to do something above and beyond the vast majority of the time was spent in a prison like setting where all we did was focus on standardized testing. I remember literally spending weeks of schooling in primary school learning how…

Oh the TAAS...I spent 10 years being told I would finish that crap in the 10th grade...only to find out in the 10th grade that TAAS II was coming out and we were the lucky candidates to take it...in the 11th grade.

The #2 pencil is spot on. I carried an entire box of pencils and would trade them for a slice of pizza at lunch.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#73

Post by jmduke »

ng12 wrote: post #67
jmduke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the issue is "not enough of an area's educational budget is devoted to AP kids", I don't see how that is solved by creating an entirely different school? If there's enough money to create a school for gifted kids, then I think that money is better spent investing in the AP programs in those multi-track schools. (It's entirely possible that I'm overlooking some nuances in how education budgets work, but I'm talking…

A few bad apples. The kids who don't care spoil the opportunities of the kids who do. The two need completely different support systems -- kids who don't care need to be monitored, kids who do need opportunities. As a finite example: they canceled the "electives" at my school (students could sign up for a 2x/week lecture on an eclectic subject) because a lot of the kids figured out they were the easiest to skip.

I agree, but I think "kids who are actively harming the educational system" and "gifted kids" is a false dichotomy: the spectrum of "kids whose educational experience is damaged by bad apples" is wider than the gifted kids discussed in this article, and by only helping out that small subset I think we leave a whole bunch of kids left hanging (and arguably the ones who need a strong education the most.)

(Our high school's approach to that was just offering "study hall" as an elective, with the implication that you could just skip study hall and nobody cared.)

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#74

Post by ygaf »

jawns wrote: post #3

Here in the U.S., very few public high schools have single-track education, at least not for "core" subjects such as English, math, and science. There are typically remedial, standard, honors, and AP classes for these subjects. And I would think that if you're OK with multi-track education, it would seem like having a separate school for gifted students is just an extension of that. That said, in my own experience, a…

>giftedness varies wildly by subject. If you attend a school for gifted students, would there be an expectation that you would be gifted in all subject areas?

I think a superschool should allow each student to be ordinary in X subjects. In other words, two levels of acceptable marks depending on the student.

Splitting a student's school life between two schools cannot be an option, it also doubles administration.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#75

Post by cloudwizard »

stinky613 wrote: post #5
dijit wrote: post #2

Absolutely. I'm going to sound very self-centered and certainly not humble but when I was enrolled in mandatory education I was doing so under Tony Blair's Labour government. This government was elected under premises such as nationalisation and additionally "Education, Education, Education"[0]. As such no child was allowed to fail school. This had the opposite affect in my primary school, instead of segregating the…

But, on the flip side, faster-learning kids need to learn how to live/work/deal with slower-learning kids and vice versa. The purpose of schooling goes beyond the accumulation of facts.

The problem is the entire class is geared to the slower kids. Since the faster kids learn the entire year's work in the first month or prior to the beginning of the year, the only thing they learn is how to deal with slower kids or amuse themselves quietly. My son read most of the fiction in his elementary school before I took him out to go to a private school.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#76

Post by cschmidt »

The article reminds me a bit of the Maine School for Science and Mathematics (http://www.mssm.org/). It is a free boarding school run by the state of Maine to support those kids who don't have a school district where they can really get into STEM. Tuition is free if you're from Maine, which is really cool. A great way to support kids in rural areas. It is usually rated one of the top high schools in the country.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#77

Post by jmkni »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #68
jmkni wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still have Grammar Schools in Northern Ireland. I definitely believe that they work, it's a shame they don't have them in England.

Can you define "work" in this instance? For example, if they made half the kids do better, and half the kids do worse, does that count as working? While you sometimes get claims that it's for their own good that less academically inclined pupils are sent to the non-grammar schools, I'd guess the same people who say this would freak right the hell out if their own kid failed the exam and didn't get in, which kind of u…

I meant that they work for the individual, a child sent to a grammar school will get a solid education.

I take your point about the wider ramifications, but I feel as though I got a good education, and if I ever have kids, I would want them to go to a grammar school too.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#78

Post by FT_intern »

stinky613 wrote: post #5
dijit wrote: post #2

Absolutely. I'm going to sound very self-centered and certainly not humble but when I was enrolled in mandatory education I was doing so under Tony Blair's Labour government. This government was elected under premises such as nationalisation and additionally "Education, Education, Education"[0]. As such no child was allowed to fail school. This had the opposite affect in my primary school, instead of segregating the…

But, on the flip side, faster-learning kids need to learn how to live/work/deal with slower-learning kids and vice versa. The purpose of schooling goes beyond the accumulation of facts.

They learn to deal with slow-learning kids at the cost of not learning from a slower paced class at all. The negatives outweigh the positives for the gifted kids.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#79

Post by arethuza »

frobozz wrote: post #63
arethuza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very humble comprehensive I went to in Scotland addressed this issue with streaming - which seemed to work pretty well. Is streaming out of fashion in state schools these days? I know its alive and well in public schools as my son was streamed. Edit: For those outside the UK: public schools are a type of private school.

Streaming is the best approach (IMO), as long as the schools are large enough or homogeneous enough (or have appropriate intercollegiate relationships with nearby schools) to make it happen. If you can't make a full class of pupils of whom you expect top grades, then the range of abilities can be a bit too big. You ideally need to be able to promote and demote, which means having at least one subject teacher per stre…

I think we had about 8 parallel streams for main subjects (i.e. everyone did maths, english etc. at the same time).

People were moved between streams fairly frequently.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#80

Post by cortesoft »

aaronchall wrote: post #56
got2surf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College courses are a great option too (my school district allowed "dual enrollment" where you could take anywhere from one to all of your classes at one of the local community or state colleges). There are definitely some cases where the AP equivalent is "harder", better taught, or better suited to high-school age students, though. I agree that defining "advanced" is very challenging, and goes beyond just the academ…

I remember my decision making process: It seemed to me that if I took the dual/early enrollment college course that I would definitely get the credit, whereas the AP course would actually require far more repetitive homework, lots more class time (which I didn't want to do), and only then would I have a chance to qualify for college credit. That's a no-brainer, in my book, but so many of my peers refused to follow my…

I know in California when I was in high school, it was free for high school kids to take community college courses. It was cheaper to take calculus at a community college because I didn't have to pay for the AP test. In addition, I knew it would automatically count as college credit, instead of the pseudo-credit you get for AP test results.

As an added bonus, I could compete calculus in a semester instead of a full year. It was way better for me.

Post reply on HN