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Should gifted students go to a separate school?

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Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#271

Post by r00fus »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #100
Aqueous wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. This idea that education is only for my own individual welfare has to end. It's creating a culture of individual atomism that is instilling the most anti-social, selfish values and corroding the country at its roots. We go to school not just to be educated but to educate each other. If you're smart, you set an example to kids near us who don't feel that way. Hopefully, those who aren't labelled 'smart' gain from t…

Have you ever been inside a school? The stupid kids don't gather around to bask in the glow of the gifted kids. They DO gather around them and call them 'faggot' and trip them in the hallway, especially if they are smart but not athletic.

Do you think bullies are limited to the "stupid" kids? Let me tell you something - that's not the case at all. There is a good distribution of smart kids who just like to mess with others as well.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#272

Post by greedo »

morgante wrote: post #161
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…

I agree. This is going to sound conceited, but I really blame the public school system for never giving me a challenge. Until I eventually got into private school for the last 2 years of high school, I had never had to work to get straight As. I could often complete homework assignments before class was even over. Unfortunately, this conditioned me to be incredibly lazy. As I never developed a strong work ethic, in c…

You've described the fate of an entire generation of gifted students. It's awfully hard to overcome years and years of this instilled at an early/formative age. Teaching children to work for goals is one of the most important tasks that parents and to a lesser extent society, have.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#273

Post by throw2016 »

This can be simple as long as there is a scientific way to identify gifted children that is fairly and unequivocally available to all children and as a society there is clarity and consensus on what to do with both groups.

If there is consensus then there also has to be a way to cross pollinate between both groups as gifted children are discovered later and those who are gifted but unable to cope are moved back.

And finally since the fundamental basis for any such exercise is ensuring gifted children get the attention they need, any plan has to ensure full and comprehensive support to the unprivileged so children who are gifted but from unprivileged backgrounds are not denied opportunities to exploit their full talent because of circumstance.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#274

Post by jstimpfle »

r00fus wrote: post #265
justin_vanw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is a Harrison Bergeron argument. "We can't let people move quickly, because it might be unfair to other people." Effectively this means denying the people you can identify because there are going to be other 'deserving' people you don't identify. Replace 'education' with 'food' and see if this logic holds up: "We shouldn't feed the people we know are hungry, because other people might be hungry and now they w…

A whole raft of opinions that have no backing, in fact, I can provide a lot of evidence that counterargues your points. > Dumb kids don't benefit from being around very gifted kids. Let's not use the words dumb but lets say, "less smart". If this were the case, why would parents fight to get their kids into magnet and charter schools? Also special needs kids benefit from mainstreaming. Evidence > Unsubstantiated opin…

[cite needed]

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#275

Post by LordKano »

llsf wrote: post #168
justin_vanw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is a Harrison Bergeron argument. "We can't let people move quickly, because it might be unfair to other people." Effectively this means denying the people you can identify because there are going to be other 'deserving' people you don't identify. Replace 'education' with 'food' and see if this logic holds up: "We shouldn't feed the people we know are hungry, because other people might be hungry and now they w…

RE 1. It has already been mentioned that food analogy is not a good one, since we are not talking of not providing education to smarter kids. And, this is not a binary issue, there is a whole spectrum of intelligence. RE 2. The previous post does not say "every kind of diversity is automatically good". But I certainly agree that social and intellectual diversity has benefits for all parties. RE 3. "Smart people do we…

Being a free country does not mean necessarily you can act freely against the collective good.

Yes. That's precisely what it means.

Serving the collective good is a fine ideal but for me to pursue my own interests before yours (and for you to pursue yours before mine) is a mandate.

Once you mandate the good of the state over the good of your own children, you are no longer a free society.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#276

Post by opensandwich »

I come from the state of NSW (in Australia), the state with this program, and was also one of the students from selective schools. It is important to note that in Sydney, Australia: it isn't only the public school system which have selective schools, but there exists private schools where academic exams are required to gain entrance (see Sydney Grammar School).

There are a lot of [selective schools; not just one or two, but 46](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selective_high_schools...)!

You can see in the implementation that some are full selective, and others are partially selective.

Furthermore in primary school there are also [opportunity class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_class) which is also for gifted students. All of these schools are partially selective with around half the spots of high school.

My observation from these schools are that the _location_ of these schools don't matter much. Students will travel from the other side of Sydney to attend any of these schools! For example, there would be a lot of students from the south-west Sydney attending school in North Sydney.

However, segregation based on academic abilities do yield some...results which I have also read about in the US:

* Areas of top selective schools and top OC schools will generally yield higher asian population. * Schools will tend to have a higher asian population

Also (unsurprisingly) these schools have dominated university entrance exams, with the median mark of the top school (James Ruse Agricultural School) typically well within the top 1% of all exam-takers within the state.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#277

Post by got2surf »

steverb wrote: post #144
akhilcacharya wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some more academically gifted students have managed to graduate high school and finish their two year degree simultaneously I did that, it's not as useful as it seems.

It's more useful than graduating high school and then having to go through two years of mediocre undergraduate courses, no? What did you find non-useful about it? Did you end up having to take just as much undergraduate coursework to make up for some perceived deficiency? I'm genuinely curious.

I agree with @akhilcacharya and had the same reasoning (ended up not doing the AA in high school for the same reason).

More restrictive set of courses for the AA means you're taking classes you don't enjoy for a requirement you don't need. The "name value" of a community college AA also isn't as great, particularly for kids who want to go to a higher-ranked public or top private university for undergrad.

That being said, if you know you want to go to a local/state school where the credits will transfer easily, getting the AA early can be great. I know people who graduated early but still received all 4 years of scholarship money (direct deposited in their bank).

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#278

Post by justin_vanw »

r00fus wrote: post #268
justin_vanw wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said 'better' vs 'none'. I said should you give some resource to someone who could benefit from it when there are other people who also would benefit that you will fail to identify. Presumably even in my analogy the people not given food had some food, since they were merely weak and not starved to death. But that ignores my argument anyway! My point is that you should do what you can do, even if it's imperfe…

More light, less heat. Where're your facts or evidence?

Facts? The argument against me was 'you shouldn't help people because you might not help some people that you could also help'.

That's a moral argument, and my reply was a moral argument.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#279

Post by hydrogen18 »

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…

Ah, bubbling in the correct little bounded area. My experience was about the same. Maybe no one thought to stop that the kids who couldn't fill in a little area didn't know the answer to the questions in the first place?

In any case, I'll share another funny anecdote: I took a reading comprehension test in 3rd grade. It said I was reading a college level. I'm not really sure what that meant then, but in any case it was as high as the system went. Not only did I have to take the same test in 4th grade again, my parents were sent a letter with a very concerned tone. It said I was not making progress on my reading skills and that soon I would fall behind the other children. It recommended I be placed in a remedial comprehension course so I could catch up.

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