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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?

#331

Post by k-mcgrady »

jgust wrote: post #210
k-mcgrady wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "before my time there were English Grammar schools which were done away with" I'm not 100% sure but I believe these were similar to Northern Irish grammar schools where at the end of primary school you took an exam to determine if you could go to the grammar school or if you would go to the standard high school. I went through this system. Recently they have been slowly removing it and personally I go back and for…

> failed that exam but were lucky enough to still get into a grammar school and who did very well Could this be attributed to the school being of higher quality/better funded, higher performing teachers, or surrounding oneself with higher performing students? Or all of the above?

Possibly. Although there were also many people in that school who did well in the entrance exam and did not succeed in the school. Thinking about both groups of people it's very obvious in retrospect that that the people that managed to get accepted despite the bad grade in the exam worked very hard and wanted to succeed no matter how difficult they found it. They'd put in 3x as much work as everyone else.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#332

Post by cwbrandsma »

Should they go to different schools? No.

But corporate learning should be done away with. Any system that involves all students learning at the same pace just isn't cutting it. There will still be teachers and subjects, but it is more defined by how fast or slow each individual student can learn.

Do this, and you wont need different schools.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#333

Post by reflexive »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #192
reflexive wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst schools will never get better if all the talent is sucked out of them. You're already lost if you're relying on the worst schools to get better. We only need a tiny fraction of the population (1% or less) to be the leaders of the next generation. Focusing on improvements within that group is likely to have far greater impact on society than trying to move the "bottom" group to the "next group up from the…

If we're trading intuitions, my intuition is that "the leaders of the next generation" will have mostly negative effects on society. Leaders usually spend all their resources reinforcing hegemony. And many of the people having the most positive effect on society will do it in a totally inconspicuous way. And many of those folks will come from bad schools, succeeding despite lack of institutional support. I suspect in…

If we're trading intuitions, my intuition is that "the leaders of the next generation" will have mostly negative effects on society.

It's hard for me to take what you're saying seriously. You are disagreeing with the idea that leaders should be well-prepared to do their jobs, because you think they mainly are going to harm people. Therefore, you reason, we should not attempt to improve their education, because (by your argument) we want them as incompetent as possible, to minimize the damage they can do.

For me, if even one kid has a strong desire to learn and is hampered by a bad school, I think that's worthy of attention.

You seem to miss the point that everything is relative. Badness of schools is relative; there is always a "worst" school out there hampering someone. Attention is also relative; giving attention one place means taking it away from somewhere else.

If anything, hard power tends to corrupt teenagers.

Who is suggesting giving power to teenagers?

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#334

Post by htns »

jasode wrote: post #287
habosa wrote: post #85

A lot of comments here sound something like this: "I am smart and when I was in high school the classes bored me because they were taught to the lowest common denominator". This is not an argument for intellectual segregation of schools. While I could put forth a hundred arguments against this, here are a few off the top of my head: 1. When do we decide who is "gifted"? What happens to late bloomers? Are they forever…

>What about the social benefits of being around people who are on a different intellectual level? I'm wondering how you feel about "smart" kids like Terence Tao.[1][2] At age 14, he was in enrolled in college instead of attending high school with his "less smart" peers. At age 17, he was a graduate student at Princeton instead of being a senior at high school with other kids his age. (And working backwards from those…

Frankly it seems to me he was railroaded into an academic career. Makes me wonder if gifted programs are ultimately in the student's interest.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#335

Post by cableshaft »

cloudwizard wrote: post #75
stinky613 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I programmed games on my calculator, wrote stories and poems, printed out stories to read in tiny 4pt font so the teacher wouldn't notice, and constantly doodled drawings to keep my mind occupied. I sometimes think I learned more doing that than I did in school (at least until college, which was like a brutal wake-up call I wasn't prepared for).

Honestly I think the worst part is when teachers would get annoyed that you weren't 'paying attention' and force you to stop doing the crap that's keeping your mind busy and 'focus on school', even though you already get pretty much straight A's.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#336

Post by solresol »

opensandwich wrote: post #276

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 t…

More worryingly, only one of the Sydney selective schools actually is vaguely representative of the Sydney population. James Ruse, for example has far less students from low-income families than Cumberland High does, which is on the other side of the street.

In practice, the selective school places are awarded to the children of parents who are willing to send their kids to coaching college throughout years 4 and 5. Hence the higher asian population. Actually having a high IQ (my two children were tested by a leading psychologist above 99.8% and 99.9% of the population for example) doesn't get you there.

And slightly worse -- if you are smart and are accelerated, then you hit high school below the age range for which you can sit the selective test.

The result is that schools such as James Ruse underperform: when the candidature were all in the top 1-2% at year 7, there are plenty of year 12 students who don't get even in the top 5%.

But in principle it works out very well. The teachers can run classes at a rate more appropriate for the students, bullying is less prevalent, etc. So it's definitely worth doing (for the students) if the entrance criteria are half-way sane.

The effect it has on the students who don't get into selective school though is a bit sad. It's also depressing for the teachers at comprehensive schools who may be working just as hard as those at the selective schools, but won't get rewarded from having highly successful students.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#337

Post by Kalium »

mulmen wrote: post #327
Kalium wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find that very often, what gifted students need is to be separated from their less gifted peers for more appropriate instruction. The solution and approach you described earlier is the one currently in use in a great many places. Indeed, it's the default approach in general, because it requires no efforts whatsoever on the part of the schools, faculty, or staff.

Please do not misunderstand, I do not think the current system is working, I just don't think segregation is the solution.

I understand. I agree! The current system is not working for anyone. I also think that the system you have described, in which gifted students are placed with their less gifted peers to raise them up, is identical to the current system. What you have described is literally identical to a system we have just agreed does not work.

As a result, I believe that what you describe does not work.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#338

Post by harpocrates »

habosa wrote: post #85

A lot of comments here sound something like this: "I am smart and when I was in high school the classes bored me because they were taught to the lowest common denominator". This is not an argument for intellectual segregation of schools. While I could put forth a hundred arguments against this, here are a few off the top of my head: 1. When do we decide who is "gifted"? What happens to late bloomers? Are they forever…

This. Yes.

As someone who was classified as "gifted" and went to one of these special programs, your third point is a common occurrence.

All that aside though, I think the very notion of gifted-ness is harmful (in a labelling sense) to both the are's and the are-not's. Your first two points are relevant on this. For that reason, I'm not sure we should even discuss/judge gifted-ness, regardless of whether it even exists.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#339

Post by Kalium »

mulmen wrote: post #326
Kalium wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! Having peers to turn to for assistance is immensely valuable in any learning process. It's most valuable when both people involved have something to offer one another, allowing them to engage as equals. It's perhaps less than ideal to restrict gifted students to the level of their less gifted peers in the interests of said peers having resources to turn to for aid in learning. They are often unable to engage…

I think it is a mistake to assume that students with a lower level of academic achievement have nothing to offer students with a higher level of the same.

I agree! I do not believe they have nothing to offer. I do believe that what they have to offer may not universally be a good fit for a classroom environment. I know that when I was a gifted student, my less gifted peers had much to offer outside the classroom. They also had nothing to offer inside the classroom in terms of instructional aid.

I believe that the system described fails because it neglects the needs of everyone involved. The proposal neglects the needs of the gifted by refusing to offer them instruction and material at a level that challenges them and instead attempts to coerce them into being teaching assistants. The proposal neglects the needs of the less gifted by relying on them learning from their more gifted peers instead of offering sufficient instructional infrastructure. The proposal neglects the needs of society by failing to meet the needs of any of the students involved in an attempt to use one group of students to meet the needs of another.

What is proposed is not novel or new. I lived this proposal. It is not one that adequately serves the needs of any person involved.

Segregation may not be the answer, though it's a good way to describe what happens in tertiary education. What we have now - and what you propose - we know with certainty is not the answer.

After all, it's the same system that we all agree is failing for everyone involved.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#340

Post by logfromblammo »

The question itself falls apart when you remove the requirement that all schools follow a rigid curriculum based on grade levels modeled upon a particular age cohort.

If you accept that a 9-year-old student can learn productively in the same room as an 11-year-old student, you no longer need to consider setting aside a separate room for all the 9-year-olds with ability equal to the median 11-year-old. You just put the smart kids into the more advanced classes.

Just let the fast kids read ahead on their own. If they can get far enough ahead of the instructor, they can skip a semester, and either start the next class in the sequence early, or cram an elective class into the gap. There's no need to ship them off to another building.

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