Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement • Hacker News Board

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#71

Post by seamyb88 » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

downerending wrote: post #61

seamyb88 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have some real problems in your society for that bad experience at school. Surely if you're the gifted individual you claim you are, you'll want to change society rather than seclude yourself from it as much as you can get away with. The non-gifted kids, whatever the fuck that means, don't deserve to bullied/abused either.

No one deserves to be bullied. And I'd be pretty okay with permanently removing bullies from the general population. That said, in my experience, the gifted/nerdy/aspy kids got the lion's share of the bullying. I still carry it with me decades later, and at least one of my comrades in misery killed herself because of it.

Do you have kids?

Suppose you have two. One's into javascript and dungeons and dragons. The other's not great academically. No good at football either, and they still behave in a slightly awkward way. But great person, all the same.

So, you condemn the latter child to the cesspit that is public life and protect the former? Or think up a better policy?

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#72

Post by unexaminedlife » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

I want separation, but I'm not convinced separating the "cream of the crop" is the right way to go.

What if schools were more proactive to weed out and separate the bullies from everyone else. I think we'd end up with an overall healthier society, wherein 90% of kids will get a good education and have a good experience in school vs trying only to ensure the top ~10% get separated from the rest.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#73

Post by seamyb88 » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

borski wrote: post #54

seamyb88 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have some real problems in your society for that bad experience at school. Surely if you're the gifted individual you claim you are, you'll want to change society rather than seclude yourself from it as much as you can get away with. The non-gifted kids, whatever the fuck that means, don't deserve to bullied/abused either.

The non-gifted kids (to use your terminology) weren't bullied or abused. They were friends. They played sports together. I played sports too, just not with them, because I wasn't invited to. I wasn't 'cool.' I 'tried too hard.' I 'cared too much about learning.' Not sure what you're going for here?

I added a "non" to the word in the title of the post to indicate the opposite of that thing. But my terminology.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#74

Post by toasterlovin » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #48

dguido wrote: post #8

Here's the opposite perspective: https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/bs-xpm-2012-02-06-bs-ed... > But as the facts now show, smart kids don't always stay smart, and when they are bored or bullied or ridiculed or neglected, some turn off and some drop out. Thirty-plus years of experience and research into how these students learn has taught us that the academically able can and must be challenged and engaged, inspire…

Right, so it raises the question: What is the relative importance of helping the best students verse helping the worst students? Even if we solve the talent identification problem, SOME kids are going to be the lower achievers.... are we willing to sacrifice helping them do better to help the top achievers do their best? How much are we willing to sacrifice in either direction?

> are we willing to sacrifice helping them do better to help the top achievers do their best

It's not clear to me that separating more talented kids into their own groups and classes hurts less talented kids. What is your thinking here?

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#75

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

jstewartmobile wrote: post #37

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, homeschool should be considered as at least an option if you care about your childrens' education. The rest of the parent comment is paranoid drivel, which I do not endorse.

did you go to public school? an ordinary one?

Some of the time. Define "ordinary".

Also state why you think that's a relevant question.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#76

Post by tyjen » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:06 AM UTC

hackerrenews wrote: post #9

I was fourth picked for g&t. First and second pick ended up being quite successful, as did the third picked. One has a high up, prestigious position at Amazon and the other retired from Microsoft wealthy. Me, I smoke weed and that’s about the only thing I’ve really done consistently since high school.. more consistently than music, and programming, even. Frankly, I wish I had been better separated from the other kids…

This anecdote resonates with the experiences encountered by my child. What's interesting about our case is that we move every 2-4 years and experience five different states and school districts--all public schools. For reference, our child ordinarily tests in the 99th percentile for the normal battery of tests the school psychologists administered.

A Hawaiian school did not offer a G&T program due to a lack of funding for it. Participating in the normal classroom changed her to the point that it contributed to withdrawing her from school and we instead opted to home school. Coming from the mainland, Hawaii's general curriculum was behind and she became bored, faced relentless bullying from peers for being a "...know it all haole...," and found it difficult to make friends. She often came home with stories regarding the teacher spending significant time dealing with behavioral issues, negatively impacting instruction to the few children looking to learn. The teacher was also culpable for practicing a less engaging and micromanaging teaching style involving smothering children with worksheets during the school day, and forcing parents to initial all assignments and fill out learning logs at night. The teacher treated learning like a chore instead of a fun discovery process, and it killed her curiosity and motivation. After she was assaulted at her bus stop, we pulled her from school.

Fortunately, we only lived in Hawaii for a short time period and I was capable of taking a hiatus from professional life to home school her until we moved from Hawaii. We involved her in local home school groups to facilitate like-minded friendships and the customized, self-paced curriculum enabled her to make substantial strides in her subjects. Thankfully the damage done to her was temporary and she resumed her happy normal curious behavior.

In every other school with a G&T program, she has fit in and flourished. Good teachers, friends, and personal growth on her part. Not acknowledging that people have different aptitudes and motivations, then forcing them to learn from a cookie-cutter styled teaching program is a defunct social experiment gone awry. In our Hawaii case, it seemed like crabs in a bucket when it came to peer bullying. I get it, you're only as strong as your weak is a decent metaphor, but sometimes people and institutions are taking this concept to a degree that forces others down instead of boosting people up. I'm just guessing from personal experiences, but mixing students of all abilities appears to generate a net negative social welfare outcome.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#77

Post by marcusverus » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:07 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #60

How do we help those kids that are in 'gen pop', though? Simply pulling the smarter kids out, helping them, and ignoring the rest doesn't seem like a good answer, either. I feel like HN is not the best place for this sort of discussion, since everyone is coming at the problem from the perspective of the high achiever. The low achievers deserve help, too.

I don't think anyone is advocating for 'ignoring the rest'. The point is to prevent 'the rest' from setting the pace of development for everyone. You can't optimize educational outcomes for the full spectrum of human beings, from the no-effort types with an IQ of 85, to motivated types with IQs of 115+, in a single classroom with a single curriculum. It just does not make sense.

If anything, separating high, medium, and low achievers and allowing them to move at their own pace seems like a preferable situation for everyone.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#78

Post by empath75 » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #10

I have to say that this result is wildly different from my experience and that of my children. It's boring to sit in class redoing a simple math problem just because someone wants to detrack math. A friend of mine who is a teacher says that he has MORE discipline problems from the smart kids who aren't challenged enough. The real secret should be to embrace independent, computer-mediated systems like Khan Academy. Ev…

I think they’d do better by taking the kids who understand the material and asking them to work with the kids who don’t. You learn as much by teaching as doing, if not more.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#79

Post by vanniv » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

This (opinion) article seems to be making the claim that separating out all of the top kids makes the group not selected perform worse.

(The measurement of "achievement" used is percentage of students failing a rudimentary algebra class and percentage of students enrolling in an advanced mathematics class)

This seems uncontroversial -- the smart kids will benefit the rest by their presence, and being labelled as not-smart probably doesn't help achievement very much.

But the purpose of separating out the really gifted kids was never for the benefit of the folks that couldn't cut it -- it was for the benefit of the gifted kids so that they could actually achieve at the level of their ability.

It seems to me quite uncontroversial that removing all of the disruptive kids and eliminating all of the remedial study time would aid students that are both interested and able to achieve.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#80

Post by underpand » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #51

nine_k wrote: post #24

I'd just hazard to say that the current school system is not very functional. It puts kids through a lot of unpleasant experiences, requiring to exert a lot of effort and spend a lot of time. The problem is that not so much of that effort, discomfort, and time is due to learning new and useful stuff. Instead, some kids waste time bored when they are ahead of the class, some waste time clueless when they are way behin…

I always feel like my most valuable lessons from school was about how to live and interact with people of different types. I learned academic stuff outside of school... it was learning to deal with dumb people, bullies, smart jerks, dumb teachers, stupid rules, etc that were the lessons most important to my life.

It depends on your support system when you're a kid/teen. Facing stress and challenges when you're unable to handle them can cause irreversible trauma. Some people would be better off learning to face them when they are adults.