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

281–290 of 390 posts

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#281

Post by urahara »

jlebar wrote: post #137
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…

Perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to engage with the scientific literature cited in this article? These arguments are considered. Indeed, even in TFA: > Failing to provide an appropriate education for students who are gifted increases the risk of mental health issues, boredom, frustration, developing behavioural problems both at school and at home, leading to disengagement and dropping out of school. > When thes…

These arguments seem to be true, but I'm sure there are similar facts telling us that without smart kids around other kids can be harmed in similar ways. So it is kind of smart kids well being against other kids well being. So why smart kids well being should be more important than others? Especially taking into account that smart kids tend to have better families and opportunities to get what they need without going to special schools, while "dumb" kids are often "dumb" because they have no choice and their need for support is more urgent.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#282

Post by justin_vanw »

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…

>> I think you'll find that parents are very uninterested in your theories of social engineering [cite needed]

How can I find a citation for a my own statement that I believe something?

Are you under the impression that the comments section of HN is a scholarly journal where all claims are documented? I notice that you don't ask for citations for any of the claims in this thread that you agree with, so your demands for citations are really just an obnoxious lack of argument.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#283

Post by hydrogen18 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #178
zepto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense - you are proposing restricting the options of high performers so that they don't make self interested choices. Why not restrict the choices of low performers instead?

Because with this definition of the problem, the "low performers" don't have options to restrict. My point, as applied to this case, is that giving the option of "smart-only schools" will predictably lead to people taking it, which may lead to issues described by 'habosa here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483591 . It's a reasonable question to ask if this is what is beneficial to the society (including its…

Then why not just rephrase the problem, so the "low performers" can simply be removed from the education system entirely? That's what you're proposing when you tell someone gifted they can't have education that _actually educates_ them.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#284

Post by codingdave »

Should they get tailored education? Certainly. Does that mean different schools? I'm not qualified to say, probably. I know I've seen programs recently where gifted students ended up mentoring their peers, thereby learning the material even better, and all students are lifted to a higher level. That seems like a pretty cool solution to me. But I'm not a professional educator, so I don't know what all the possible solutions are. But I do think that holding up just one possible answer for just one group of students and asking a yes/no question of whether that answer is correct is probably not looking at a big enough picture for all children.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#285

Post by jlebar »

urahara wrote: post #281
jlebar wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to engage with the scientific literature cited in this article? These arguments are considered. Indeed, even in TFA: > Failing to provide an appropriate education for students who are gifted increases the risk of mental health issues, boredom, frustration, developing behavioural problems both at school and at home, leading to disengagement and dropping out of school. > When thes…

These arguments seem to be true, but I'm sure there are similar facts telling us that without smart kids around other kids can be harmed in similar ways. So it is kind of smart kids well being against other kids well being. So why smart kids well being should be more important than others? Especially taking into account that smart kids tend to have better families and opportunities to get what they need without going…

> I'm sure there are similar facts telling us that without smart kids around other kids can be harmed in similar ways

My point is that rather than assuming things we think are probably are true, we should try to argue from data. Especially since people have studied this, both professionally and experimentally.

I can think of plenty of ways that your argument might not be true. For example, per TFA, if gifted kids act up or intentionally tank themselves in "regular school", then maybe it's worse for everyone for the gifted kids to be in "regular school".

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. But rather than making guesses based on nothing but our gut, why don't we consider the experts' studies and opinions?

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#287

Post by jasode »

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 2 points in his timeline, he was in highschool when he should have been in middle school, etc.)

Should the young Terence Tao regardless of intelligence be denied the ability to "remove" himself from the school he is "supposed" to go so that other kids can benefit from his intellect? If at age 8, he's pulled from regular school to attend high school instead, are his parents selfish?

Is there a political movement to force all geniuses to stay with their age group and normally assigned school to fulfill a societal goal?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao

[2] http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Tao.h...

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#289

Post by crushton »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123
hawkice wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We go to school not just to be educated but to educate each other. If we're smart, we set an example to kids near us who don't feel that way. Hopefully, those who aren't labelled 'smart' gain from the presence of 'smart' students and 'smart' students gain from theirs. So, if we trap the geeks where they can be bullied and beaten, they'll understand what the real world is like better? I'll be real with you, I've nev…

Even if you were to create a special "school for smart people only" and magically teleport all geeks there, I wouldn't be sure it would eliminate the problem of geeks being bullied. Bullying seems to be an emergent thing that comes up naturally in the sort of environment a school is - as long as kids have a "hierarchy of popularity", there will be some people at the bottom of it, and those are your bullying targets.…

Intellectual bullying is also a thing. Having the social intelligence not to be bullied or to form strategic alliances with bullies is useful and less likely to happen for these precious gifted geeks if they are placed together in an unrealistic safe haven. We are all in this world together. If anyone on this thread believes IQ determines social value they need to be bullied a bit more.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#290

Post by LordKano »

John23832 wrote: post #258
LordKano wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just make schools better for all, rather than replicating the educational resource hoarding that takes place in private schools? Because we have working models for high performing specialty schools. We already have endless infighting about improving every school. And how do you define "better"? Is it a lower teacher to student ratio? Higher average test scores? Graduation percentage? Percentage of graduating…

> Because we have working models for high performing specialty schools. So just because? >"And how do you define "better"? Is it a lower teacher to student ratio? Higher average test scores? Graduation percentage? Percentage of graduating seniors accepted at 4 year colleges? Some other measure?" There is no "better" for everyone. Rather than just segregating students (and requiring more teachers resources etc.), work…

So just because?

Because we know it can be done and how to do it.

Have different classes at different speeds.

We already have that. Education is more than a series of classes. It's the social interactions too.

However, to say that segregation of kids should be the norm is a dangerous. IMO reckless.

I find it dangerous, reckless and disingenuous for you to use a loaded term like "segregation".

Post reply on HN