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[penguinofhonor]

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[scriver]

Maybe it's intellectual elitism, but my attitude in general is "fuck your dumbass kids". I'm sympathetic to kids who want to learn and genuinely struggle. I have zero use for kids who have decided that they don't want to be there (often reinforced by parental attitudes towards learning) and just want to fuck it up for those who do.

It's not elitism as much as it's the standard "fuck you, got mine" asolidarity in action.

[TheDarkStar]

I definitely support having a a track for the upper and lower ends of the spectrum. Not splitting classes leaves a sizable group unhappy with school (either it's confusing or boring), but split classes allow teachers to better teach their students. However, the problem that still needs to be resolved is the fact that being in the "dumb" classes is demotivating and doesn't pressure those students to improve.

[Bauglir]

Flaw that's occurred to me with what I'm proposing - pushy parents will pile their kids into STEM stuff if there's a limit on how many "advanced" class you can take, because it's "prestigious", so those kids are still getting screwed and now they're being deprived of anything outside that area.

Thoughts?

Re: Tracks - has literally anybody actually been reading my posts, or have I been in tl;dr mode this whole time? If so, please tell me - I'll try to be more concise.

[Antsan]

I've read it and it makes sense to me.

[Dutchling]

In the Netherlands every kid makes a test when they're in the last year of elementary school which, along with advice from the teacher and preference of the parents, decides which level of high school the kid can follow.

Does something similar not exist in the States?

[Descan]

There's only one level of high school in the states, have you not been paying attention?

[Redzephyr01]

Does something similar not exist in the States?

Nope.

[Bauglir]

Oh, yeah, hell no. There's no formal branching. Some high schools will have Honors classes or AP classes (which are essentially the same thing, but with a national, standardized test you can take for sometimes college credit), which you can substitute for the ordinary variety of the same class. Sometimes there will be something like a GPA requirement or something but mostly it's up to the kid's choice of which to register for (read: often the parent's choice).

In terms of self-selected splitting up by academic ability, that's actually fairly close to what I've been harping on about, but it's far from universal in the States, and as applied it tends to segregate student bodies into cleanly-split Honors/not groups when it is available. Also, my experience with it was at a fairly good high school, just under a decade ago (and my understanding is that the system's been increasingly crippled every year), and they suffered from all the other problems that have been rambled about. I doubt it's exactly representative of the current situation.

[Redzephyr01]

AP classes are basically college level classes that you take in highschool.

[BurnedToast]

Maybe it's intellectual elitism, but my attitude in general is "fuck your dumbass kids". I'm sympathetic to kids who want to learn and genuinely struggle. I have zero use for kids who have decided that they don't want to be there (often reinforced by parental attitudes towards learning) and just want to fuck it up for those who do.

The other side of the argument is that bright children with supportive parents will probably succeed regardless, and money spent on AP and honors classes just lets the winners get further ahead, while those most in need of help fall even further behind in a vicious cycle that creates a permanent, self-perpetuating lower class.

But I guess "fuck your dumbass kids" sounds great when you're the guy on top.

[RedKing]

Although to be fair, it's more like college has been dumbed down to where first-year courses are just kinda AP high school.

Seriously, most international students that come to the US for baccalaureate study get into their freshman courses and go, "WTF? I learned this two years ago in gymnasium/sixth form/etc."

This is one of the reasons why Obama's proposal for two free years of community college is so compelling. The first two years at major universities is usually spent getting the prerequisites out of the way, and frankly Statistics 101 at Harvard isn't going to be that much different than Statistics 101 at County Community College, other than the pricetag.

Maybe it's intellectual elitism, but my attitude in general is "fuck your dumbass kids". I'm sympathetic to kids who want to learn and genuinely struggle. I have zero use for kids who have decided that they don't want to be there (often reinforced by parental attitudes towards learning) and just want to fuck it up for those who do.

It's not elitism as much as it's the standard "fuck you, got mine" asolidarity in action.

No, it's more "fuck you, my kids are going to get theirs". I dealt with waaaaay too much bullshit from other kids who actively hated learning and anyone who was good at it. If there's a way to firewall them off from the bright kids, then I'm all for it. I'm not saying that once someone's in the "dumb" track that there shouldn't be opportunities for them to learn, and even to test up and out of that track each year if they try hard. But the ones who just see school as something to skip so they can go get baked with their friends or a way to practice extortion and coercion at an early age....fuck 'em. We'll always need someone to flip burgers.

That's one of the beauties of college -- because it costs money, people who really don't want to be there tend not to stick around. And most professors have a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit behavior.

[Bauglir]

I'm really not okay with implementing the basic premise of a thousand shitty animes as a patch for a real-world school system, RedKing. You're going to be fucking over way too many kids who're borderline on whatever exams you happen to pick, if absolutely nothing else. Sure, they can "try and get better", but after being officially classified as stupid, how many do you think are going to internalize that and become exactly the sort of little monsters you want walled off? Kids' personalities aren't set in stone - there is literally no more formative time than childhood.

[UXLZ]

What I really hate about the system so much is that it drags everyone to the 'average' point. The people who could have been absolutely amazing and gone on to cure cancer/aids/invent things/solve Global Warming? They just become someone of above-average intelligence. The kids who who have trouble get so much time and energy invested in them to bring them up to the 'average.' The teachers are forced to teach to the lowest common denominator. Yes, I think I would have been sent to one of those 'super-special smart schools', but only back then. Now? I'm just someone of above-average ability.

There's a reason I loved the internet (particularly forums like this place) so much when I was 13. I could find people who were 17, or 20, or 23, and in these places, I could talk to those people about things I wanted to talk about, and they could talk back. For the first time in my life, if I wanted to talk about something interesting like philosophy, religion, mathematics, human emotions, space programs, I could.

It's worth noting that I think (almost, genetics can screw people over with learning disabilities and such) anyone can be 'smart'. The 'dumb' people just haven't been taught the right way, or have the wrong parents, or were given the wrong idea of school earlier on in their life.

[SalmonGod]

It's hard for me not to sort of agree with Redking, given my school experiences.  Even though I'm usually not in favor of anything resembling elitism.

My family moved out to a really small backwoods area when I was 8 years old where there was zero intellectual culture and the education system was total shit.  Before this, I was both a smart kid and an over-achiever.  I loved school and excelled at everything.  Here, I was immediately singled out from the rest of the class to the point of having zero positive social interaction for years (tolerated at best) and never challenged academically (even when put in advanced programs).  I was in this school system for 8 years. 

The simple fact of having a place where they can meet other kids that are like them makes a huge difference in their mental health. I have heard stories from people where the simple fact that they finally got the chance to meet other people that were like them has literally saved their lives by improving their mental health.

This happened with me, except the thing that saved my life was the internet.  And by the time this happened, I'd been 5 years ostracized and unchallenged.  I thought school was a joke, and put minimal effort into most things.  I'd do no homework and pay little attention in class, but ace tests.  I was in really bad shape when I found the internet and becoming socially self-destructive - hanging around with stupid people that took advantage of my desperation.  But suddenly I had new opportunities to intellectually challenge myself.  It was so easy to find interesting information, have interesting discussions with interesting people from all over the world, and make friends that were as geeky as I.  But it also made the school I was going to look REALLY REALLY stupid to me, especially when I started stumbling on examples of bad information being fed to me by horribly outdated textbooks and bad teachers, and I became even more disinterested than I was before.  I only just started getting better in my senior year, and ridiculously high placement on my SAT scores got me easily into college despite most of my grades being average or below for the last few years.

But I also kind of wonder if personality didn't have more to do with it.  U.S. schools are structured in a way that extremely disadvantages introverts and abstract/conceptual-style thinkers.  Looking back on it, I can recognize now how a lot of my problems had to do with the way my personality clashed with and was easily preyed on by others, and focusing on my geeky weirdness to ostracize me was just a really convenient way for that to manifest.  I could and probably would have done a lot more independent learning, but this heavily discouraged my interest in doing so.  There were also other kids in the class that I should have paid more attention to that I only recognize in retrospect, because the whole class was always together with the more dominant personality types always present, making themselves the focus of everyone's attention all the time.  I think it would have a really positive impact if those kids were given their own space to thrive in and reinforce each other once in a while.

There's a reason I loved the internet (particularly forums like this place) so much when I was 13. I could find people who were 17, or 20, or 23, and in these places, I could talk to those people about things I wanted to talk about, and they could talk back. For the first time in my life, if I wanted to talk about something interesting like philosophy, religion, mathematics, human emotions, space programs, I could.

It's worth noting that I think (almost, genetics can screw people over with learning disabilities and such) anyone can be 'smart'. The 'dumb' people just haven't been taught the right way, or have the wrong parents, or were given the wrong idea of school earlier on in their life.

Ninja'd!  I think we're having very similar thoughts here.  I also think most dumb kids just haven't had information presented to them in a way that motivates them or penetrates the way they process information.  I've met very few people who I believe are actually stupid.  Almost everyone turns out to be capable of proving great intelligence on some subject, and there is always a story behind how that subject captured their attention and clicked with them.  Just look at the way so many people talk about sports.  So many people most would consider stupid that could write a fucking dissertation with the amount of information and analysis they put into that interest.