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[UXLZ]

I doubt that there are any children that like it, either.

[Antsan]

That's why I propose an open school without classes and lectures where the teachers task is to make sure that the environment is fit for children feeling good about learning. If every child is learning what it wants either way, the individual differences become so big that the formation of groups becomes less pronounced as the children in those groups are more diverse.

We'll always need someone to flip burgers.

No we don't.
I see the purpose of the job I am learning in making jobs like that superfluous, as they are normally degrading and mind-destroying.
Flipping burgers without any kind of ingenuity or creativity definitely is a job that needs to die.

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.

What. So, everyone who really wants to will just have the money? Yeah, no, not really. While there may be people who are willing to destroy their health for college I very strongly think destroying your health shouldn't be mandatory for anything, especially not education.

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

I have been mobbed continuously from first to tenth class. Guess what: When the people who did that grew older they mostly became decent people.

Yes, I realize that childhood and teenage years are a time when kids make terrible decisions, and this could be penalizing some kids who aren't bad, they just have a shitty home life and bad parents and are craving attention. NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM. We can't save every family from itself, especially not at the cost of dragging down truly gifted children just so everyone can feel like a special snowflake.

It's not your personal fucking problem, but it's societies personal fucking problem and school is a societal and not your personal fucking matter. And unfortunately for you you and your kids will have to deal with the results of that education whether they go to the same schools or not.
Today teachers are trained in teaching only. That were fine if they had support by people who are trained in dealing with disruptive children.

Now....there is a radically different alternative to this, which I think can and does work but only under a narrow set of circumstances. You spread the "disruptive" kids out so that there's only one per class, and you spread out the bright kids to a few per class. If there's no audience for the class clowns' bullshit, they'll rein it in. And the brighter kids will often welcome the chance to help their peers, IF they're not going to get teased and mocked for it. This is the situation currently in my daughter's elementary school class and it works well. The teacher actually moves her around the classroom every month or so because they've noticed improvement in behavior and academics in the kids sitting around her. Smart kids *can* bring up the whole class, if given a healthy atmosphere in which to do so. Which means thinning out the disruptive kids as much as possible. But this only works if the number of disruptive kids is low enough that you can thin it out to that level. When you have major portions of the student body coming from low socio-economic strata and where a culture of failure and disregard for school is already entrenched, this isn't going to work. Honestly, I don't know what the solution is in situations like that, short of some kind of indoctrination camp where you completely reprogram the kids and rip them out of that culture of failure. (and that's not some kind of coded racism thing...it's equally apt for white trash kids as it is ghetto/barrio kids).

And you really think the best way to deal with social entrapment is to ignore it?

[Arx]

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.

What. So, everyone who really wants to will just have the money? Yeah, no, not really. While there may be people who are willing to destroy their health for college I very strongly think destroying your health shouldn't be mandatory for anything, especially not education.

That's not his point. His point is that if someone doesn't want to be in school, their parents will send them anyway because it's free (I think? It's not here), but if they don't want to be in university they won't go because they or their parents would have to pay.

It's true that people without money can't always get into college, but not immediately related.

[Antsan]

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.

What. So, everyone who really wants to will just have the money? Yeah, no, not really. While there may be people who are willing to destroy their health for college I very strongly think destroying your health shouldn't be mandatory for anything, especially not education.

That's not his point. His point is that if someone doesn't want to be in school, their parents will send them anyway because it's free (I think? It's not here), but if they don't want to be in university they won't go because they or their parents would have to pay.

It's true that people without money can't always get into college, but not immediately related.

It might not be his point, but it's still an unavoidable consequence and not even one you need to think very hard about to realize it is one.

[wobbly]

And then you get 'smart' Year 8s going into a class with average Year 9s and 'dumb' year 10s... Who proceed to make the class hell for the 9s and 8s.

^^^
THIS.

When I was in 8th grade, they decided I wasn't challenged enough so they shipped me over to the high school next door one period a day to take Biology (typically a 9th grade subject). While the material was more challenging, it also made me stick out that much more like a sore thumb socially. You had high schoolers who were that much more miffed that a kid not even in high school was doing better at this than they were. And you had middle schoolers who wondered what the fuck I did to get to go to high school a year early (I wondered that myself...wasn't like I tested into a program or anything). The fact that it was just me, and no one else from my class of like 500 8th graders,(several of whom were just as bright or brighter) created resentment from that end. So while I learned more, it made my peer interaction that much more miserable.

On the other hand I wasn't accelerated & was still treated like shit growing up, so I don't see how this is a change from how the situation is anyways for bright kids. Interestingly enough in year 12 (17-18 years old here) we had a 12 year old in our classes. He wasn't picked on in class just because the difference is enough that it would of been adults picking on a little kid. Now you can argue that he never got a normal social upbringing because of this. I seriously doubt he would of anyways. I know I didn't.

[Bauglir]

Surely dismantling an age-based system for determining where you're supposed to be would be a good thing, then, RedKing?

[RedKing]

I don't know that it would be any better. Children in a certain age range (about 8 to 16) are, for the most part, pack animals. The social behavior is shockingly analogous to wolves, with alphas, betas and omegas and a propensity to prey on the weak and those without a sufficent "pack". Mixing up the ages a bit more wouldn't change the behavior, and it would expose the younger bright children to that much more potential abuse.

I think the core problem is that industrialized learning is sub-optimal at either end of the spectrum. Very bright kids might benefit more from a pedagogue/private tutor, the way children of nobility used to be educated. And the ones who are struggling the hardest would also be best served by an individual teacher and a setting which removes them from peers who would reinforce bad behavior. It's no coincidence that public schools and the Industrial Revolution are roughly concurrent in history. But achieving that takes far more money than governments are willing to invest, and creates a problem whereby the kids in the middle feel shafted (and probably rightly so). The smart kids get individual teachers, the dumb kids get individual teachers, and the normal kids get corralled together in classes of 40 and get almost no individual attention. So it's still not a fair outcome for everyone. I don't think there IS a fair outcome for everyone possible, which is why I'm focused on maximal outcomes rather than equality.

Or someone can invent RoboTeacher 2020 and then every kid can have their own teacher. Until one of them figures out how to hack it so that their homework assignment is to surf for porn.

[SalmonGod]

So any thoughts on the alternative approach I brought up?  Because we've had a ton of conversation now about how the social environment of school has a massive impact on its educational value, and everyone seems to agree that it is an issue.

I think that what we normally think of as a classroom and the way information is typically presented is designed primarily for certain personalities and styles of thinking, disadvantaging anyone who doesn't fit in with that.  I do believe that the perception of smart and dumb kids and over/under-achievers is often a product how they fit into the environment that school has forced them into.

So instead of worrying so much about sorting things by ability level, how about focusing instead on providing alternative classroom environments, and allowing kids to find the one that clicks best with them?
For example, you have your classroom where the teaching style is based more on lectures and direct interaction with the teacher and other students, and all the students sit together in a tight array of desks like in your typical U.S. classroom.
But then you also have a classroom where the teaching style is based more on reading and approaching the teacher or even other students individually when something doesn't make sense to you, and the students sit more spread out from each other, with maybe dimmer lights and optional closed off sections and such.
And don't let those environments stay completely separate, because people have to learn how to get along with each other... but as I said before, I imagine things could have been a lot different for me if I'd been given more opportunity to explore who I was in this fashion and notice others like me, instead of being terminally held under the influence of personalities that dominated the setting I was trapped in.

I know that ever since that one girl managed to bring a lot of attention to the subject with her Ted talk and book on introversion, there's been a lot of chatter lately about how workplaces and schools could be re-designed to better accomodate introverts.  I should have a look around and see what sort of stuff people have been suggesting.

[TheDarkStar]

Even if that fixed some things, there would still be bored smart people.

[Antsan]

I know that ever since that one girl managed to bring a lot of attention to the subject with her Ted talk and book on introversion, there's been a lot of chatter lately about how workplaces and schools could be re-designed to better accomodate introverts.  I should have a look around and see what sort of stuff people have been suggesting.

You have a link?

I still maintain that a lecture-less and class-less school isn't worse in terms of education and much better in terms of keeping children mentally healthy.

[Graknorke]

I still maintain that a lecture-less and class-less school isn't worse in terms of education and much better in terms of keeping children mentally healthy.

So what would the school be doing in that situation, exactly?

[ArKFallen]

I still maintain that a lecture-less and class-less school isn't worse in terms of education and much better in terms of keeping children mentally healthy.

So what would the school be doing in that situation, exactly?

Being a library?

[Frumple]

Being a library, providing tutors, structure, resources... connections with other organizations, etc.

And SG, I've too much of a headache at the moment to comment (and will probably forget to later), but I could probably have been convinced to kill in my youth if it would have gotten those goddamn florescents replaced with less strident lighting. Even just turned off and opening the blinds would have been an incredible improvement.

[i2amroy]

That's not his point. His point is that if someone doesn't want to be in school, their parents will send them anyway because it's free (I think? It's not here), but if they don't want to be in university they won't go because they or their parents would have to pay.

Where I'm at you are literally required by law to either be a registered home-school student or going to a school from the point you get to kindergarten all of the way up until you hit high school. It's an effect of having nigh-free (and if you have economic problems, totally free) public schools available.

I definitely like the idea SalmonGod, but I think it might run into the same problem as many of the more "individualized" approaches; the fact that the old rich people without children don't want to pay money for schools.

[SalmonGod]

I definitely like the idea SalmonGod, but I think it might run into the same problem as many of the more "individualized" approaches; the fact that the old rich people without children don't want to pay money for schools.

As mentioned before, though, any improvement to the education system is going to have that problem.  What we have right now in most places is the absolute cheapest approach to public education possible, which doesn't leave much space for things to be any different.