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[TheBiggerFish]

We should spin off the education debate, this isn't really politics anymore.

[wierd]

I disagree. The issue of the failing educational system is a very salient political topic.

[penguinofhonor]

I never see it phrased in specific teaching policies or anything. It's more like... denying the Good Ones the Special Attention they deserve is the most terrible thing that a teacher can do. With that mindset, of course you've got to spend a lot of time sorting the Good from the Bad. Misidentifying a Good One is literally your worst possible mistake. Who even cares about the Chaff?

[wierd]

Granted, my experience is from podunk USA, where the school population was very low-- but:

My big problem was that the school had certain... materialistic needs.. that were predicated on meeting federal competency requirements, coupled with students that were academically lazy, due to a complete lack of consequences on their part.

For instance, the school could fail to meet mandated grade scores if the students were graded accurately. This placed a strong bias pressure on teachers and administrators to concoct testing scenarios that would incorrectly pass students that totally did not understand the subject matter (tm) as those that Totally Did Understand(tm).

To maintain the charade, those students that Totally Did Understand, and did so legitimately, were often saddled with a large number of other students who did not, and given "Group activitites", so that the contribution of those "Good ones" would bring up the aggregate scores of those that did not, allowing them to pass, and for the school to stay funded.

Nothing sucks the life out of school like being burdened in this way-- Either for teachers, or for the students.

Instead, I feel that identifying students that would benefit from supplementary education is not only a good idea, but is essential. It profits nobody, NOBODY, to find clever ways to pass these students through the system, just so the school can stay funded. Likewise, it does not profit the lower-achievers to put the brainiac with them-- because understanding is not transmissible. (It has to be built on, and the empirical fact that the brainiac picked up the material quickly while the lower-achiever did not, indicates that they have different basic understandings from which to grow to the desired level. What makes sense to the brainiac is confounding to the others. It is not good to pair them up.)

Underlying this whole problem is the philosophical notion that all students are essentially equal. They aren't. Life experiences, interests, personality quirks-- everything-- all conspire to determine if a specific, individual student is going to take to a specific topic with ease, or with difficulty.  Treating all students like tabula rasa is bullshit.

Identifying those in need of more aggressive search for underlying understanding nuggets to build from, so that they can get that attention, is in everyone's interest.

But for some reason, politicians and parents alike consider this to be a bad thing, and I can't for the life of me understand why.

[Rolan7]

Jeez the hosts can't emphasize enough just how civil and nice and mature the candidates were this time around.  Typical FOX -
oh right this is CNN

Well done "liberal" media, keep... [being nice] to the conservatives.

[Vector]

Well, because last time, Binet intelligence testing turned into Yerkes-Goddard intelligence testing, and we responded to the aggressive social Darwinism with "LOL everyone is the same," which is now leading to the viewpoint of "the worst possible thing you can do is fail to separate wheat and chaff for the sake of the wheat."

I had a similar experience to wierd, in an area that required mainstreaming of kids that had severe behavioral or intellectual difficulties. I was informed that it would be a "learning experience" to be sat with kids who, for example, would spend their entire class hour hitting me. I certainly learned something, true--mostly to hate school. I don't think that the kids I was babysitting learned anything much at all.

[wierd]

As SouthPark taught us:

Violence is OK, as long as nobody says any naughty words.

[wierd]

Well, because last time, Binet intelligence testing turned into Yerkes-Goddard intelligence testing, and we responded to the aggressive social Darwinism with "LOL everyone is the same," which is now leading to the viewpoint of "the worst possible thing you can do is fail to separate wheat and chaff for the sake of the wheat."

I had a similar experience to wierd, in an area that required mainstreaming of kids that had severe behavioral or intellectual difficulties. I was informed that it would be a "learning experience" to be sat with kids who, for example, would spend their entire class hour hitting me. I certainly learned something, true--mostly to hate school. I don't think that the kids I was babysitting learned anything much at all.

The thing is, the view that is evolving is WRONG.

I dispute that there really is "chaff."

There's wheat that easily processes, and there is wheat that needs a little extra drying first.  Identifying the wheat that needs to dry out a bit first, so it doesnt spoil the easily processed wheat with mildew and rot, is important. But throwing it away wholesale is wasteful and stupid.

[Descan]

everything vector has said implies to me that they think "wheat from the chaff" is obviously wrong

hence the quotation marks around it always and the implied sarcasm it resides in

[wierd]

I did not mean to imply that there was a disagreement between Vector and myself; more, where I disagreed with the popular view.

I suppose that most parents dont want to accept that their child is one having difficulty picking up educational material-- They view it as a personal attack against their home environment, and a number of other personal matters, rather than viewing it objectively as what is actually best for their child. As a consequence, the idea that "It's all the teacher's fault that Timmy cant do fractions!" is very popular.  Rather than going "OMG, Timmy can't do fractions! How can we help Timmy?!", they want to remove blame from themselves first and foremost.

That's entirely supposition though. I don't actually know that.  It would be a terrible shame if it were the truth.

[sprinkled chariot]

You, guys, get to use calculators in school?

[Vector]

You, guys, get to use calculators in school?

When I was in school, we only used calculators for real-world modeling, up until we needed them for trigonometry, and we weren't allowed to have them for the first half of our exams at any point; this strongly motivated us to keep up our mental math skills, AND to learn how to use a calculator well. Then, in college, I completely stopped using a calculator

Schools are recently changing so that kids are allowed to use calculators for any kind of computation, starting in elementary school. In other words, instead of teaching computation, they are teaching how to use a calculator.

Of course, some folks in this thread have suggested that this shouldn't be such a big deal, but I really do think that it's a problem, at least when it comes to learning math as it has traditionally been conceived.

[Rose]

Here in india, calculators were barred from our 10-th grade standardized exams, but were allowed in our 12th.

Dunno what it is now, though. that was 10 years ago.

[sprinkled chariot]

Here in school calculators are pretty much banned, unless it is physics, statistics, theory of probabilities. Math teacher will straight up tell you, that using calculator will make you stupid, so that is why I want you to make all your calculations on paper, as this will also help me to see, how you got the answer.

[Vector]

Yeah, exactly. It used to be the same thing here (at least where I'm from), but now it's changing.