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Hello,
I would like schools to have two admission periods every year in order to ensure children in a given class are closer to each other in age when they begin school than they tend to be today.
Are there schools in your country that do this? Do you know how it's worked?
I wish Florida/America did this.
Ocean misses the deadline by less than a week. She is also in the top 95% for her height.
So not only will she be the oldest, she'll be the biggest kid in her class.
Retarded.
it's great for her but probably awful for the tiny shrimps she will inevitably marginalise
I think it's not a particularly good idea, really. Maturity and learning ability are not based on age.
i think it's a great idea because i hate the relative age effect.
Her size alone will no doubt bring the rumors of "she must have failed!", throw in her age and its a done deal. That will no doubt not help her socialize.
And she is an incredibly smart little girl. The daycare we had her in put her in the VPK program at no charge cause she was more content with them than the younger kids.
I was larger and more grown up than most kids in elementary and middle school. I was asked once in a while by friends on mine if I had ever repeated a grade and the answer "no" was always sufficient. Rumors about me never came around so I think she's okQuote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Is there nothing you can do about this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
I don't know what the system's like in the US, but it's not that rare here to join the year above you (if the child seems capable).
A very interesting idea.
Not true. Gladwell cites some studies in Outliers, and makes very good points.Quote:
Originally Posted by littlelolligagged
I was the opposite; I made it into school before I turned 5 because I barely met the limit. So, I've been one of the younger people in my grade all the way through. I didn't look it though due to my height! :) I can't imagine how weird it would have been to have to wait another year to enroll in grade school.
i was thinking more about how they interact with classmates and teachers than about how they'll do on tests of learning, or how "mature" they are.
this is one if the more thought-provoking things gladwell brought up in his book! i think loki should read it!
and ogre too
if he reads
Same here, I think.Quote:
Originally Posted by Discord
And allowing admission twice a year also increases the amount of teachers you need, which is already strained.
Gifted testing doesn't really exist anymore, and with that all avenues to push for skipping ahead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Discord
Funny, it does here. Guess Georgia schools are better than something, after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Pretty sure I've mentioned that before :pQuote:
Originally Posted by littlelolligagged
Its got a lot to do with how the lottery supplements your system, while in Florida the lottery is used as a replacement, freeing up funds to be spent elsewhere. Georgia has one of the better funded educational systems in the country.
Florida still has "advanced" groupings, but thats at the teacher's call. No more 3rd party testing like I had to do.
Are you out of your mind? Georgia has one of the worst educational systems in the country - although since we do it by county some are actually better than others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Lottery pays for pre-k and Hope scholarships, so the benefit in that is that anyone who can make a B average in high school has the opportunity to go to college.
kind of interesting:
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/
I forgot a rather important word in there. Its funded nicely, but how thats used and distributed, especially among urban schools has a lot to do with Georgia's social atmosphere.
so make more teachers! DUHQuote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
what's so great about having a "gifted" system??
How old are you?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
So people get taught to their skill level, instead of forcing teachers to teach to the lowest common denominator?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
:up:Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Entertaingly enough, the gifted program in Georgia schools also qualifies as "special ed."
pff why's that such a great thing? such a damn' rush just to get to uni a couple of years ahead of your mates from kindergarten, sheeshQuote:
Originally Posted by Loki
i'm 24Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
make more teachers
by making more spots for teaching students at uni
and raising teacher salaries
using lots of more money
which you can get by convincing the taxpayers that teaching kids is important
It doesn't actually generally involve skipping grades - just providing gifted kids with work that actually holds their interest. To, you know, keep them from being completely bored all day in school.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Math isn't your guys' specialty, is it? :noob: If you have 2 admissions cycles per year, then each cycle would have half the students, meaning that it would require half the teachers. Overall, the amount of teachers needed would remain the same.
Yeah, we should strive to breed mediocrity, and bore talented students to death by giving them unchallenging work. That's a great recipe for creating great minds and getting the smartest kids to take school seriously.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Depends on your schools, really. My high school, and elementary school, I usually had only one class of my 'level' in my year (sortof like an advanced program). So there you would need to double the amount of teachers. Bigger schools would have less trouble with this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
On the other hand, it would spread out the use of resources, which is an advantage. And if you for some reason (illness, for example) miss a significant part of a year, you could be set back half a year instead of an entire year.
College would also have to have two admission dates then. Do they offer that already? Ours does for master's programs, but generally not for bachelor's.
Colleges here have a semester system, which pretty much already works like that.
ahh here i thought it was about giving those kids a competitive edge, you know merit padding, looking good when it's time for uni applications, etc. never in my life did i imagine it was about keeping kids from being bored. i thought that if people cared about keeping kids from being bored they would simply make school more interesting, maybe have more singing and dancing and trips and stimulating even the "mediocre" kids instead of focusing on getting them to serve their time and hopefully pass standardised tests.Quote:
Originally Posted by littlelolligagged
i'm all for stimulating kids of course, gifted and otherwise!!
Good to see that your dedication to socialism isn't limited to economic equality but intellectual equality as well. God forbid some people are more interested in school than others or smarter than others and don't want to spend a year learning material they already know.
the funny thing is i've always been ahead of my age group at school, right up until uni :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Loki
man if i want to spend money on schools i want it spent first and foremost on ensuring their health and wellbeing. perhaps that's my dedication to socialism, perhaps it's just my notions of what's most valuable and rewarding during childhood.
wow here's a thought if everyone in school knew more and were happier and were thoroughly stimulated then you wouldn't have kids going around being bored and unhappy at school!! :o :o
but let's face it this isn't about keeping kids from being unhappy, this is about giving kids some people perceive as being more worthy some extra boosts over their peers. parents are selfish, greedy, uncaring creatures.
It doesn't really give that much of an advantage, application wise. They tend not to look back to elementary and junior high - and in high school classes are sorted by ability - and the "gifted classes" would more than likely be AP, or random electives. Being smart is no guarantee of having an advantage, anyway. And do you really think that my son needed to spend his first three years of school learning phonics so he could learn to read? Or that spelling tests with such difficult words as "will" (that during the work he has had to write 3 times each, even) could ever come close to challenging him? Unfortunately, in his case, it is more important to focus on socialization than actually giving him opportunities to use his mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
For anyone who doesn't know this already, my son has Asperger's - and after you look it up and determine that people with it have relatively high IQs, you should also know that his even exceeds the typical range for that.
I have never understood why anyone would think that. The best chance for success is for everyone to be with people close to their level. The less intelligent kid is going to be frustrated if the smarter ones know everything, while the more intelligent one will be bored with the material.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
I was tested because I was getting bored in class and stopped doing mindless work. The teacher would allow us to grade our own work and I would just pretend to be checking or Xing a blank piece of paper. When she asked for grades I would ring off a low A or high B. Started around 3rd grade. My parents didn't have any involvement in the process.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
bizarre, in my classes we've mostly benefitted from the diversity, maybe because we were good at being inclusive and looking after one another, as were our teachers, maybe because our lessons weren't focused exclusively on learning assigned material and being smart!!Quote:
I have never understood why anyone would think that. The best chance for success is for everyone to be with people close to their level. The less intelligent kid is going to be frustrated if the smarter ones know everything, while the more intelligent one will be bored with the material.
pff, what's so awesome about IQ anyway
but i'll concede that "teaching to the lowest common denominator" in many US schools may entail far more crazy-boring work than it did in my own classes :)
Because people like Minx care more about creating an equal society than they do about the well-being of each member of that society. There's absolutely no excuse for not teaching each child at their level (as far as resources permit anyway). I really fail to see how anyone can think that it's possible to keep kids interested through some gimmicks when they're learning material they already know.Quote:
Originally Posted by littlelolligagged
They clearly failed at teaching your class analytical reasoning, though they did quite brilliantly at spoon-feeding you propaganda.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
okay but check this out though... ominous was tested and was obviously a bright lad but look where he is now!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
proof positive that testing for such things is just to have an excuse to reward a few kids that some delusional people care more about :p
Where exactly is that aimless?
Are you claiming that my currently chosen financial position some how suggests I've become dumber? I've never been one to chase the money, one reason public education was my first career choice.
It probably does. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Also, repetition. My daughter and my son both had the same page of math homework, from the same math textbook one day last week.
1/4 + 2/4 = ???
ha ha that's rich coming from you! but i'll concede that ensuring the wellbeing of each member of society depends on having programmes for the giftedQuote:
Originally Posted by Loki
no, wait, i won't because it's nonsense
Presumably they'll keep on repeating it until a sufficient number of students in the class get it right, even if that means forcing that problem down the throats of students who've figured out the answer years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by littlelolligagged
Because we all know that all students are identical and should therefore be told the same information at the same pace. Do you realize that your strategy would probably kill off the sciences within a generation?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless