in many swedish schools they have two or more classes in each grade (eg. 1A, 1B, 1C -- all first graders) arbitrarily divided and all beginning at the same time. do you guys have that in eg. the US?
instead of arbitrary divisions they could perhaps be divided strictly according to age. i think that would be a fun experiment!
Originally Posted by Aimless
Yes, your fire department will be delighted at such an idea.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
okay you can put a door in the wall as well
Yes, kids are arbitrarily divided into classes.
I still think dividing by ability is better than dividing by age. Or maybe dividing by their level of being a troublemaker. Or by personality. Or (and this is something I think would be brilliant) learning styles.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Florida's class size restrictions have pretty much shown that "adding walls" or doubling the number of classrooms, doesn't fix a damn thing.
I'm still waiting for aimless to address my last post, unless I lost it in all his triple posting...
Yeah, because Finland achieved 1st place in PISA by dividing the children by ability or personality.
Oh, wait...
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Right, because everyone is treated exactly the same in Finnish schools...
While there is little grading and in essence no tracking in Finland, ninth grade does become a divider for Finnish students. Students are separated for the last three years of high school based on grades. Under the current structure, 53% will go to academic high school and the rest enter vocational school.
There is no way in hell we can fix our schools by drastically changing everything overnight - and in the meantime the concept of screwing over the most intelligent to benefit the less is stupid to the extreme - unless, of course, the goal is to turn out people who will never manage to think for themselves.Perhaps more importantly, there is a realization of the realistic academic potential of the entire student population. As Murray notes in another article, “Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them.”
Also, more importantly, really:
http://www.openeducation.net/2008/03...school-system/The people are far more homogeneous in terms of both income and education. Perhaps more importantly, there are no poor and no wealthy schools, each school educates children at the same per pupil rate. Perhaps that is one reason why the gap between Finland’s highest performing and lowest performing schools was amongst the lowest of all 57 countries tested.
Just another one..
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
I'm a big proponent of advancing kids early through classes. If they can get done with school early and knock out stuff via AP that is great. It lowers college costs and does not waste societies resources. In addition the LAST thing we want is everyone to be "equal" because that will require the lowering of standards to the morons at the bottom.
I love the idea of mandatory testing but I despise the philosophy of "No Child Left Behind." Yeah you have to leave the fools who refuse to learn or are in some way mentally incapable. That is just reality.
The problem with advancing them early through classes is socialization, Lewk.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Do you really think it makes a difference weather someone spends 12 years in school or 10?
Hope is the denial of reality
I think kids, even geeky smart kids, make friends in school and that choosing to rip them away from their friends does more harm than good.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Because the only meaningful social interaction is with kids almost the same age? That's silly.
That's rich. You say that with your quote stating that they're separated after nine (9!) years.
Gawd.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Sure, in response to your saying they are never separated by ability at all.
Also, I'm going to take a guess and say that they don't teach at the level of the stupidest child in Finnish schools, but Nessie will have to answer that one.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Is that any different to kids who have to move to a different school for a variety of reasons?
Hope is the denial of reality
I never said "at all", my dear. That's your interpretation. Furthermore, at the age of 15-16, the term "children" does not exactly apply anymore (that's what "youth" or "teenager" is for).
And of course they don't teach at the lowest level. But they're still teaching them all at once and yielding good results. Strange, huh?
I mean, one of our states (Bavaria) is proud that their Gymnasiuml students are the best of all of Germany. Well, that they may be - however, they're also the fewest because Bavaria also has the highest barriers of entrance. If one takes that fact into consideration, suddenly a lot of their advantage disappears.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
It's a shitty thing to do to kids. I'm going to do it anyway, but it is not good for them. And the people who move their children multiple times disgust me.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
So if someone skips two grades that would be equivalent to them moving schools twice. That's hardly unusual.
Hope is the denial of reality
And I'm telling you our schools teach to the lowest level, and what kind of results do you really expect from that? And do you really think Johnny Average's parents would accept it if they simply raised the standards for everyone?
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
So the answer is more sieving instead of raising the quality of education? Good work.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Because I don't see it ever happening - because of Johnny Average and his mommy and daddy.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
In fact almost every career military soldier has to move at least that many times during their kids schooling.
Funny - neither my mother nor my stepmother ever moved when my father changed postings. They had the good since not to disrupt their children's schooling or their own careers because of the jackass they married was a military man.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Children are not that fragile, in fact change may even do some of them some good. And if you are going to marry someone in the military - flexibility of location is a must. Otherwise they will end up hardly ever seeing their spouse.
I'm feeling a lot of love for the "jackass" do you have daddy issues? lol
Um, the division is for everyone's benefit. I don't know if you're just trolling but I'll make a serious response either way.
The fact that at 16 kids are divided between the SS and vocational schooling (hope against hope, but alas, that stands for Senior Secondary) is probably one of the biggest boons our system has. SS can be a school that teaches, at least, above the level of the mediocre student. It is not what it once was, but essentially it is a primer for university education.
Obviously I have not attended the alternative, but the fact that a person can receive quality education in a vocational school and graduate at 18 is also, in my eyes, an unquestionably good thing. Certainly it seems heaps and bounds better than the US norm where every shitheel spends first three years wasting everyone's time in high school, and then another four years, four years, getting a "university education".
The thingy you quoted is blatantly dishonest and writing in an incredibly chauvinistic way, too. We do not have the same high school shit track you Americans do.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Our schools do a hybrid of the old "tracking" method, based on standardized tests. There's some mixing of levels, within the levels--some are smart buy lazy with bad study habits, and putting them with other smart kids who are motivated can help them set higher goals. A kid can be in what becomes the CP or CPA track in math, but regular social studies. Some brightest students take classes a year ahead, but only if they're brilliant in all subjects do they move to gifted or up a grade. Some of those kids take college classes at our Penn State extension and get early uni credits.
After 9th grade, there's another type of "track" to encourage certain students to enroll in the County Vo-Tech; average academics plus one of the trades. The ones who have super bad grades/attendance/attitude are sent to the County High School, where they get something more like a GED and certificate of graduation, but not a diploma.
Disgust is a pretty strong word.
I lived in IL, KS, MI and IN by the time I was in 6th grade, because my dad would get promoted and transferred. It wasn't easy moving in the middle of a school year, but it wasn't horrible either. We managed to do fine, learned some flexibility, and were fortunate to experience so many states and new people.
My mom went to 13 different schools before she got out of highschool. That doesn't include the schools she returned to.
I went to 3 (ele, middle, and high), never moved once.
Extremes on both ends, obviously. But claiming that giving kids a different atmosphere, new friends, opening them to different educational experiences, is a "shitty thing to do"....is a shitty and disgusting thing to say.
i'm confused... all this talk of the lowest common denominator... what the hell does an A+ mean anyway??
When I went to school we weren't taught to the "lowest common denominator"... we had a syllabus with strict criteria for passing a course, further criteria for passing with distinction, and some fuzzier criteria for excellence or special distinction. what, you guys have nothing like that in the US?
Are you using the term "lowest common denominator" to denote the average students? Just so you can refer to people as "low" and "common"?
In Sweden, after ninth grade, you can go on to get an academic highschool education (natural sciences or social sciences, but often also profiled eg. natural sciences focusing on medicine) or go to a vocational school which is often basically a regular highschool education with stuff tagged on so you can become eg. one of those whatchamacallits... sub-nurse... at a hospital. There are different paths to different goals but the great thing is that you can change paths if, later on, you decide you'd like an academic education after all.
i heard they do that sort of tracking at a very early age in germany, i don't think that's very awesome.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Here they tend to teach at the level of the slowest student in the class - to the degree that even an average student is bored. Rote memorization so that you can pass the standardized test so your school continues to get its federal funding is the very most important thing of all.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
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