A recent study found that as much as three-fourths of the state schools were holding back the most talented and brightest students because they wanted to combat the scourge of “elitism.” These students were not being given more advanced work even though they were not being sufficiently challenged by grade-level material.
Instead of being allowed to progress at their own pace, the students were often asked to simply mentor the other students. The Ofsted study found that the school treated academic gifts as “not a priority” for teaching and that allowing them to work to their full potential would “undermine the school’s efforts to improve the attainment and progress of all other groups of pupils.”
Stephen Hawking, it appears, would have been a threat to the educational mission and told to eat glue with the rest of the kindergarten kids. Shakespeare would be told that he needs to return to those word group “mix and match” exercises and stop composing sonnets on the school computers.
What is interesting is that England has a gifted and talented program for the top five to ten percent, but these schools are choosing to ignore that policy.
With kids in the gifted and talented program in Fairfax, I can say that this view is inimical to the development of such children. These kids can actually do worse over time in standard lessons because they are not challenged and they tend to slip in their skills and interest. More importantly, by holding them back, you are denying them the opportunity to develop to their full potential. It is not more “elitist” in the pejorative sense than selecting the fastest kids for track and field competitions. Children have different skill sets and aptitudes. Finally, while such kids can be viewed as an elite group for their area, it does not make them elitists in the sense of people who believe that they are superior to others.
We have previously discussed the dangers of a “nanny state” with our close cousins in England. This would appear another such example of those dangers.
When talented children are not challenged, they can turn to less productive activities:
For the full story, click here.
Carlyle:
I am fully aware that not all English language words, which include much Greek and French, are subject to phonetic rules. That is the very reason why it was ridiculous for American liberals to have tossed phonics overboard. Without phonics, ALL words have to be Sight and Say rote memorization, which is really what whole language is about.
Phonics reduces the number of words needing to be memorize and it allows for further expansion of phonetically deciphered words by the child during independent reading as she grows and encounters more complex materials.
It is not that phonics is perfect; it is that it is imperfectly ESSENTIAL for good reading skills in English (which is the only language I was referring to).
In one of your posts you said that conservatives are authoritarian, unlike you–a liberal. I’m sure we don’t agree on this. Perhaps you confuse foreign conservatives with American conservatives, the two are not the same. A conservative Saudi King is not the same as a conservative American president. One is conserving a bad thing, the other is not.
I think people make a huge philosophical mistake when they fail to recognize that the terms liberal and conservative have a context based on the form of government being discussed. And depending on the context, liberal or conservative yields different results.
For example, if I was a Chinese citizen, I would want my government to be liberal. That is because the Chinese form of government is bad. There is little if anything good to conserve.
Likewise, if I’m an American (I am) I want its form of government conserved because it is good. So, depending on the form of government, I could be either liberal or conservative POLITICALLY. Personally, most of us are both liberal and conservative. Politically, we resemble one or the other.
Edmund Burke is a hero of mine. He too was a conservative, but talked about a liberality of mind, and more importantly–the heart. For Burke (and me too) a liberal attitude (in its classical meaning) is a virtue. But that is not what American liberalism is about. American liberalism is about hedonism, nihilism, promiscuity, and theft. All of it leading towards brutal totalitarianism. It is not the liberalism Burke deeply admired.
In America, conservatives are limited government proponents. And in our system you cannot get to authoritarianism from conservatism, the road doesn’t lead there. This is because power is strictly limited to specified powers which the 50 states LOAN to the national government and are revocable. If the powers are strictly limited and your philosophy is to conserve those powers, you cannot become authoritarian unless you abandon conserving.
It is the totalitarians in America (liberals) who insist on compulsory government education in America. It is liberals who persecute and even agitate to imprison parents who home school their children. Barack Obama is a perfect example of the leftist liberal totalitarianism that would force little children into government schools at even younger ages.
It is liberals who harass and put roadblocks in the way of parents who wish to home school their children. If liberals were anything but narrow minded, they wouldn’t stand in the way of home school parents.
Byron.
The public school system does not serve any of its students well. There are many reasons for the dysfunction. Only by attending to all of the reasons would significant improvement be achieved. Attend only to one or two of the causes and the other umpteen will mean that little improvement appears.
Single cause theory means that vested interests scream about their own pet cause while doing everything possible to prevent others doing anything for another cause when their ideology vetoes that. Conservatives like tootie see with razor sharp clarity every fault that they can blame on leftists or liberals and they are right about some but no all. Likewise leftists can see with razor sharp clarity every fault that they can blame on conservatives and they are right about some but not all. Buy there are other causes to which bothe lefties and righties are blind. Here is my partial list.
1/ Schools are supported by local government level taxes, not state or federal. This means that the poorest areas have the least resourced schools. I am aware that “throwing money at the problem may not be the solution”, but if the people who say this require that the schools that their children attend are resourced with more money per student how can they argue that the ghetto schools must do with much less.
2/ Ghetto schools suffer problems because of the socioeconomic conditions in the areas in which they exist. Students come to school hungry because their parents can’t afford food or spend what they have on drugs instead. If they do eat they are fed junk so all the problems caused by additives in junk food are maximized. Students from the ghetto lack prior knowledge of things that children of the respectable classes know which are needed to support later learning. If no remedial training is done to remedy this it will struggle later.
3/ These schools exist in a war zone, students have to run the gauntlet of drug gang shoot outs on the way to and from school. Students fear violence at school. Chronic fear and anxiety are not conducive to learning.
4/ Many students are alienated and spend most of their efforts on insurrection. Not only to they kill any hope of themselves benefiting from school but the disruption they cause sabotages the education of those capable and prepared to learn.
5/ Because control of incipient violence is a priority, a much greater level of authoritarianism is required than in schools in respectable areas. Some students are sheeple and will knuckle down to mindless fascism but many will become more oppositional.
6/ Teachers are to various extent demoralized as they do not get the same feeling of reward by seeing visible improvements related to their efforts.
7/ The curriculum has become too crowded. Because so much more is known now than was known or example in the nineteenth century, there is a compulsion to teach a little bit about everything instead of teaching a limited selection in depth. Maybe teaching chemistry or physics in depth is better than teaching a little bit about every specialty in a shallow manner.
8/ There are too many essential facts which schools are expected to drill into their students. Schools can never succeed in this. It is better to teach students how to learn on their own and rely on their ability to acquire much of this essential knowledge themselves.
9/ Too many resources are used up in teaching to the test for no child left behind. The kind of things that children learn in order for their school to pass these tests are not useful to them in the long term.
10/ Industrial hostility between teachers and their employers.
11/ Too little rigor in the teaching of subjects because of fear of overloading the little dears brains and damaging their self esteem.
Byron,
I’ve always called it pattern recognition. Great survival skill for early man. It’s also part of why we’re hardwired to make up superstitions and see crosses on cow’s foreheads.
On the music end of things, trained musicians actually process music with the language parts of their brains versus the auditory parts that non-musicians use. As an interesting side note Sonata Allegro form (the first movement of symphonies) is actually a musical parallel to the classic essay form.
Elaine M.
Follow the link to search that I included in my previous reply to Tootie. It searches Greg Palast’s archives for all references to no child left behind. It is a scam. He is quite scathing about it.
Greg Palast http://www.gregpalast.com/ broadcasts on the BBC and writes in the Guardian. His site does nt get updated that often, I recommend visiting monthly. His books “Armed Madhouse” for example http://www.gregpalast.com/store/?id=10 are very well worth buying.
Byron.
What surprises me is that most school massacres are by alienated right wing white students. This surprises me as I would think that black children have far more reasons to want revenge on their schools, their teachers and fellow students.
Perhaps they are prevented by historical memory of the lynching era and know that any massacre by some of them would be followed by a much greater one with the forces of law and order participating.
BIL–
I’d like someone to do a study to find out how much money is being spent annually for all the mandated tests that children are now required to take. I’d like to know which companies are reaping the rewards of this testing mania that is overtaking our educational system.
We’ve got some smart kids here in Massachusetts who have found and reported mistakes in the MCAS tests that they have taken. It makes one wonder who’s writing the tests.
Buddha:
“And don’t say inner city drug users unless you want me to club you about the head and shoulders with Columbine.”
But these things also happen in “genteel” neighborhoods.
I did not and would not as evidenced by the sentence above.
My wife is a teacher and we have paid for supplies out of our family budget so I understand that point.
“And they don’t have this because the money for education is being spent on other things that politicians really care about. Like shit with their name on it.”
no arguments there.
Buddah.
Many dittos to what you justsaid.
Thinking that educational costs were less in the past compared to today’s dollars adjusted for inflation and taking into account that illiteracy and not going to school used to be the norm for Americans, not going to college. More students . . . with less teachers. And less resources per capita. That’s the reality of teaching today. Some teachers have to pay for supplies out of their own pocket. Not because they want to. Because they have to. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have the tools they need to do their job. Tools their employer the state is supposed to provide by the way. And they don’t have this because the money for education is being spent on other things that politicians really care about. Like shit with their name on it.
And the pressures of school are not what they were when you or I were kids. Not even close. A bad day at my high school meant someone got the shit kicked out of them. A bad day at high school today can mean body bags. And don’t say inner city drug users unless you want me to club you about the head and shoulders with Columbine.
School is more costly and dangerous and less and less effective at actually teaching. It’s also no accident that when new facilities are built in this country that our schools look more like prisons than schools. Because they are being designed by the same people who design prisons. That way there will be less revolution when martial law in thrown down. The kiddies will be trained to follow blindly, not think for themselves. They’ll be used to being warehoused. Creating a critical thinker, especially in a student not blessed with a proclivity for raw logic, is an expensive proposition. It’s also one that pays off for society in the long run in the form of better workers, scientists, and artisans. Where as not educating your populace? Well, that just leads to slavery and violence.
Cost is a specious argument in education and the wrong metric in isolation. Efficacy in creating critical thinkers is the ultimate metric of education. And if we spent 1/20 of our defense budget on education, we wouldn’t need to fight wars. Our kids would be so smart we could beat down other countries with telepathy if not beat them economically.
Buddha:
what is wishful?
CM/Gyges:
out done by computer nerds, I am hanging my head in shame.
I vote “wishful”.
Gyges:
What kind of thinking would you call that?
CM:
I am aware of that, but the problem is that a good many of these inner city children are smart as hell. And they are not being well served by the public school system. I don’t know what the reason is, low tax dollars, not serious about school, a dysfunctional family, drug abuse, one parent home, etc. But these things also happen in “genteel” neighborhoods.
There was a case in DC maybe 15 years ago about a guy that had a huge drug organization, millions of dollars in revenues and it ran like a clock. He could have run IBM for Christ sake as talented as he was. He set this up before he was 30 maybe even 25. I would call that more than gifted and talented. It was misguided but what a loss to society and to himself (he is in jail).
I agree with Tootie in regards to money, we used to educate people for far less than we do today. Not being in the educational system I could only hazard a guess at the reasons. Some of it is probably higher overhead costs (management levels).
Byron.
I mixed up to whom I was replying, the previous post was addressed to you.
Gyges.
326442 but I did not time myself but it was less than 2 mins. I am a retired computer systems programmer
Byron,
About 20 seconds to figure out the pattern, a little longer for the math. Music theory is all about patterns.
off topic sort of.
*It is said that engineers take 2 minutes to resolve this, architects 3
hours and doctors 6 hours, Supervisors/Managers 10 hours.*
It took me a little over the 2 minutes. I throw down the guantlet to the lawyers are you faster than a doctor? My wife a teacher did it in about 30 seconds.
Which is the 6th number?
1, 2, 6, 42, 1806, ___???
Mike.
I used to think that I was an economic rationalist but I must admit that like you I am an evil liberal, pinko, lefty, latte sipping chardonnay swilling member of the chattering classes who think all members of species homo sapiens sapiens are entitled to human rights, even towl headed terrorist camel jockeys who did not actually do any terror but are rightfully Guantanamoed into solitary confinement.
Byron.
In relation to your post aimed at Elaine M.
I suppose that it is theoretically possible for some teachers to find enough rewards in seeing positive results of their work, despite low pay and the contempt with which they are viewed, but what happens if one of them suffers a period of clinical depression? I think that knowledge of that contempt would threaten a downward spiral into demoralization. Also I suspect you are talking about teachers in a good public school in a genteel area where students arrive at the school door with many skills and much knowledge that poor students attending under resourced schools situated in drug war ghettos lack.
Schools in the US are financed from local taxes, not from state or federal taxes, so poor schools get less money, but start with poor quality raw material and are hampered by the social dysfunction that their pupils bring in the door. Students in these schools need much more resources invested in each of them to overcome these deficits. Teachers in these schools are likely to acquire a feeling off incompetence as they see so little improvement from their efforts. I recommend some episodes of the HBO TV series “The Wire” to illuminate the problems, I am not sure which series. There were stories set in a ghetto school where teachers tried to deal with the alienation of troublesome students who were headed to a future of street corner drug dealing and then prison by generating a special local curriculum that was based on recognizing the fact that these students came from an environment different from that of the genteel students from the white flight suburbs. The program was tested for just long enough to show results but then canceled on orders from above because of the need for teachers to spend more time teaching to the no child left behind tests. It’s fiction but I suspect fiction based on knowledge of reality.