When I was in school, I was always resentful when I was placed in mixed-ability groups and expected to help out the less competent. Why should I have to hang around these guys, when I’d rather be reading books on astrophysics or whatever my subject de jour was?
Years later I became a teacher, and I realized how freaking hard teaching is. Learning comes in stages- being able to repeat information, being able to use information to solve routine problems, and finally being able to integrate information your everyday life and use it in creative ways. Teaching pulls on the latter, Just ask anyone who has tried to teach English as a Second Language. It seems like the easiest thing in the world, right? I mean, you have been a master at English since you were four years old. In reality, it turns out that even when we are really good at knowing how to use it, we usually still might have a very incomplete understanding of how it works. When I started teaching ESL, the first thing I had to do was get a grammar book and actually learn grammar. I’d have students ask tough questions like “Why do we say ‘going to’ for things in the future- what does that even mean?” Simply being able to speak and write wasn’t enough- I had to achieve a full mastery of English.
I’ll grant you that when “the fast help the slow” is actually implemented in classrooms, the student often are not given a foundation in basic teaching. But it’s still a very sound concept. In the real world, just knowing stuff isn’t worth much. You need to be able to communicate and use that knowledge, with specialists and non-specialists alike. The person who knows everything about the field probably isn’t the MVP of the office- it’s the person who can put together teams where everyone shines and knowledge gets turned into action.
What I wish I had learned when I was younger is academic discipline. The joy of learning is a great thing, but gifted kids can get very good at only doing the joyful parts and skating through the tough parts. As a kid, I “wasn’t good at math,” but I could fake it through by cramming and making educated guesses. If I got called out, I’d just pull out my stellar performances in other subjects and people would usually back off. Unlike the more average kids, I never had to do things that I didn’t have a lot of natural talent in, so I never learned how to do that. I just did what I was good at and avoided the rest- no different than the basketball player who is coddled through the tough classes because he can shoot hoops.
It didn’t catch up to me until I was 30 years old and trying to take the GREs for a competitive grad program. I suddenly realized that I had never learned high school math. I could barely remember how to long division. I literally had just never learned math. I had to learn it all over, on my own. I took me two-three hours a day of study and very not-fun drills for nearly a year. The people around me (Chinese college freshman who had spent their lives studying ten hours a day) laughed at me when they saw me struggling through the basics of eighth grade algebra. And I still plugged away. Eventually I took the test, got the score I needed, and realized I wasn’t “bad at math,” I just had to work to do it well. Suddenly I realized all those avenues i had though were closed to me- scientist, doctor, etc. were actually something i could have achieved if I had ever learned to get good at something I wasn’t great at.
Now I can do all kinds of things I’m “bad at.” I can run a few miles, even though it took months of unpleasant training. I can speak some tough languages, even though I’m a terrible language learner. I learned to budget my time, even through I’m “naturally” a procrastinator.
I wish I had learned that lesson a couple decades ago- who knows what my life would be if I had learned to push myself, rather than coasting on my natural talents?
, here is an article debunking the above, with links to many more that do the same.