Sure , we could put the nine year old in a “social skills” class appropriate to his level of development. But that’s not my point. My point is that a theoretical nine year old who is so advanced academically that his or her classmates are 15 year olds will not fit in with his or her peers- even if the nine year old’s emotional and social development is right on schedule.
Look, as far as elementary school age kids go, most of them are within a year either way of grade level. Most of the ones who are not are still at the same level in nearly all of their subjects. You don’t find third graders capable of ninth grade math, and who are ready for fifth grade social studies and sixth grade science who are unable to read. You’ll find kids who are very far ahead or behind only in reading, or math, and you’ll find some who are capable of more advanced work in nearly nearly subject. Rather than ending up with kids all over the place in terms of placement, you’ll end up with a kid who spends most of his time in one class and gets pulled out for one or two with a completely different group of kids. You would have 8-10 year olds having an individualized schedule to follow ( a disaster waiting to happen). You will have to eliminate the distinction between grade school, middle schools and high schools- otherwise you could never accomodate that mostly average third grader who’s a math genius or the mostly average tenth grader who still hasn’t passed third grade math.Or the mostly genius 8 year old who reasy for tenth grade work in everything except math, where he’s on a third grade level.
How exactly is that an improvement over the current systems which have magnet schools and gifted programs for those who are pretty much uniformly advanced and pull-out programs for those who are either advanced or behind in one subject , summer school for those who failed only one class, and the capacity to retain a child in a grade if he hasn’t passed most of that year’s courses in elementary school, and different levels of courses in high school. The only possible advantage I can see to your system is that theoretically, a ten year old could graduate from high school. But does that really matter? Children have been admitted to college without graduating from high school first.
And I can see disadvantages. For example, I went to a very large high school. It was large enough that each quarter, when I chose my English class, I had at least ten to choose from. The same for social studies- the subject had to be taken for four years, there were two years of required courses and for the other two years, we were free to choose from the departmental offerings. But that was because the high school only had to offer high school level classes. It didn’t have to perfectly accomodate students taking math from third grade level up to AP Calculus. It didn’t have to accomodate a third grader who was on grade level in every subject except math, where he was taking AP Calculus. If it had to teach all the levels from third grade ( or kindergarten) up, there wouldn’t have been enough high school students to offer that many different classes. And forget about the idea of sending an 8 year old to a school with over 4000 students ranging from 8-21. I wouldn’t do it, and I doubt any parent would.
I wasn’t talking about it in terms of PE. Maybe I wasn’t clear. Hypothetical genius nine year old boy in classes full of 15 year olds.Nine year old is emotionally and socially on track for a nine year old. Now the nine year old and the 15 year olds may both play baseball outside of the PE classses. None of the fifteen year olds are playing on the nine year old’s team, so that’s not really a shared activity. The nine year old can’t join in the post- mortem on yesterdays game becasue he didn’t play in it. It possible that the nine year old and some of the 15 year olds are Scouts- but they wouldn’t be in the same age division and wouldn’t be doing the same activiites. The nine year old is not likely to be interested in the same movies that the 15 year olds are , and even if he was, his parents probably wouldn’t take him, so he’d be left out of those conversations. There is likely to be a fair amount of conversation about social events that the nine year old either isn’t invited to or has no interest in. I’m sure a genius nine year old could have an intelligent conversation about current events or some other adult topic- I’m not at all sure that average 15 year olds have those conversations with each other, though. Nine year old is probably going to be a social outcast for most of his day at school- about the only conversations he might be able to get are the ones bitching about a teacher or school policies ,or an incident that happened at school.
I think the proposal ignores the issue of social maturity. An 8-year-old is not a short 13-year-old, even if they’re at the same academic level. An 8-year-old is not even a short 11-year-old. They don’t have the same interpersonal skills, they don’t have the same level of emotional development. From personal experience, I think that the kids who are very much outside (above or below) their age group would suffer under the OP’s system.
Also, as much as group projects suck, they are not entirely without value. (There is something to be said for learning how to work in a group). And I don’t see how you could do that with so much mobility within the system.
And my bet is that most kids would end up exactly where they are now, grouped mostly by age.
That said, a few of my classes in my (public) elementary school did go on the work-at-your-own-pace system. We were required to keep up with the teacher, but if we wanted to, we were allowed to work our way through the book and pass a test at the end of each chapter. And that worked. But even those people who ended that year multiple grade levels ahead, were still in the same classroom as others in their grade.
In the schools I went to (in Australia), they didn’t have any of those things, except for occassionally putting students ahead one grade, or making them repeat once (or possibly twice in theory). People who are kept behind would have done that early on and they still might be behind in later years.
BTW, though kids might end up failing lots of subject in high school and maybe repeat the grade, it could be due to their very poor literacy skills. I’m talking about repeating core subjects, such as english, until they pass them, and sufficient levels of english could be a prerequisite for some of the other subjects.
The problem I saw a lot was that there seemed to be a vicious cycle… kids would barely comprehend something, and then next’s year’s subject would assume you were very familiar with that concept, then the year after it would be expanded on again…
I guess for many subjects, such as science, it doesn’t really matter if graduates or school leavers only comprehended a small fraction of the subject, but some subjects are pretty important. Or at least that’s what people say on the news… they say that illiteracy and poor maths skills are such a bad thing…
If you had to wait the normal amount of time (one term per subject) it would probably take 2 or 3 years to get into the class that most 15 year olds are in anyway. Also, in my idea, kids would have quite a bit of free time - due to the time tables. If the social skills class talked about some of the things in books like “talk language”, the advanced students would learn how to talk to strangers - which they might meet in the basketball courts or playing chess or board games in the library or making arts or crafts or something. (those kinds of things could be encouraged during free time). During my proposed “social skills” classes they could develop some self-esteem during some of the exercises like doing conversations. BTW, child prodigies who get advanced education are going to be a social outcast for most of the day anyway… unless they go to an advanced school - which is probably hard to travel to and/or expensive, and if they’re homeschooled then they miss out on socializing… what amarinth talked about sounds like a good solution to the child prodigy problem, though it would mean that the kid doesn’t really join in with the class much and is kind of an outsider. (they might miss out on having friends sitting next to them, chatting to them) Or of course, bright kids could just be forced to sit through the same material.
In my proposal I’m saying that the two age groups would only share a classroom for non-compulsory lectures and quizes/tutorials - and the assessments. Socializing can be done at other times (see my previous post). You’d learn about how to be independent (rather than mess around in class with friends trying to kill time), while at the same time having opportunities during the day to meet up with friends and do activities.
Also, the 15y/o’s most likely will want nothing to do with the 9 y/o’s, because to them he is a “baby”–especially if these 15 y/o’s have younger sibs.
Anyone here heard of Piaget? He posited that we went thru several stages of developement throughout life. I don’t have time to go into him here (on my way to work–googel his name), but there are biological reasons related to human developement for kids being served best by being grouped by age (overall).
JohnClay : It sounds like a very idealized system, one that might work on a specific body of students in a small class–ie, private school where the students are handpicked.
What of handicapped kids? What about ADD/ADHD kids? What of ones whose parents don’t care about their education?
Our system now needs repair, no doubt of that–but given all that schools are expected to do, they don’t completely suck. It sounds to me like your system did not address the needs of some failing/struggling students–and that should be changed.
I understand that your system may not have had any of those special programs, and that it may need changes. But what is the advantage of your system over those programs which keep children in a class suited to both their academic abilities and level of maturity?
So in fact doreen’s “older kids drinking with younger kids” problem might be very rare…
But anyway, in most of the classes, people would be moving ahead and falling behind or changing classes on a term-by-term basis. The classes aren’t a very good place to socialize with old friends since the odds are that most of them won’t be together for long, so you can socialize during the breaks instead.
Yeah… (BTW I think that AI that reaches human-level “awareness” should pass through the stages as well, so that it begins like an infant, then learns…)
That’s odd in a way since tribes wouldn’t have the extremely strict age segregation that we do… also in tribes boys would be classed as “men” as a much younger age I think and become equals with the other adults. (same with the girls and the women)
Well maybe to make it more realistic I’d need heaps of schools to experiment on. It’s kind of a thought experiment really… maybe it is futile.
Well if they have some kind of handicap it would show up quite early on - e.g. they’d fail classes, or before that, they’d be disruptive in class and mostly incorrectly answer quiz questions by the tutor. Like I said a few times, there could be lectures and tutorials for kids with learning difficulties… they’d have more individual attention and whatever else is needed.
Like I said, there would be different classes for kids with a history of failing.
Maybe there is no overall advantage when you look at the disadvantages… initially it seemed like a good idea.
Note that the age level doesn’t guarantee they’ll have the same maturity. e.g. even though I learnt everything the rest of my class did, I was extremely naive/unskilled about social stuff. I avoided going to parties I was invited to - except for ones with a friend who was a year younger, or another friend who got expelled who was a year younger who had autism (maybe mostly because there were girls at his party - the neighbours). With my friends we’d just talk about science or computers or cartoons, etc. Well I did also talk about girls a lot but I think in high school I was at about the level of an average 10 or 11 year old with girls. To avoid going too off topic I’ll end there.