I’m not talking about downloading movies or anything like that; I’m talking about the practice of grouping schoolkids into classes according to their abilities — something which has been regarded as doubleplusungood by Big Education for a long time.
As always, Joanne Jacobs brings in da numbers:
“It wasn’t long ago that some educational researchers in the UK and Ireland were calling ability grouping ‘symbolic violence’.”
And yet…
Strong students learn less math in mixed classes, concludes a new Education Endowment Foundation study of English middle schools, reports Richard Adams in The Guardian. Weaker students, as judged by prior math achievement, do about the same whether they’re in mixed classes or lower-track classes, University College London (UCL) researchers found. Furthermore, students placed in lower-track classes were more confident of their math abilities than those in mixed classes.
I can attest to this. Way back in time, we members of the chalk ‘n slate set were “streamed” in just about every class, from A to D where the numbers supported it (e.g. in Mathematics and English), and from A to C for the elective classes (such as Geography, Biology and History).
I remember starting at St. John’s College in the A class for every course, but by the end of my second year I was moved down to the B classes for Mathematics and Science (Chem and Physics, which were combined into a single discipline). All the other courses, I remained in the A stream (English, Afrikaans and Latin — our French class was so small that streaming made no sense).
Once I’d got over the shame of being “dropped” — and withstood the anguish of my parents, who couldn’t believe that their “straight A” son was no more — I actually found those two courses less intimidating, because I didn’t have to work with the super-smart Maths and Science geniuses in the A class who regularly got 90%-100% for all their tests, whilst I was lucky to pass.
In the B classes, however, because the teaching was delivered at a much slower pace, I regularly passed all the tests, along the way discovering that my actual problem was that I had no facility for mathematical processing — ironic, really, considering that I ended up being a statistician and data analyst at the Great Big Research Company, and later as a data model algorithm developer as a consultant.
My problem was never getting the thing solved; I just needed a lot more time than everyone else to get there. So tests were always going to be difficult for me because of the limited time thereof. (I proved this when I took the Core Math class at college, yeah in my fifties: I could barely scrape through tests with a passing grade, but because the final exam was taken in a lab with no time constraints, I ended up with a final “B” grade — my only one in all the courses I took for my B.A. — because while my semester tests were a dismal failure, I actually scored 99% for my final exam, which luckily for me counted for 80% of the total.)
But I wouldn’t have been able to do even that, if my self-confidence hadn’t been bolstered in high school by being able to work at a slower pace in the B class.
So you can put me on the side of people who don’t think that ability grouping / streaming is symbolic violence.
I’ve been a science teacher in Public Schools for 38 years and I can attest to what you say. I’d much rather have my students grouped by ability. As Capt. Kirk once quipped… “Better for you, better for me, better for everyone.”
Another vote for streaming. Both of my kids ended up in math classes that were too advanced for them and were basically run over academically. Once we got them moved down, they actually learned the material because the class moved at a pace they could handle.
I remember my early Elementary School was grouped this way. We didn’t have separate classes as such but we had an A, B, & C groups split out for Reading, Math, etc. I was in the A group for reading (took to that like a fish to water) and the C group in Math (much less aptitude then, much less aptitude now). I, as you stated appreciated it, because I needed more of a challenge to stay engaged in the stuff I excelled at, and more time and help for the stuff I didn’t excel at.
Then somewhere around 3rd grade it all stopped, I have my suspicions why, and I moved between the islands of “bored” & “completely lost” for the remainder of my education. The math thing was especially crippling, because even though I advanced in grade level, my math understanding never really took hold. so I was perennially behind the curve.
Put me in the “no math” category. Or worse – the “liars, damn liars, and mathematicians” (slight modification there) category. Moreover, the most important things in life can’t be quantified and manipulated.
Thankfully, there’s no math section in the LSAT.
That said, my clients can’t do basic addition, subtraction, or (and this is crippling) basic percentages. Frankly, those are survival skills. Perhaps that’s in part why they’re my clients . . .
Everyone should read a bit about John Dewey (the Dewey Decimal system guy). He was the architect of the modern US public school system and an absolutely horrible person and an extreme progressive (would be called a socialist today).
He believed that the purpose of public school was to indoctrinate kids to be followers in a planned top down system. So his systems (the basis for our system) was to hold back high performers, because high performers expected more results in life and were not good followers.
So it is not a bug, it is the plan.
The Dewey Dec imal System was devised by Melvil Dewey (no relation) and introduced in 1873. Everything else you said about John Dewey is the truth, and he was a Progressive, with a capital “P”.
Interesting, I was told it was John and never checked.
So he had no redeeming qualities, figures.
One of the many ways “well-intentioned” liberals poisoned black America was “affirmative action” in college admissions. Black above-average students were admitted to (even recruited to) elite colleges, where many either failed or had to be nursed through to graduation. Those who failed were encouraged to blame “racism”; those who “passed” got inflated self-images. The syndrome propagated to lower levels: black average students went to challenging colleges, with similar effects.