Eliminate high school honors classes to increase diversity?

in Lake Wobegon..

No, tracking in my school did not start till Soph HS, and we might be able to even wait one more year. Other countries start earlier I think. In my time there was extensive opportunity for even that not so bright kid to get on the college track if he/she put his head down and worked hard during middle school and fresh year. In my day 7th/8th grade mattered, they were not blow-off years as they are now, where the only goal is to get the kids ready to deal with HS, and if the kids screw around oh-well. Kids today dont take 7/8th seriously because they know that these years dont count....and then we wonder why Middle Schools are such a disaster. We blame it on hormones, but that is not the problem. The expectations/incentives and culture are all wrong in Middle School, and THAT is why American kids really start to fail behind the other kids of the world at this time, not because American kids have stronger hormones or because we dont keep hormones in line with beatings and threats as it is claimed other countries do.

Oh Hawkeye your tracking in other word offering a third rate education to those you selected by early testings will only be apply to the lower economic levels of society as well to do parents will never allow you to condemn their offspring to a third rate education no matter what the testings results are or are not.

You testings/trackings will in effect decrease social mobility and as I am fairly sure you will be shoving people down that have abilities that you tests did not uncover that sooner or later those men and women will prove your tests wrong by leading harmful rebellions in one form or another.

There was at least one major study out in the last year or two that shows that social mobility is far less prevalent than most people believe it is now, I am not convinced that tracking makes much of any difference in reality. We like to keep the dream of better things alive, which is a worthy endeavor, but American Schools are failing, have for along time been failing, and we show no ability to fix them. It is time to start looking at slaying sacred cows....

So often, education is wasted on the young. I teach both college level and remedial classes. There are folks who feel that remedial classes are unnecessary. However, when a person returns to school in his middle-20s or later and the light dawns on Marblehead, the process is worth it.

I think some "apparently" bright kids are very verbal people who know how to bluff. They may or may not make the honor roll, but a combination of native intelligence and personality carries them through. When they reach college, the discover that the lack a solid foundation.

You do know that Edison was kicked out of school and that his mother taught him at home, don't you?

Why Johnny Can't Read was published in 1955. John Dewey was an educational reformer whose life spanned the mid-19th to the nid-20th C. Bronson Alcott preceded both Fleischer and Dewey.

Ya, the difference is at the time America was a model for literacy and education, even though we knew we were not perfect. Now much of the world does a better job than we do. I am counting from when we became aware that we suck in education compared to other nations. we should be able to do as well as they, considering how much money we throw at education.

I haven't looked at this thread for several days and spent a goodly amount of time catching up. You seem to be continually at odds with the drift of the thread.

America was not a "model for literacy and education" when Why Johnny Can't REad was published. The very fact of its publication contradicts your claim.

Yes and that Edison have a very low regards for formal education for his whole life to the point that his children by his first wife was not so educated and never amount to must in life as a result.

His second wife however was older and more self assure and the children from that marriage did received formal educations with his one son earning an advance degree in mathematic if memory serve me correctly

And yet our technology and the numbers of patents granted yearly are second to none in the world.

No other country developed the micro computer, or the OSs to run them or the internet for that matter for.

We must be doing something right when we are the ones with Bill Gates and the self taught engineer by the name of Steve Wozniak who gave us the Apple two.

Interesting to me footnote in that Wozniak after he became a millionaire and famous as a founder and engineering genus of Apple went back to school under an assume name to get his engineering degree.

For a nation with such a **** poor education system we are doing damn well in all areas of technology.