We're from the government and we're here to help....

i dont think it was like that...the principal would sit in a room with all of the 4th grade teachers and they would decide which 5th grade class everybody went to......."mary has really excelled this year and I dont think that she should go into mrs jones class next year, she should go into mrs martin's class...is there room?"

Yes Hawkeye we can not have the Edisons of the world that do not fit smoothly into a group classification system slowing down the so call smart kids or god forbid even showing up such kids.

To this day I can remember the dislike of the officially smart kids as I screw up their battle for overall class standing by being a wild card out of nowhere.

I think you and I just looked at that NY Times article from different perspectives--both of which I feel are valid. And I don't think it was intended to persuade, but rather to inform.

Had I had the advantage of being in dynamic groupings in elementary school, I would have been much happier in school--much happier. I probably would have been happier if they had had tracking, but I don't think they were doing that in my public school when I attended.

I was able to read, fairly well, and really very well, before I started kindergarten. My kindergarten teacher would plant me in front of the class and have me read to them so she could go out in the hall and smoke a cigarette. In first grade, I was much more advanced in reading, and writing, and I completed all of the other work much faster than the other students, leaving me bored and unoccupied a good bit of the time. The only things I ever got enthused about in the early grades were the crafts activities, generally for some sort of holiday, because we made things, decorated the classroom, etc. and I could really feel involved in what was going on.

In the first few grades, I often didn't want to go to school, because of the lack of interest, and my mother had to shove me out the door on most mornings. I would stroll to school so leisurely, exploring everything along the way, that I most often arrived late, causing my first grade teacher to continually complain to my mother about my "tardiness" and to exhibit her obvious frustration with me when I sauntered in late. My mother bought me a watch, taught me how to tell time, made sure I knew what time school started, and nothing changed, I still arrived late more often than not. I just found school boring, and I wasn't in any hurry to get there.

By the time I was in the third grade, I had a witch of a teacher whose methods of handling both my disinterest, and my questions she found too challenging, were to verbally insult me in front of the class, and actually make me stand in a corner of the room with my back to the class. At that point, I actively hated going to school, and I would often tell my mother I had a stomach ache, or a headache, or something, just so she'd let me stay home. My parents caught on to this rather quickly, and insisted I tell them what was really bothering me. They knew I was a well-behaved, polite kid, so when I told them how my teacher was treating me, my father exploded. He went to school and read my teacher the riot act, I could hear them in the hall outside my classroom, and when that teacher came back in, she was clearly shaken--and she never ever bothered me again. It didn't help my boredom problem, but the atmosphere at school was less unpleasant for me, and my attendance problems stopped.

By the time I got to fourth grade, both my teacher, and the school, had caught onto the fact that I wasn't being sufficiently stimulated, challenged, or engaged. I was getting great marks on the basis of very little effort on my part and I had a lot of downtime when sitting in class. I was called down to some office for testing that I now realize was an I.Q. test. In addition, as soon as I finished my regular classroom work, my teacher gave me additional work to do that no one else in the class was getting, and I also had additional homework to do. I suddenly became a much happier camper when at school. I had no idea what was going on, I didn't even wonder about it, I was just glad I wasn't as bored, and that I was occupied with work in the classroom instead of having to amuse myself with daydreaming while the others were still finishing their work.

The last day of class in the fourth grade we all got our report cards as well as a slip that had the name of our teacher for the next year. This was a big deal because students wanted to know which kids--like their friends--would be in class with them the following year. When I looked at my slip, I was completely confused--it had the name of a 6th grade teacher. I was skipping a grade, and no one had told me because they wanted me to be "surprised". Surprised was an understatement, I was thrown for a loop. Then my mother appeared, to hug me and kiss me, and to walk me home (something she never did). All the way home, I had other kids and parents congratulating me for skipping a grade, and I felt proud of myself, for apparently having done so well, but I also felt "different" in a way I didn't fully understand at the age of 9, and I was a little upset I was being separated from my friends at school since they would all be going into the 5th grade without me.

Well, the next fall, in the 6th grade, I definitely got a taste of what school is like for a struggling student because I was totally unprepared to do math on a 6th grade level. I had skipped the grade where they taught long division, and some multiplication, and other math operations, and I was confronted with school work that required that previous knowledge--and I had missed an entire year of such instruction. I really floundered, I was frustrated, and I didn't know how to compensate for what I was missing. Again, they tried to give me some extra work, in math, to remediate and help me catch up, and my mother tried to help teach me what I had missed, but a gap of an entire grade of math curricula was too much for me, and I found it overwhelming. I developed "math anxiety" and decided I just wasn't good in math, and I began giving up more quickly, and those feelings of inadequacy haunted me through all the math classes I took from that point on, even those in high school and college, even when I got good grades in math in high school and college. I just felt inadequate in math, even though my actual ability is at least average, if not higher. I had no problem with any other 6th grade work, in which I continued to get good grades, skipping a grade didn't affect me negatively in any other way, but math had become my nemesis, through no fault of my own. And I suddenly knew what it was like, firsthand, for less academically gifted students to have to struggle to understand, let alone master, work which is beyond their grasp. I developed a sense of empathy for those students that has never left me.

Skipping a grade seems to have been the only alternative my elementary school had, at the time, to deal with a bright, academically advanced, kid--the kind of kid I was in my first few years of school. It's definitely an imperfect solution, but it's a better solution than doing nothing, and risking losing a student's interest in formal education to the point that, when they get to high school, they can't wait to drop out.

I would definitely have been better off in a dynamic grouping environment in elementary school, of the type described in the NY Times article. I could have been in more advanced groups in the first few grades, and in a more remedial or slower group when I had those 6th grade math difficulties and needed extra help--but I still would have remained within the same classroom, and with the larger, more diverse, group who were my classmates, for a more diverse social experience. Even if I had still needed to skip a grade, those dynamic groupings would have benefited me both before and after I skipped a grade.

So, that's why I think that NY Times article resonated differently for me. It has to do with what my own elementary school experience was like.

Same here. I was permanently frustrated in arts classes and sports, where I sucked, and permanently bored in music, math, and the sciences, where I excelled. Languages (German, English, and French) were the only subjects in which I was appropriately mediocre. Overall, 'equality' was not a good deal for me; I don't think it was a good deal for anyone in my class.

God, you're an idiot and an ass.

I doubt that poor people care less about their kids than I care about mine.

But my family is very fortunate in that we can afford to provide a parent at home full time. A Ph.D. in clinical psychology at that.

Compare that to a single parent who has to put his or her kids in day care, or to a poor family where two parents work three full time jobs just to keep the lights on. How many books do you think those kids get read to them at the end of the day when the parents come home exhausted?

How do you know a thing like that ff? You might have been able to read the words better than anybody else but the "definitely" suggests to me that you didn't know what they meant and what lay behind them.

And what does "better off" mean? What's a "dynamic grouping environment"?

My elementary school classes had up to 50 students and one nun, the students varying from what would now be called children with adhd and other problems, including serious family problems that precluded sane study time, to a few adept at everything, to most, somewhere in between. The nun I remember most was stallwart as she taught a double grade, 6th and 7th together. I don't remember her ever embarrassing a student, think most did well under her eagle eye. My visual memory was of an engaged classroom, with the troubled getting to speak (after raising their hands, of course) equally with the swift, after raising their hands, of course. Sort of eagle-atarian.

Now when I remember the names of my fellow students, I remember the strugglers' names probably better than the swifties', because I got to know them and root for them. Too bad I won't pay to check out classmates.com.

When I do one of my whines about the nuns, I'm talking about my high school, not my elementary school, St. Nick's, and not the one year I went to Mount St. Mary's college - both of those sets of nuns were sharp in different ways.

We didn't have art or music (I would have been ok or ok+ in art and a total fool in music (did I tell you about my singing a funeral mass by myself? That poor family, but the organ probably got louder); great in geography (why do you think I'm gaga about Italy? Brazil?), stressed but ok in math, interested in history but not all that sharp re evaluation, analysis; tip top in spelling, and finally, the shyest person on the face of the earth, as far as I felt.

We didn't have sports as such, just recess, which was mostly fluid. There was a football team, but that was after school stuff. Sr. Mel did take us out for a long recess a few times in the spring, where she taught us about baseball. It was the whole class, never an exhibition of swell play, but it wasn't meant to be.

Thing is, Sr. Mel didn't have all this super test bushwah to deal with.

I feel pretty good about those years.

<wanting to give you more than one thumb up>

I found that the problem was considerably less when I got to high school--I learned to complete assignments on my level, so that, when sufficiently interested, and able, I went beyond, sometimes way beyond, the actual class assignment. I set my own standards for myself in those areas where I needed more challenge. I couldn't do that in areas where I was closer to average, like studying a language, but I did it as much as I could in other areas that allowed for it.

I also found the advanced classes I was eventually in in high school an absolute godsend. I was surrounded by other students who were at my level, or above it, in those classes, and that really brought out the best in me, it helped to actualize my potential because we competed with each other in positive ways. Also the teachers I had for those classes were incredible. One was one of the best, most inspiring teachers, I ever encountered, before or after. His impact on all of us was incredible. I hope he would have been pleased to know that, decades later, at a class reunion, we all lifted our glasses to toast his memory, and continued to express our great appreciation for having had him as a teacher.

So, in high school, I agree with you, overall 'equality' is not a good deal--some grouping is definitely preferable.

I definitely did know what the words meant and what lay behind them. My comprehension was on a level with my reading ability--possibly even above it. I was academically much more advanced than my classmates, in all areas, in my first several years of school. And that's why I was extremely bored in school, and not in a hurry to get there.


Read that NY Times article about it. I posted the link.

nor did i contradict that, I said that they value education less thus poor kids invest less of themselves into education


http://www.academicjournals.org/err/pdf/pdf%202011/july/lacour%20and%20tissington.pdf

Please note, that what you posted to support that statement, says some families--while you're making a blanket indictment of all poorer families. Not all poorer families value formal education any less than middle or upper class families do--many value it, and do want their children to have a quality education.

But, whether it's due to valuing education less, or due to an inability to provide what the child needs before entering school, I think that's why we need programs like Head Start, that reach out to those living at or below the poverty level. We shouldn't be cutting those programs, we should be expanding them, if we really want to close the economic advantage gap. You need early intervention of that sort, before the child even gets to public school. It helps to better prepare these disadvantaged children in all sorts of ways.

out of time...the empire is calling. i will try to get back with more documentation later...

Good grief, that alone makes it tough to provide any individualized instruction, or attention, to students.

I would imagine my elementary school classes had about 30 students, max, in each class.

The kind of music classes we had in elementary school, and even in Junior High, mostly involved the teacher playing a record, or excerpt, of some classical music, and talking about it. It was supposed to be "music appreciation". I love music, particularly classical music, which I also heard at home as a kid, but they presented it in a very boring way in those classes that did nothing to enhance my appreciation. The "art" I remember from elementary school is mostly drawing and coloring with crayons, and some painting, and we weren't graded beyond "S" or "U" and you got an "S" just for doing the classwork or the assignment.We had some sports, more like phys ed I think, because I remember they made us do some exercises for "fitness", but nothing like team sports. We also played physical games mainly at recess. I'm only talking about elementary school with all of this.

I'm glad that kids today have a more generally interesting time in school than we did. And all the electronic gadgets help them to have a more interesting time outside of school as well. One reason I did so much reading, and creative play, on my own was because there wasn't much else to do. I think we got our first TV when I was in the early grades, but there wasn't even much on TV to look at.

I've heard all that stuff before ff. Many times. There are as many variations on the basic theme as there are ladies to exercise their wits on it. Such as they are.

Being bored in school is obviously not a unique experience and not suitable as an excuse for why you haven't risen, in the better off brigade, further than you seem to think you deserve to have done and it's all the fault of the school authorities for organising the schools all wrong.

What's the point of reading the NYT to find out what a "dynamic grouping environment" consists of because it will be whatever they say it does.

It's one of the more fanciful ways that those who wrote the article use to try to get over the same message you were trying to in your less subtle manner.

Have you seen the schoolroom scene in Amarcord? That's a "dynamic grouping environment" only different from the one you have had put in your mind. But not that different compared to some I have seen.

I thought my time in that elementary school was interesting.
I suppose it wasn't perfect but that teacher cared about every kid.

Since I'm quite a bit older, it was different then.
We didn't have foreign languages in elementary school, had rather large classes even in the first years at grammar (high) school - but it wasn't boring at all.
I think that especially in classes from 8 to 13, we really had what could be called "dynamic groupings" (even in Latin classes!)
But that was in 60's ...

Last weekend we talked about this with our niece and her friend, both at university now. They barely had an idea what we talked about when we told them our multiple activities outside school ...

Where did I make excuses for my life accomplishments, or my ranking in the "better off brigade", because of my early school experiences? Where did I even complain about such things because of where I wound up in life?

All I said was that I was bored in elementary school through the 4th grade.--and I was. But things, thankfully, improved after that, because I did skip a grade, and later, in high school, I did have access to advanced classes. All of that helped me to develop my potential. And I can understand what it must be like for those students who just can't 'connect' to school, for whatever reason, and I can empathize with them.

I'm more than happy with what I've achieved and accomplished in life, which is definitely above average, and that includes my level of educational attainment. I've been a very privileged person in many ways, and I'm very grateful for that. I've had the advantage of being able to do just about anything I wanted to do. I wish everyone had such opportunities. And that's why I value a good education, it helps to make other things in life possible. I want that for all children.

I feel no need to make excuses, of any kind, for myself. And I'm not making any. I've done quite well, despite having been bored in my first 5 years of school.

I think that dealing with frustration and boredom and daydreaming and kids that aren't just like you is integral to growing up.

I'll wager that everyone almost everyone who uses A2K was a pretty literate kid. We all choose to communicate in a text based format after all. This is a self selected community cut off from the population at large.

I think that we confuse literate with intelligent.