[Thamiel]

Could you elaborate why you think stratification is a bad thing? I think at age 10 you can robustly determine whether or not a student has the abilities for serious academic work, and I believe it's best for the students to get an education that's appropriate for their talents/needs. Besides, the system (as I experienced it in southern germany) is quite permeable, so even if the sorting is not perfect, students with the necessary academic ability have many paths to university.

[watwut]

At that age, brain still develops and relative ordering of children still change. The lowest performers are unlikely to become best, but the middle still changes significantly. Otherwise said, it is too soon to determine how good they will be as adults and what they will be good at.

Also, at that age, your ability to learn climbs very high just as function of age.

[Thamiel]

> The lowest performers are unlikely to become best, but the middle still changes significantly.

As long as the middle gets sorted into the Realschule, there's no problem ;-) But more seriously, according to wikipedia[0] IQ is relatively stable beginning at an age of approx. 11 years, so if we compensate for the measurement error with a permeable system I only see two problems: As you mentioned, at this age the brain devolops so rapidly that being the oldest in the class gives students a measurable advantage, but that is an issue for any school system, and as I said in a neighboring comment, overly ambitions parents are meddling too much, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon and a problem unto itself.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Age

[tptacek]

Be very careful extrapolating from Wikipedia on IQ. The science is subtle and not at all as stable as the encyclopedia makes it sound. One of the reasons people in the field talk about this stuff so gingerly is the proclivity laypeople have for taking half-baked science and turning it into public policy.

[Thamiel]

I know the difficulties surrounding IQ, I was just quoting it to show that predictions about future ability can be made at that age.

[tptacek]

... and my point was, probably no they cannot.

[Thamiel]

I quoted a source for my claim, imperfect though it may be. Can you support your assertion?

[watwut]

German system does not measure IQ. They split children based on second, third and partly fourth grade grades.

There is a lot more then IQ that goes into grades. All of it happens before 10.

[Thamiel]

I think I explained myself poorly. Of course the schools don't measure raw IQ, there are many factors like intrinsic motivation (problematic as a measure in young children) conscientousness (which is a relatively stable character trait) and of course parental pressure which distorts any measurement we can try to make. All I was trying to say that it is possible to judge the potential of the children with adequate accuracy.

[watwut]

Your claim the IQ does not change after 11 years old, even if true, is completely irrelevant then. It shows neither that it is good idea to split kids as 11 years old nor that you can say potential so soon.

[taysic]

I know people who were thought to be 'learning challenged' in elementary school who went onto MIT and do great things... so no I disagree you can ascertain that at age 10.

[Thamiel]

Well, as I said, the system is not perfect, which is why there are several paths for "late bloomers" to make it to university. I myself got sorted into Hauptschule, but after a year my grades improved and I switched to Realschule, got a diploma, went to a Fachgymnasium and enrolled in university. Btw I agree with grandparents argument that the parents' ambition is often the determining factor (as it was in my case) but I would rather try to find a way to assess the students innate abilities more accurately than to simply mix all students together.