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by corty 1954 days ago
Of course higher intelligence is a privilege, as is higher sportive ability and other attributes given to you from birth. This includes your own personal attributes as well as the privilege that comes from your family's wealth and status. But actually, the word "privilege" muddles the waters, because those are two very different things.

I agree that schools should not differentiate based on families' status and wealth. Schools should treat poor and rich children the same.

However, schools should never treat stupid and intelligent children the same. Not everyone is cut out to be a rocket surgeon. But your argument means that we should hold back all future rocket surgeons and bring them to a lower level of privilege, i.e. dumb them down. This is neither in the interest of the children (stupid as well as intelligent ones) nor is it in the interest of society. We do need rocket surgeons...
2 comments
UrsaMedius 1954 days ago
However, schools should never treat stupid and intelligent children the same. Not everyone is cut out to be a rocket surgeon. But your argument means that we should hold back all future rocket surgeons and bring them to a lower level of privilege, i.e. dumb them down. This is neither in the interest of the children (stupid as well as intelligent ones) nor is it in the interest of society. We do need rocket surgeons...

I agree that this can be a difficult balance to strike. But I think it's also important to keep the door open for children who mature a bit later. Stamping someone as "not gifted" by excluding them from a "gifted" group sure seems like it would cause problems, especially for younger children. Of course it's a difficult practical problem to solve; to give every child challenges on their current level.

Also, while there are surely variations in intelligence that are "from birth", I do not know how that compares to all the variations caused by different educational privileges; having parents that have a lot of time to read for/with the child etc. It sort of comes down to "equality vs. equity" I suppose - and that is not a simple question.

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fabbari 1954 days ago 

  Schools do not treat stupid and intelligent children the same, teachers - with few exceptions - do. Not because they are evil, but because to be able to cater to the different levels of intelligence and the variation in interests that you will naturally find in a random sample of children they require the time and opportunities to do so.

  As long as we treat teachers as the least important workers, without acknowledging the critical work they do [0], have classes that have more pupils than a teacher can follow individually in a meaningful way and consider education "an expense" that needs reduction, rather than "an investment" we will not have a proper education system.

  On the flip side: an uneducated population is easier to sway, so there is not a lot of pressure on the political establishment to change things.
[0] Lack of self awareness - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er2_n9pXUAMZnyq.jpg:large
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corty 1954 days ago
Paying teachers more is beside the point. A well-paid teacher isn't suddenly a better teacher just because it earns more money.

The things we should invest in are more teachers, smaller and more separated classes and better teachers' education. Only the last one correlates (somewhat) with teachers' salaries.

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Aerroon 1954 days ago
How much of a difference do teachers make in the public school system? I don't mean teacher vs no teacher, but good teacher vs average teacher. The topics in the public school system are not set by the teachers themselves - they have to teach what has been decided elsewhere. A good teacher can engage students better, but how much of that is the teacher's ability as opposed to the teacher and students happening to get along? How much of it is good students self-selecting themselves into academically better schools, therefore having better peers?

Asked in a different way: if we paid (all) teachers 3x as we do right now, would we observe significant long-term improvements in students?

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randompwd 1954 days ago
Please do not use code blocks just to draw attention to your comment. It is not clever or creative.
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fabbari 1950 days ago 

  This is odd - I am not using code blocks, I am just typing in the text box to reply. I thought it looked like code as a way of showing my comments. I really don't know why it happens, I will look and see if it's somewhere in the settings.
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