Teachers can’t “dumb down” the curriculum, either. You can only modify assessments and “differentiate instruction” so that you might cover the same material three different ways to make sure it’s accessible the visual learner, the auditory learner, etc. You can’t record modifications in the gradebook or transcripts, but you MUST keep a discrete – and utterly indispensable – file of the ways you’ve modified the assessments, seating, etc. and how the student performed each time.

On the other hand, teachers are “flipping” their classrooms and using blended learning so some students can do more of their work at their own pace. Or having their parents do their work – it’s really hard to tell for online assessments. I know a hs teacher who has 96 students in one class; they show up to class a couple times a week and do the rest with iPads and laptops. But you can imagine that she has to simplify all assignments so she can correct them and still teach her “normal” classes.

I foresee a time when employers will have their own entrance exams, just to be on the safe side. And then there will be cram courses to pass those. 🙂

Things like philosophy 101 and history, they can definitely absorb easier than class lectures. As for math, they’re going to need mathematical test programs. If it is just solving math problems, we got software that does the same thing as a teacher at a chalkboard.

But faster.

If it hadn’t been for tracking in school I don’t know what I would have done. I remember hearing, a bit after I left school, that the egalitarian, end-of-tracking educators were beginning to triumph. I shuddered, knowing how bad this would be for the smarter kids.

And this was back when I was a liberal.

De-tracking fools no one, either. Everyone knows who the smart kids are and who the slow kids are. The smart kids are being sacrificed, and it’s purposeful.

More than once, she criticized tracking. Her idea was that students should work together across all ranges since that would benefit the group most. In other words, the bright ones would help the less bright ones learn.

OMG. Having been in the gifted classes in school I told her it wouldn’t work. And, that it was unfair to the bright ones. Why should I not be challenged and instead do the work of the teachers, to kids who would resent/hate me? I had one bio class that I had to take with ‘average’ kids, and since I was sitting in the back of the classroom, everyone around me got As. I’m sure she would have been thrilled at hearing that, but it meant that the guys thought I was cool to help them. There were a bunch of partiers and jocks sitting near me.

They will view it with a very unnatural eye. Greatness in one’s pets can only be tolerated so far.

Would this psycho teacher be shit canned in a minute today?

Somehow, given the stranglehold teachers unions have on the educational system and how hard it is to fire anybody, I don’t think so.

As a contemporary example of the kinds of things going on in elementary education that don’t result in firing see, for instance, this example (http://nypost.com/2014/01/19/city-ignored-teachers-pleas-to-ax-lunatic-principal-since-05/)

Now, we Really need to see more diversity on the basketball court, on the track, and on the the gridiron, people!

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At Lake Wobegone the ENTIRE class is above average — as is everyone else.

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Wolla Dalbo…

I first ran into that scheme, circa 1965, with one teacher taking the middles and the other taking the extremes (bright and dull)

Not being previously ‘calibrated’ I proved to be a ringer in the ‘middles.’

My previous teacher (4th and 5th) was so obsessed with me that she followed me up to the 5th grade.

Only decades later I found out that she was a spinster — and distant cousin.

Ultimately I ended up with a ‘battling cume’ that set state records for heft and thickness by the time I graduated.

(As in 4″ thick.)

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As for my experiences during those two years…

I commonly arose from sleep shaking out of my nightmares. Too much teacher. (Like a Nazi concentration camp, you didn’t ever know where to step, how fast to read, or what else would set the psycho on edge. When you’re that young, profound mental illness is not a concept that is comprehended, especially when all of the authority figures inform you that Ms. Maniac is A okay.)

(What kind of school administrator permits an obsessed teacher to follow a student into his next year?…)

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Being a prodigy has its own perils — when they distort all of the adults around you.

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As perverted as my own experiences have been, they’re topped by too many I know…

What of a classmate who scored in the top 50 nationally? (NMSQT todays PSAT) He was whipped raw, unable to attend class. His idiot father totally rejected him. Every ‘A’ brought a whipping. That’s no joke.

He scored well precisely because he thought that his results would never be reported back to his father.

How sick is that?

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My Sister is a schoolmarm — for the Microsoft set. (She’s just down the road from HQ.)

After thirty-years of teaching, she’s discovered that parents are the WORST evaluators of their own children. They either think them dunces or brainiacs. It’s amazing that any child survives.

Her worst student has an awful IQ — it’s 100. That’s a nightmare when the average IQ of the parents is around 138. The poor devil’s parents just can’t understand why their third child is so dull — as to be average.

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Life is tough all over. It’s mind breaking when your parents and teachers lie to you — even to themselves — about where you stand.

Or as my Father intoned, ” It’s impossible to teach you anything.”

BOTH extremely bright and extremely dull students should not be nailed to the average track.

America’s problem is that it can’t politically accept that some kids are born really, really, smart.

The one thing that I noticed with Jewish family life is that they, almost uniquely, can accept having really bright babies. Most other cultures can talk a good game — but can’t deliver.

Then, they become embittered by Jewish success in all of the intellectual arts. The connection is not made.

http://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299

Herrnstein and Murray point out that our society is going through a splitting on this axis.

Barry thinks he’s the one when he’s the other….

Such is the Harvard way.

That’s bizarre. When I first wrote this post, I transposed the numbers from the article I linked and had written “P.S. 139” rather than 193. “Paul in Boston” corrected me, and I went back to the article and checked, and then corrected the post.

And now it seems my original mistake was right after all, and it was the article that was wrong? Weird!