Rock and a Hard Place
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Rock and a Hard Place
| Thu, 11-20-2003 - 10:45am |
There's something on this board that has been bothering me, and I hope I can articulate it.
| Thu, 11-20-2003 - 10:45am |
There's something on this board that has been bothering me, and I hope I can articulate it.
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And I am not in a lower class neighbourhood. The kids of which I'm thinking did know what a book was and what it was used for - in someone elses hands. But reading is not a skill that will develop instinctively with passive exposure. Unlike walking, talking - development of reading skill requires another level of direction beyond simple exposure. The childish brain won't just start reading because it is exposed to adults who do it. The idea that developing the skill is something to which the young child should aspire - needs to be actively put into that childish brain, and reinforced actively, constantly. I would bet CLW is wrong - I bet those kids in her area WERE read to. I bet it was something else that was missing.
Does this work? All I can say is that the Scandinavian countries did very well in the last round of PISA tests, certainly much better than the U.S. and most other European countries.
Laura
It came from our principal. He was explaining to a group of us how, in his school, and with his philosophy, children would be assigned to mixed grades on a rotating basis year by year. So that all kids ended up there sooner or later and no group of kids ended up there more than others. I think thats just a dumb idea. Its a more complicated learning environment, and I am much more in favour of the other philosophy where the kids chosen to be part of mixed grade classrooms, all of them, the upper and the lower grades, are those who are most able to work independantly and function in the environment. But that isn't the outrageous part.
So I asked him why he didn't use the philosophy I prefer, which makes so much sense and helps minimize the occurence of kids ending up in environments they can't handle thus loosing out completely for an entire year at a time, and also helps minimize the occurence where other kids who can handle it loose entire years because they teacher is trying to cope with a large percentage of a class who can't. Well. Can you believe it. This was his answer. "Well we don't want to have kids assigned to classes in such a way that some classes can be identified as more highly achieveing than others. How would YOU feel, Mrs Opinion, if your child was always in the slow class?" And that is the outrageous part. I was told that the educational experience of children was going to be sacrificed, entire years at at time...to preserve the egos of as many parents as possible! HELLO. THAT is the most OUTRAGEOUS thing I have ever heard. I can't believe you people support this kind of thinking. Its really sad that parental ego is so tied to kids that the parents can't stand dealing with a little concrete comparative analysis of their childrens ability and performance. Especially since I notice how willing all you PARENTS are to have the performance of SCHOOLS compared. Oh sure - as long as you can blame the shortfalls on something other than yourselves - as long as the results of the comparison place no responsiblity for the situation for it on YOUR parenting shoulders...its ok. But boy, just let anyone imply that Mommy or Daddy's performance stands to impvrove and its a little ego meltdown fest. BLECH.
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