And mandatory attendance. You can't force someone to learn when they don't want to. Stop treating schools like prisons and the attendees will stop acting like inmates.
We make it mandatory because otherwise the kids of the disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised wouldn't get a decent start in life. It also allows more people to work - someone else is looking after the kids.
There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.
Mandatory schooling is more about keeping people OUT of the job market than it is putting people INTO it. If schools were about training, they'd look more like universities (and if universities were about advanced training, they'd look more like business environments).
How many kids study to pass the test? How many teachers teach to get the kids to pass the test? And thereafter they forget everything. I see grown-ass adults who can't calculate a simple 20% tip on paper, and more who can't do it in their heads, and that's an EASY one. People, working in industry, who don't know that the US has 50 states. I've seen programmers with computer science degrees counting on their fingers to add numbers.
Again, you can't teach something to someone who doesn't want to learn, and you can't prevent someone from learning who does want to. Schools get the credit for education, but they're just present. The mandatory aspect did nothing.
> We make it mandatory because otherwise the kids of the disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised wouldn't get a decent start in life.
For most of the "disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised", as you put it, mandatory school attendance does nothing to solve their problems anyway, as the people you are thinking of have many systemic things running against them in addition any personal issues in their lives.
> There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.
Mandatory school isn't the same thing as doing something positive for communities. Some communities will find the policy beneficial, others will find it destructive (esp. when some kids are forced into school systems are that literal prisons, complete with metal detectors, cell phone lockers you pay out of pocket for, and frequent searches of all student belongings).
"mandatory school attendance does nothing to solve their problems anyway"
I disagree that it does nothing. Some people still get the opportunity to better themselves through education, even if it doesn't help everyone.
Schools becoming prisons is a weird US phenomenon, I think you have societal issues to tackle that are much bigger than schooling.
And it's still better to have kids given access to education under those circumstances than not at all (and without it being mandatory they would not have access. No, they wouldn't)
so "we" have to provide mandatory schooling and a value judgement on what constitutes the "correct" schooling, but "you" have to deal with societal issues.
> mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.
[citation needed]
...and on the other hand putting smart kids _willing_ to learn in an uninspiring and oppressive environment. (Bad for their learning and devastating for their still developing personality.)
IMHO it's hard to find a worse crime against natural curiosity and willingness than _forcing_ people to do something.
Smart kids willing to learn - how do they know?
How do we pick out these smart kids and make sure they get education? Even if they're not from good backgrounds? How do we get these smart kids out of their crappy homes and make sure somebody teaches them something, anything, unless it's mandatory?
YOU may have been perfect, motivated, willing to learn, and may have been given the opportunity to learn even if it wasn't mandatory. Many others would not, many parents wouldn't bother.
It was very noticeable to me, by second grade, who was there to learn and who was just there because they were forced to wake up and walk to a bus stop in the morning. While I was lucky enough to be put into some specialty classes based on previous testing I'd done, the majority of my day was still spent sitting next to kids who were literally drying glue in their desks, pouring ink into it to color it and eating it once it dried.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with those kids, they just need a different direction and a little more support.
Can't disagree with that. But at that age some of the 'forced to wake up and walk to the bus-stop' kids still have a long way to grow and change.
I don't know the system in the US very well. Kids can go to different sorts of colleges post-16 here in the UK, or could (until recently, this may have changed) opt out at that age and enter the workforce.
Just providing a good environment for learning (teachers explaining things, eager to answer question).
For ones wanting to learn, just don't force them to do so.
OK, is someone is not much willing to learn - well, then it may be good to force to do so. But don't force everyone because some need it.
(It seems that forcing people to learn is very inefficient. And I think for that reason many times school are places to socialize, bully and drink doing not much work that it is necessary to survive... and not much places actually good for learning anything.)
Forcing all kids to go to school and forcing all kids to learn are two different things.
As you know, daycare (and, say, crime and accident prevention), training, and cultural/national upbringing are different things, and they work differently, often with contradicting goals and methodologies. Currently we tend to treat "education" as a one thing, but in isn't.
I am all for all kids going to school (unless one can provide a better education), otherwise there would be a disaster of crime and poverty, much alike the one during the industrial revolution. However, what happens inside is extremely far from things which "make sense" both for them, and the society.
Erm, what scares you about ability-based classes? The single strongest motivator for me to do well at school was to get into the top set which was free from bullies.
The problem with ability based groupings across age groups is that doesn't take into account learning velocity, ie the speed at which people learn new things. For example, a second grader that is at a fourth grade math level is likely to learn much faster than a fifth grader at a fourth grade math level. And you don't want to put advanced 8 year olds in a class with slow 11 year olds. That in itself is an invitation to bullying.
Ability based learning within age groups makes perfect sense, but assumes a sample size large enough to make meaningful groupings at the high and low ends.
The problem is the classroom environment itself. The lecture format is an antiquated relic. We don't ever do the lecture format again once we leave school, which I think is pretty good evidence that it's garbage.
You might submit conferences as a counterexample, but I would submit them in favor of my argument.
I firmly agree with you that classroom lectures are garbage. We homeschool our children. I'm simply making the point that, at least among younger children, age based classes are preferable to skill-based classes.
A preferable alternative in my mind would be a classroom where ALL work is done independently. The teacher then calls each student to their desk individually to see what they have learned and what they need help with. They can then spend 10-15 minutes individually with each student per day. Fast students can get pushed ahead and slow students can get the help they need instead of being forced along with the rest of the class.
Actually, the argument for skill-based education _is_ that learning speeds are different.
So for one it takes 6 months to learn something, for another - 3 years. And in such systems it's fine - you got promoted because you have learnt something, not just because you got one year older (and haven't failed utterly).
And again, for the same "level" of subject there can be two speeds - so no risk of smart 8 yo kids in the same class with slow 11 yo.
I think its pretty common that when students are divided by "ability", especially later on in middle or high school, it can weigh pretty heavily on the students in the "lower ability" classes. Its essentially saying "we don't expect much but you need to be here."
This system works out very well for bright, academically inclined students, sure. But it sets a structure of expectations that don't motivate what could possibly be great talent, but we wouldn't know because they didn't bubble in the right answer.
Me too. Until my family moved to an area, the schools in which didn't recognize ability as an appropriate differentiator. It was not good times for me.
This doesn't mean that ability as a differentiator is bad--I think that it's a great idea. What it does mean is that consistency is absolutely crucial when such an idea is implemented; I was in an environment where excellence was encouraged, and that led to a lot of self-motivation. Not all children are going to be in the same situation, and that could be disasterous.
"The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin tackles the concept of the environment which best facilitates learning and personal growth, and touches on the idea of ability-based classes as well. It's a great read for anyone interested in such.
The idea that bullies are never academically talented is a false dichotomy. The idea that bullies only attack "smart," kids is ludicrous. Thus, ability-based classes would not end bullying in any way.
Who's saying we want to use a 5-year-old's ability as an indicator of future ability? We want to use a 5-year-old's ability as an indicator of their current ability. I'd say we'll look at their ability again when they're six, but really the ideal is near-continuous evaluation.
Don't just think about slightly tweaking the system we have today. Think about the system after it finally embraces computers as a transformative force, instead of a very silly expensive way to issue multiple choice tests. We're going to free up teachers to spend their time on the stuff that actually requires a human, instead of bogging them down with so much automateable work that they end up hardly any more effective than a machine, what a surprise.
Indeed. Education is only one part of the personal development you get at school. Socialising/communicating with your peers is another key thing.
Which is why so many "proteges" tend to burn out, I think, or have emotional problems as they age - simply for lacking that time to develop with their peers.
End age based classes would be a good start.