If this analysis is correct, there seems to be an easy fix—just throw the disruptive students out of the classroom, and you can have rather good results with large classrooms too.
The reason this isn’t implemented is that children are forced to attend school. If they could get out of classes without consequent punishment, not just one or two ‘disruptives’ but many students might opt out. A school doesn’t have anywhere to keep such a group; classes are in large part make-work to occupy students.
On the other hand, if you punished disruptive students but did so outside of class, the habitual disruptives would spend a lot of time in punishment sessions, and would definitely not learn their lessons / pass end of year exams / etc. Schools in the US* prefer to have everyone barely pass exams, to 80% passing with high scores and 20% failing irretrievably. The failing students’ parents have too much political power over the schools.
I’m not from the US, but have seen enough people complaining about US schools on the ‘net. The Israeli public schools I went to in the 90s were the same. Every time teachers tried to set up separate classes for non-disruptive students who could be taught instead of disciplined, the non-eligible students’ parents complained.
Schools in the US prefer to have everyone barely pass exams, to 80% passing with high scores and 20% failing irretrievably. The failing students’ parents have too much political power over the schools.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. The unwillingness to risk (localized or individual) failure is the strongest guarantee of mediocrity.
Does it? By many metrics the US does better with gifted and talented education than much of the world. For example, the US has some of the highest per a capita rates of Noble Prize winners and Fields Medal winners, more than Britain or France. If anything, the US is doing badly on the average case but is doing a lot better with the very smart students.
Edit: This claim is massively wrong, see Douglas’s remark below.
Someone a while ago told me this I think and I must have not bothered checking it. Yeah, this is unambiguously wrong as of right now. It is possible that this was true until some point quite a few years ago, but is clearly false today. Thanks for catching me on that.
You shouldn’t reason from Nobel Prize per capita all the way back to gifted & talented education without bringing in many other factors to your regression.
The US is the wealthiest economy in the world with the best elite higher education establishment with some of the largest investments in STEM or R&D in general, with the largest Jewish population outside Israel (which, IIRC, beats the US on per capita measures), and as wedrifid pointed out, for all these factors attracts the best students from across the world. Just off the top of my head.
This means that our G&T programs could easily be underperforming and a simple gross observation of per capita Nobelists not make this instantly obvious. A better approach would be to simply look for experiments, natural or otherwise, on funding for G&T programs and seeing how they do.
If anything, the US is doing badly on the average case but is doing a lot better with the very smart students.
Either that or they are doing well at acquiring very smart students (either by immigration or the genetic inheritance from historic immigration patterns.)
The reason this isn’t implemented is that children are forced to attend school. If they could get out of classes without consequent punishment, not just one or two ‘disruptives’ but many students might opt out. A school doesn’t have anywhere to keep such a group; classes are in large part make-work to occupy students.
On the other hand, if you punished disruptive students but did so outside of class, the habitual disruptives would spend a lot of time in punishment sessions, and would definitely not learn their lessons / pass end of year exams / etc. Schools in the US* prefer to have everyone barely pass exams, to 80% passing with high scores and 20% failing irretrievably. The failing students’ parents have too much political power over the schools.
I’m not from the US, but have seen enough people complaining about US schools on the ‘net. The Israeli public schools I went to in the 90s were the same. Every time teachers tried to set up separate classes for non-disruptive students who could be taught instead of disciplined, the non-eligible students’ parents complained.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. The unwillingness to risk (localized or individual) failure is the strongest guarantee of mediocrity.
It also explains the state of gifted & talented education, incidentally.
Does it? By many metrics the US does better with gifted and talented education than much of the world. For example, the US has some of the highest per a capita rates of Noble Prize winners and Fields Medal winners, more than Britain or France. If anything, the US is doing badly on the average case but is doing a lot better with the very smart students.
Edit: This claim is massively wrong, see Douglas’s remark below.
What is your source for per capita rates?
France has 4x Fields medalists per capita as the US. (and the UK is the geometric mean). (or try wikipedia) For science Nobels, the UK beats the US, which beats France.
Someone a while ago told me this I think and I must have not bothered checking it. Yeah, this is unambiguously wrong as of right now. It is possible that this was true until some point quite a few years ago, but is clearly false today. Thanks for catching me on that.
You shouldn’t reason from Nobel Prize per capita all the way back to gifted & talented education without bringing in many other factors to your regression.
The US is the wealthiest economy in the world with the best elite higher education establishment with some of the largest investments in STEM or R&D in general, with the largest Jewish population outside Israel (which, IIRC, beats the US on per capita measures), and as wedrifid pointed out, for all these factors attracts the best students from across the world. Just off the top of my head.
This means that our G&T programs could easily be underperforming and a simple gross observation of per capita Nobelists not make this instantly obvious. A better approach would be to simply look for experiments, natural or otherwise, on funding for G&T programs and seeing how they do.
Either that or they are doing well at acquiring very smart students (either by immigration or the genetic inheritance from historic immigration patterns.)
.