RE: Schools

["Jason Abbott" <jabbott@uidaho.edu>]

>> But we don't have the impression our children's classes
>> are significantly slowed by underachievers who were
>> socially promoted.
>
> I wonder how the kids see this.  I hated this about school.

I went to school over in Troy and also "hated this."  When my family
moved to Troy from a small town in Oregon I was ahead.  The solution
the first year was to put me in the reading groups, and what-not, from
the grade above me.  The solution the next year was to not put me in
any group at all.  The teacher gave me some books to read on my own,
which took me a about the first month of the school year.  Then I drew
pictures for the rest of the year.  By the next year, of course, we
were all at the same level.

High School split out "Advanced Math" from "Basic Math," and such, but
was little better.  We could still only move as fast as the slowest
students in our class.

This point was proven to me in my senior year.  I was a teacher's aid
for Junior physics (only the "brightest" took physics).  A few
students did well on most of the assignments.  Many did not.  I graded
accordingly.  If an answer was wrong I marked it wrong.  If they got
part right I'd give partial credit.  But the teacher still had to
scratch out the grade I'd given and bump it up as much as two letters
at times.  He explained that the parents would riot if you failed
three quarters of the class.  To me, that's "socially promoted."

By that senior year it all seemed so pointless that I used money
earned from working evenings during the school week, and summers, to
buy my own computer and some books, and stay home to study.  I love to
study.  I missed too many days to graduate and had to appeal to get
out.  I'll admit that I had developed a bad attitude, which I now
regret, but I think much of it came from six years of grade school
where I'd realized I only had to do slightly better than the worst
students to get an A.  It wasn't very engaging.  It seemed very much
like a social program, as openly described by one of my teachers.

Jason Abbott       - Boise, Idaho, USA
jabbott@uidaho.edu - http://www.uidaho.edu/~jabbott
Home: 208/336-3678 - Work: 208/364-4051 - FAX: 208/387-1246