October 2, 2007
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Schooling and Intelligence
Should school children be segregated by intelligence levels? In all subjects/areas? If not all, in which?
That's one of Socrates_cafe's discussion question this week.
My answer is basically yes, and no.
If we define intelligence as the ability to reason, relate, and learn and we measure the speed and accuracy of these abilities we can pretty well determine the differences between children (and adults for that matter) in their ability.
There are several different areas of talent where this difference can be measured (musical, artistic intellectual, et al) and in some of them children naturally segregate themselves.
Curriculum subjects taught in school generally come in two "Flavors": Skills and Attitudes.
While both skill and attitude are found in all subjects, skill is more important in math, science, language, and such while the attitude developed is more important in the Social Studies, and perhaps in Art and Music. You don't have to know the exact date of the signing of the treaty ending the Civil War (April 9, 1865) to be a good American Citizen; but you surely have to know the periodic table of elements to be a chemist and calculus to be an engineer.
In the skill subjects, separation by intelligence/ability levels makes both teaching and learning much easier for all concerned.
A the goals of Social Studies should be primarily affective (Why study Civics, if you don't want to develop good citizenship?), it is more appropriate to have a non-selective, totally integrated group of students in the basic required classes such as American History and Civics. That does pt more of a load on the teacher, but it's not all that hard.
Comments (9)
Wouldn't you agree that another area that can be used as a discriminator is talent. That usually shows up quickly if it exists. I could take piano lessons 'til the cows come home, and while I might learn to play, I would never become a great concert pianoist because I don't have the raw talent for it that takes some individuals beyond the merely good into the category of great.
That said, I do believe that exposure of students to a wide variety of subject matters is good for them, and provides them with the opportunity to see if they have an interest in different topics they might not otherwise come into contact with. If no interest exists, it helps them to know that too, and the class contack becomes good old fashion background knowledge which can't hurt.
When it comes right down to it, really gifted people are rare. It would be expensive for schools to segregate them unless the school was very large, because you would be talking about numbers as small as 4 or 5 per class even in a class of 300 students or more. Of course, that depends on how you define gifted. Generally, though, classes for gifted students contain not only truly gifted, but also high average and talented students.
Our son is profoundly gifted. He attended a school with fewer than 1000 students k-12, so there were no students of his ability level in his classes. We did have him tested simply because he was a "spooky" child and we wanted to confirm our suspicions that he was of very high ability. We did not tell him that he was gifted until he was over 30 years old, however. Our solution to enhancing his education was to take him to plays, museums, and historic sites, to give him subscriptions to many types of magazines, to enroll him in many activities, and to send him to Space Camp. We tried very hard not to let him learn the things that were taught in school until they were taught by his teachers. Sometimes that could not be avoided, but most of the time it could. All of that really worked remarkably well and he was never bored.
In my experience, gifted people share something with autistic people and developmentally disabled people, and that is that they see, experience, and understand the world very differently from "normal" people, if there actually is such a thing as normal. That can cause problems in relatioinships, at school, and later at work. What is the responsibility of schools in helping gifted students cope with that?
Susan, you are right about the problem of talent vs IQ.
IQ, as far as I know, was developed to identify mentally handicapped children and give some idea of the extent of their handicap. Only later was IQ used to measure and rank gifted children. It's use with adults has always been a problem area.
The relationship of talent to intelligence is very complex (and probably not very close).
Nance, I have to keep remembering that my public school teaching experience is not the norm
Once I had an NDEA summer seminar at the U of New Hampshire with mostly teachers from New England. I had to gently remind some of them that the local system I was associated with was somewhat larger than the entire New Hampshire school system. My HS teaching was done in a grade 10-12 school with a population ranging from two to four thousand (It has since been reduced to about 1500). I was Social Studies Dept. Head and had 12-20 teachers to supervise. I didn't care much for administration and always taught at least five classes a day. We had plenty of all sorts of students. I later taught in a community college and university.
The definition of "Gifted" students varies with the school systems, but usually includes those with a measured IQ of 130 or better as well as those with aggressive mommas
Your son sounds as if he had the usual problems the very gifted experience in school and it sounds as if you did perfectly in handling his situation. I wish other parents were as perceptive, but I must say in my experience, almost all of my gifted kids' parents were very supportive and concerned. When we wanted to go on an extended field trip, for example, I always had many more volunteers than we needed.
I was always more worried about the other end of the spectrum. How do you take them as far as they can go without holding the rest of the class back?
My first year teaching was exclusively with that kind of kid (newbies always get that kind of assignment) and I must say, it was a delight.
I actually got chewed out because some kids would sneak into my class while playing hooky for the rest of the day and I did not check the "Absent List" and send them Dean-ward instead of letting them stay and hopefully learn something. I taught "Special Math" and "History of the South" (don't laugh) neither of which had any kind of text materials, so we wrote our own. For years I would be stopped on the street by grubby workers asking if I ever finished the textbooks.
I loved teaching and still (after 22 years of retirement) miss it - sometimes.
I have to agree with all of you to some extent - actually, to a large extent. As I said in my post, I have no answer to segregating according to ability or not. Did you teachers find that the slower kids resented the quicker ones or not.
My husband was moved forward from the 4th to the 5th grade, about 1/2 year and it was not a good experience for him. In our country school one boy was moved forward an entire grade and suffered quite a bit because of that. Of course, in a larger populated school that would not be so likely to happen. Still, I wonder if anyone has looked at that problem.
My own experience has been not with my kids' abilities but with their motivation after they hit their teens. All of my kids were voracious readers, as I am and as was my husband, so they didn't have a lot of trouble with their other classes, but they didn't seem to care much if they made more than a C. It might have been because my husband and I were pretty laid back about life in general but not about learning, so I never figured that out.
Anyway, this is a good discussion and I'm enjoying it. Blessings to all.
This is mostly for Annie -
I have not really found that slower kids resent the brighter kids, but I do find the reverse. In fect, I think one of the advantages of mainstreaming is that bright students learn to understand and appreciate students who are not as able. They learn to be more patient and to see the value in those students. I know that because I went to a very tracked high school, I really never knew that there were actually students who had trouble learning until I was out of college and started to teach. It really horrified me to find that there were students who really were trying as hard as they could but who still could not master the material.
On the other hand, one of the motivations for segregating students by ability is that it will help people relate better to each other in the community. That is probably true for the reasons that I mention above, but it is probably never going to cause me to become social friends with someone of very low ability. There is just no common meeting place. I have learned to appreciate their value as people, though. At least I think I have.
That's one reason I suggest a mixed set of groupings. In the skill-oriented classes segregation by IQ makes sense if it's done carefully.
In those classes that focus on affective learning (mostly the required social studies and such) a hetrogenious grouping is probably more appropriate.
It is, however, easy to screw this proceedure up, as has happened with the "No Child Left Behind Act" which has pretty much morphed into a situation where almost all of the kids get short-changed or "Left Behind". Spending a lot of time drilling for a test obviously isn't learning.
Any suggestions on improvment of this situation?
Hi!
I am finally getting around to reading some other posts and comments carefully. What a great discussion! When I posted, I wasnt too keen on segragating our students, but I think I was thinking more along the lines of humanities classes like Civ, Govt, and maybe history classes where different views are essential to learning. In thinking about it, however, and reading everyones comments, it might be beneficial however, to segregate students in the maths and sciences. I hadnt really thought about it in that way before. As far as getting it done.. Im not sure the feds can do it. But maybe the school board can take the initiative in that. I mean, the federal govt is good for providing services and some sort of structure and stabalization... standardization. But they arent so good at micromanaging.
I mean, the federal govt, could set the ground rules for the restructuring, and continue to provide funding, but as far as implementation, I think the superintendant and school boards might be more affective at carrying out the plan.
RYC: Hmmm that is the trade off... having the program be implemented locally gives it variety, since all localities can implement it a little different, and there is a possibility that in some cases (how many would have to be seen) it would turn out as you describe. But look at Social security. It is a program that started out written pretty loosly by the federal govt, thus when it was implemented by the states in the south, some of its statutes were used to exclude the jobs held by mainly minority workers. Over time, however, the loopholes were closed and things became much more inclusive. I recently read a paper about this.. if I can find it, Ill pass it on
I guess the point is, the policy doesnt have to be absolutely perfect at first. We just need to take a step in the right direction and give ourselves leeway to make changes and tweak it. I know it is hard to do that when we are talking about our children and thier education, but I just dont see a way around it.
B
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