I’m a teacher in training. We had reading “homework” over the summer for our incoming students. Their families were instructed that if their child read every day (15-30 minutes or so), and they kept track of it on a chart we sent them, they would win prizes when they came to school. I think it was something like a pizza party if they read a certain number of days. It wasn’t mandatory and there was no punishment for not doing it. I thought it was a great idea.
At my school so many high achievers would use summer school to get ahead that they had to shut it down. Those nerds were causing the actually remediate kids to feel ashamed and othered, so they would all drop out after a week or two. Year after year. I’m salty about it.
Hot take, schools should be geared towards accommodating the smartest kids, not the dumbest. There should still be safety nets like summer school, but the smartest kids should be able to learn as much as they want to
My hot take: schools should be geared to everyone. Have advanced classes, normal classes, and below average classes. The teacher can teach according to each class. Everyone should get an education.
Even calling those students Below Average others them. They probably have other forms of intelligence. Or they just don’t learn well in the one exact neurotypical classroom that we offer in the US. Or maybe they have issues at home, economic issues, or social issues that are keeping them from succeeding in school. Kids in other top countries are never asked to worry about these things.
Those smartest kids can go test out of everything with AP, take SAT courses privately or for free. Those kids who need more helo have no fucking other chance. Experiences like these tilt them away from education entirely.
Thermonuclear take; the kind of work it takes to perform well in school is exactly the kind of work society is preparing kids for, so good school performance can still be a strong indication they’ll be good employees.
Wether or not our society and schools are right for that is a much more interesting topic of debate. Kids who crush it in school (and continue to crush it all the way through college) will go on to make their companies loads of money for cheap.
Yes, school is a soul crushing amount of mindless busy work to earn a pieces of paper with shit printed on them. What you will do until you die. Welcome to society, it sucks here.
My kid now has to sit in classrooms where kids scream, threaten people, throw things, and break shit. The teacher has had to evacuate the classroom until these kids calm down. Barely any teaching or learning takes place because these poor teachers are far too busy trying to manage these students.
My kid went from top student in every single grade to an anxious wreck because he now has to deal with kids who threaten to hurt both other students and themselves.
I’m very much for “education for all”, but this ain’t the way to do it. It’s a fuckin’ mess out there. I don’t envy the kids of today in the slightest.
That’s horrible. Yeah, I think the misbehaving kids would fit better elsewhere. I didn’t have such disruptive issues in my school, more that the students of retired engineers took all of the fucking opportunities. Our AP classes were full, and the game to getting in was not about grades. And when I was a young child I kndw why: George Bush’s No Child Left Behind laws. And I think that crap is still in effect, as public schools continue to fail American kids.
Um, yeah? Teaching is not about awarding those who game the system the best. It’s all about making sure that the “lowest common denominator” gets every chance to succeed.
It’s not a fucking leaderboard.
Signed,
a salty fucking teacher who will defend those students to the end.
Edit: I’m gonna keep going on this because it’s a subject that pisses me off to no end.
I live in a place where the rich kids can afford to tutor during the summer, and some take extra classes to “get ahead” of the school year. And you know what those kids do?
They sit in the classes, bored, because someone paid for them to do all this stuff early.
And I’m not saying that learning extracurriculars is bad, in fact, it’s wonderful! But if you paid somewhere to just take the same math class that you would have done anyway, well congrats. You got nothing. You beat Mario before everyone else.
And even that would be fine, except the attitude that comes from them – some as early as 6 years old! – is that these fucking “remedials” are slowing them down, and they are “smart” all while a mountain of money and privilege supports them.
And do those kids feel like they should help their fellow students learn? No! They just punch down harder, because no one in their families teaches them that learning is cooperative effort. Just get to the top of that fucking leaderboard and stay there at all costs. From fucking kindergarten onwards!
So taking time out of your summer as a student and sacrificing fun for the love of learning is “gaming the system,” and needs to be abolished? No wonder the United States school system is messed up…
I explicitly said that the love of learning is great.
And I’m not saying that learning extracurriculars is bad, in fact, it’s wonderful!
I’m talking about summer schools that literally just teach a class curriculum ahead of time. In that respect, yes, it is “gaming”. The only thing those students learn is to get ahead and stay ahead.
Who’s going to teach them? We can’t even hire enough teachers for the shitfestival that education is now, how do you find more teachers?
Once you get those teachers who are skilled at driving advanced classes, would you require them also work in the poor performing classes?
That’s a conditions trap, now that good teacher is dealing with the administration and trauma burden of the low performing class making it complex for them to perform in the advanced class.
Would you make them specialists? That’s an equity and human resources management nightmare. Whid want to work in a class of hard students when classes of dreamy well behaved engaged kids is a possibility
Do we keep it the same and continue to systemically disadvantage everyone?
There are no easy answers. The entire education system needs to be invented and rebuilt from the ground up.
Why take these summer breaks in the first place? Are your kids needed on the farms still? Or is it because salty teachers are underpaid and having summer breaks is th only way the US can convince them to work. Where is the data that summer breaks help any students at all? Poor or rich smart or lazy? What about the kids that don’t get lunches when they are not in school? Summer slumping is a detriment to all, to society. I don’t see many teachers willing to stand up to that as the underlying issue, and I don’t see how it’s fair to blame those that are either willing or able to fight it independently with additional learning. They are not the ones to aim your laser at.
I don’t live in the US. I’m adequately paid, and the summers are short where I live. Take your strawmen and throw them back whatever hole you dug them out of.
I can’t speak about US problems, but what I’m talking about is education in general. I’ll give you an example: I was teaching some students to read the other day, about 8 years old. One student clearly has the leg up on the other one. She goes to after school programs, short summer programs, the works. She can read about two levels higher than her classmate. Hey, that’s great. And actually when reading is concerned, I’m happy that she can do that. But what happens is that when I need to slow down and actually teach that other student to read (at a level that’s perfectly fine for her age), she groans, she gets impatient, she makes fun of that kid. And what happens to that other kid? She feels stupid, she feels inadequate.
And ok, you might say, an intensive reading program is good! But one thing it does not teach these kids is that they are not better than anyone else, and even if they learn more, they need to also learn to be respectful to their fellow students.
Tl;dr we’re teaching them to be competitive, not good human beings
My school had two separate classes for that exact reason. Remedial summer school was Tuesday Thursday for a little bit longer, and get ahead summer school was Monday Wednesday Friday
That’s interesting. At my school, summer school was only for the remedial students and there was a stigma involved with it. Basically nobody wanted to do summer school and most kids would do anything to avoid it.
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