On Mon, 25 Nov 2013, Petros <Petros.Listig@fdrive.com.au> wrote:
Quoting "Jason White" <jason@jasonjgw.net>
I understand and appreciate the benefits of such a model; the question is whether people who are misclassified have the opportunity to overcome their educational disadvantage and move up into the more intellectually rigorous stream destined for higher education. There will always be people who are pushed into the wrong stream, and the real problem is for those who are "downgraded" inappropriately.
IMHO the German system creates losers. It is not very fluid. Kids are "stuck" from early age.
The selection happens in year 4, and it's based on teacher recommendations. Quite often, so it seems, it is more judging the social background of a child than the child's abilities.
But in a system like the Australian one where kids aren't streamed would such kids do much better? There has been some research to show that a teacher's belief in the ability of the kids has a significant effect on the educational results. So if a teacher believes that some grade 4 kids aren't going to learn much then they won't teach them much and they might as well be in a school for less intelligent kids.
(Don't get me wrong, I am not against considering environmental issues or other society-relevant ones. But that has to do with world views, and a school is, in my opinion, not the place to teach kids "how to think". Sometimes it helps to know some facts to form a view, not only to have an opinion. E.g. everybody who is reading a bit of the business part of a newspaper, and compares it with the general political pages, will understand what I mean.)
"How to think" would mean logical analysis of arguments etc and the "debates" about the environment provides many good examples where young children can see the flaws in arguments.
I like the idea of SEAL classes, selected entry accelerated learning, as my daughter is in now. It challenges them as well as keeps them in a "normal" school background, helpful in developing social skills.
If "normal" in this case means anything like most schools then it's not helpful in developing social skills unless you are preparing kids for prison life. My observation is that for boys socialisation in high school is largely based around how to use force to get what you want. Someone who graduates from such a school has probably learned a lot that would help them in a career dealing drugs, but for a career in IT (the original topic of this thread) it's not particularly useful. One major advantage of home schooling is that kids learn social skills relevant to relating to adults in ways that don't involve violence - skills that are going to be useful in most of their life. Many of the alternative schools such as those following the Sudbery Valley meme also apparently do well in this regard.
At the end, schools reflect culture. And, IMHO, Australia's system is helping kids having self-esteem and be positive "can do people". It is a value too.
Part of the problem in this regard is that most people seem to think that the only options are foolish attempts to boost self-esteem (such as giving every child a prize which even a 5yo can see through) and dog-eat-dog competition. People need to understand that there are things that they are good at and things that they aren't. If you're not good at something and working in a team then you should try and find someone else who's better in that area to help train you or help you do the work.
If I had a wish, I would get rid of all this private school stuff and use the money to pay teachers well. That's money better invested than in a million dollar concert hall or a super-gym.
The multi-million dollar expenses of private schools are just monuments designed to make people feel important. In most cases there is little benefit over cheaper facilities. Not that paying teachers better will necessarily improve things. There is a limited number of people in Australia with the skills to teach well. Of those people I think that the majority are already teaching. Higher pay for high school teachers might get some of the better university lecturers to change jobs, but otherwise probably won't change things much. I think that the best thing to do is to reduce the amount of schooling. Encourage kids to leave school at 16 if it's not working for them and both reduce the number of classes (getting rid of some of the less capable teachers) and reducing the class size (some teachers who can't handle 25 kids can do well with 12). -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/