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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

Here you go: https://www.noodle.com/articles/let-s-get-rid-of-special-edu...

Inclusive classrooms raise scores of the lower performing students. That's probably true.

It glosses over what it does to people on the other end of the spectrum.

As someone from the other end of the spectrum, growing up never having to put any effort, having few or no peers close to my level, and being constantly encouraged by the people around me to do poorly for curves etc... I can say I developed life long development/psychological problems as a result, and the idea that I or anyone in the future like me should be slowed down so everyone is more equal is deeply offensive.

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I agree.

I started in an average class in my year. Don't remember doing anything extra at home, or much at all, but still had an equivalent of all A's. At some point my parents realised something was wrong and moved me to the strongest class... Only then I started doing something. This is when I realised that some kids were already impossibly far ahead (we had world-level olympiad goers there).

Can't say I become world-class at anything but this helped to concentrate and work through the rest of school and uni without any problems.

I am sorry you had that experience. Mine was similar (around 1990s).

But these days, integrated classrooms (as mentioned in your article) tend to be staffed with two teachers: one with a general education background and one with special education. They work as a team and can provide differentiated learning paths. The lower teacher/student ratio can help both the gen ed and special ed students.

Why isn't it deeply offensive for you to want to slow them down if the reverse is true?

What's more important: make everybody average? or make it possible for some people to reach outstanding levels?

Option 2, in most cases.

Because in kindergarten I was regularly asked to go hang out by myself as literally every other student in the room learned to read. When they gave me the tests they use to measure themselves I got 99th percentile scores so literally neglecting me got them the metric as doing anything for me.

Yeah, I get the general idea. I, like most HN readers likely were, was in a similar situation.

And as a certified smart guy I now ask myself and others questions like: Why is it deeply offensive to hold you back when you are literally suggesting to hold them back instead?

Because there is a distinct bias against students who understand the material who get ignored in favor of students who don't Having a bit of talent hides what you actually need which tends to get ignored because you're better at figuring things out.

This has not been my experience.

It's very hard to disentangle though.

I have a smart, popular nephew from a good home, who also got extra acconodations on exams for dyslexia.

You could spin that either way:

Priviliged people taking advantage of accomodations for those with problems.

Or smart people who previously got written off as disruptive troublemakers being better catered for (though maybe we'll have less entrepreneurs if we keep all the smart people in the standard education track).

In particular, the benefits of living in a society with a basic level of mathmatical (etc.) understanding seems powerful but hard to trace through.

But if we can't even talk about the trade-offs calmly and factually then its just a pointless sgouting match. The people with the academic skills should be leading the way on that.

The evidence does not suggest measurable harm for those on the other side of the spectrum from inclusive classrooms. Maybe there is some harm, but if so we haven't been able to devise a test or experiment that can find it.

I'm downvoted, but you can go look at the literature. Jump discontinuity studies for placement, testing comparison, etc. - none of them show the effect that most people on HN want them to show.

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