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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Maybe related, or maybe not, but I remember when I was in K-12 school back in the 80s and early 90s, they would always seat us physically in the class front-to-back by last name. So the kids with last names starting with A-D or so would always be in front, and the kids with last names starting with U-Z would be in the back. For every class. I remember this because many of my friends had last names "near" my last name since we were always in close proximity to each other. I vaguely remember, by the time we were in high school, there were definitely more high-achieving kids with A-D last names and definitely more of the troublemakers were U-Z. Was it caused by sitting in closer proximity to the teacher and getting more teacher attention? We'll never know because this wasn't an experiment and there wasn't a control group.

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"students who sit closer are more likely to be high achievers" might also be the source of most of the stereotypes of people with glasses. It took me years to realize I'm mildly shortsighted, so the first half of school I chose seats in the front half of the classroom to make reading the blackboard easier. Many of my friends had glasses and preferred to sit up front because their glasses didn't fully correct their vision.

I remember at that age that my sight was going worse quite quickly. So in process there will be many points where your glasses might be slightly lacking.

In a somewhat reverse scenario, when I was in 4th grade (9 years old), I knew 100% that I was getting nearsighted, and I absolutely did NOT want glasses. Fortunately (debatable) we got to pick our seats so I always picked a seat in the very first row, where I could kinda-sorta-almost see what was written on the board if I squinted. And I was also way above my grade level so I was able to fake it pretty well for most of the year even when this started to fail me. My mom insisted on taking me to get my eyes checked about 2/3 of the way through the year and I couldn't fake my way through that, though, so I finally got glasses, but by that point I was used to sitting at the front of the room, so I choose front-of-room seats when possible for most of the rest of my schooling. There's probably some moral here but I don't know what it is.

I moved states and schools midway through 3rd grade and was seated alphabetically, in the back, for the first time in my life. The teachers in my previous school knew me to be a model student, so would sit me up front "to set an example."

My parents couldn't figure out for the life of them why I was suddenly struggling and thought I was having adjustment issues. I had taught myself to read when I was 3; how could I suddenly be having trouble keeping up?

It took longer to figure out because I was only nearsighted in one eye. I was tall for my grade, so as long as the person in front of me to the left was shorter than me or the teacher was writing high enough on the board, I was fine, because my left eye was fine. But when everything aligned just wrong, I was suddenly helpless, because my right eye could barely see clearly an arm's length from my face! It's a hard thing to notice when only one of your eyes isn't working very well, especially when you're 9.

I'm a teacher now, and this made me wince. It's exactly how I've been told by my parents that seating worked for them in school (India, 60s-80s) but their grading was done by semi-anonymous roll numbers.

Today I'm 99% sure all CBSE board exams (I think equivalent to A-levels?) are randomized heavily. However I did notice the name's alphabetical order effect in school, albeit in a minor way (folks with later letters were less involved in anything a teacher might need a volunteer for).

Circular shift is the trivial solution. In my high school every row moved up on Mondays and the front row moved to back. Of course you could argue the ones who started at the front on week 1 still has an advantage but it's likely not that significant.

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