School for the Gifted, and Only the Gifted
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I remember figuring out how to go from the number one, to a hundred, before knowing the names of the numbers. This was before I set foot in a school. I was ahead of the game before I was ever in the game.
I could have benefited from a school for the gifted, but my dad was having a lot of medical problems, so we couldn't afford anything. So I have a lot of resentment towards the education system.
It became a game, where I would figure out how much I could slack off and still get an A in a class. Senior year in HS, I didn't show up for an entire month, and there were no repercussions.
Our whole education system is pathetic. Access to the internet has humbled me quite a lot, but I see a lot of young people with the same problems that I had.
Hmm, I guess I'm still pretty ticked off.
Do students get a better education by being surrounded by genius peers and mentors? Or is it better to forget about the distraction that competition for seating creates (ie: limited University seats, and other various competitive factors that we have between students in North America, starting a very early level), and instead, relax that whole thing so that students can REALLY learn by teaching their less advanced peers, thereby allowing teachers to leverage the smarter kids in the room to normalize the average at a much higher level, which is exactly what happens in Finland.
The other part of the equation, of course, stems from the fact that classes in Finland are capable of swallowing harder material because the peer-tutoring thing creates a much higher base level competence, which, in turn, can understand more challenging material. That whole thing disappears when your base level competence has an IQ north of 140 to start with.
(forgive grammarz plz, head spinning, can't be bothered to proof read)
The USA has a much better university system than Finland (or any country in Europe). So they must do something right.
> smarter kids in the room to normalize the average at a much higher level, which is exactly what happens in Finland.
The USA does a lot better than most countries with mathematics achievement. See here: http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_1.asp#f2
Notably excellent results are Russia. Unfortunately Finland isn't on that list - but I doubt that the performance will be better.
I personally don't think that having peer tutoring will help - it will only hold back the competent and hard working. Peer tutoring sounds (IMHO) too much like some Outcomes Based Education ideal/pipedream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland
"In the OECD's international assessment of student performance, PISA, Finland has consistently been among the highest scorers worldwide; in 2006 Finnish 15-year-olds came first in science and second in mathematics and reading literacy, in 2003 Finnish came first in reading literacy, mathematics, and science, while placing second in problem solving. In tertiary education, the World Economic Forum ranks Finland #1 in the world in enrollment and quality and #2 in maths and science education."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/education/4073753.stm
BEST MEAN SCORES: MATHS Hong Kong-China: 550 Finland: 544 South Korea: 542 Netherlands: 538 Liechtenstein: 536 Source: OECD PISA 2003 data
BEST MEAN SCORES: READING Finland: 543 South Korea: 534 Canada: 528 Australia: 525 Liechtenstein: 525
BEST MEAN SCORES: SCIENCE Finland: 548 Japan: 548 Hong Kong-China: 539 South Korea: 538 Liechtenstein: 525 Australia: 525 Macao-China: 525
Here's some supporting evidence. Let's compare it to a country of similar size, Singapore:
http://www.imo-official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=F...
http://www.imo-official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=S...
We can see that Singapore does much better.
Of course, IMO scores are not exactly the most important measure ever, but I suspect, nonetheless, that smart Finnish students spend more time playing computer games than their counterparts in Singapore.
Anyways, if you can perform above average in your sleep, that's great. If you really think you'll benefit from being pushed to your level and reaching your full intellectual potential as quickly as possible, I'm sure there are still several schools that allow you to do that in Finland too, just like there are all over the rest of the world.
But if you don't think that, you can also benefit by learning to connect with your peers and build social capital in the process. Furthermore, normalizing out the rest of the room allows teachers to introduce more advanced topics much faster to the class on a continuous basis. And on top of that, by "helping teacher out", you'll free her up to take a closer look at each student on an individual level too.
And here's the selection bias part to the whole thing: if you're groomed in a society that values collective over individual advancement, you're much more likely to choose the latter than the former, which would help explain why you don't see as many high ranked math Olympiad contestants as you in a country like Singapore, where children are likely to be raised much more competitively.
I'm not saying that its stupid to have gifted classes in general. But you guys all seem to have a very strong resent towards your OWN education systems and your OWN experiences in elementary/middle/high school.
I can't be certain, as I didn't care enough about that crap in my own educational career, I was always able to satisfy my interests on my own, but you probably wouldn't have nearly as much of that if things were set up differently.
It's not simple, but there's a huge array of factors that go into making the system in Finland what it is. Its a complex webbing of a lot of social and cultural factors, and to many researchers on the topic (its currently the subject of a lot of active study), it actually DOES seem a bit like magic (or at least when the article came out, that's what it painted the picture like).
It's a system that benefits the norm. And though the highly gifted still need their own solution, which this process isn't meant to address in the first place, I'm sure you'll find that it produces results that are FAR better than what you see in middle america, where there's a far greater NEED for highly gifted schools because the normal ones are such crap.
But wtf do I know. I'm not a scientist.
In order for an educational environment to be stimulating for a gifted student, there has to be a critical mass of people who can learn and converse on the level of the gifted student. One teacher with other students to tend to is woefully inadequate. Having two or three other gifted students in your class still isn't enough. In my experience, there has to be a cohort of at least 6-8 gifted students before ideas begin to flow and an actual academic community forms. Once your group is that big, there really have to be at least some dedicated lectures that progress at their pace or at a greater depth than for the general student population, and the coursework needs to be adjusted accordingly.
It isn't necessary to completely segregate school populations, but there is ample evidence that for certain subjects (most notably, math), the difference in ability is too great to be handled by a single class without leaving behind a significant portion of the students.
That said, I guess the major difference is that the thing that was holding the kids back there really was just an inability to click with the material instead of what could almost look like a straight aversion to learning, which is what I found with a lot of my peers. And in situations like that, where you're working with people to see how things can fit their existing mental frameworks, I think is where the peer tutoring can really help, not just because its more about helping things fall into place, but because it grows how you look at the problem at the same time.
But regardless, its all hazy at this point. I just remember it being an interesting read: struck me as a nice parallel to cashflow normalization (getting the bulk of your revenue in november, december and january doesn't help much in making monthly interest payments unless you can smooth your earnings out to give you money to play with all year round, and thus take on higher debt to finance an even bigger revenue fall next season)
When a child, no matter how smart, is asked to take on a particular role (like teaching others in a hierarchical social system), they draw some general conclusions, like "If I have similar responsibilities as the adult teacher, I should have similar authority and power". This leads to the smart kid inevitably getting their chops busted for being "uppity" by the very teacher who gave them responsibility but then denies them authority or power and punishes them for presuming those things went together. However, the other students also draw the same conclusion as the gifted "peer tutor" and resent the perceived power of this child and also resent what they believe is "teacher's pet" status. So the peer tutor is getting hostility from all sides. Meanwhile, their own intellectual need for new information and new learning is being ignored and neglected. This is a great recipe for creating trouble, what with idle hands being the devil's workshop.
Ultimate result: A tortuously bored student getting hostility from the teacher they are trying to help and also from the other students they are trying to help. Should this kid grow up into a "socially awkward geek", no one ever stops and wonders how much of a role negative social experiences played in making them that way. It just becomes one more reason to attack and criticize the smart folks.
In one case, I quietly pulled my professor aside and asked her to not crow about me making 107 on the test while everyone is groaning about their own score as all it does it cause huge social backlash for me. On a later test, she threw out my score as an outlier when curving the grade. When the entire class pointed (accusingly) to me as obviously the person who got the 94 that she geared the test to, she and I were both able to say honestly "nope". In another instance (different class, different instructor), I was able to point out that two of the questions on the test either had never been covered in class or were unanswerable because of the way they were structured.
Yet in both cases, the entire class was quick to be angry with or blaming towards me rather than the professor for how the grading system worked. Why? Because they have been told that since they were five years old: 'Don't blame me. I would love to curve the grade more but I can't because of Mr./Ms. Smartypants over there." So I think there are huge inherent problems in making students responsible for the outcomes of other students in the class while adults not only shirk their own responsibilities but scapegoat one of their students.
On the other hand, I find that fostering an environment where everyone's contribution is genuinely valued and all individuals are genuinely treated with respect can help create a vigorous environment of open intellectual exchange that helps raise the bar for all involved, in part by setting aside pecking order, chest-beating and other ills of typical social interactions. Perhaps that is akin to what the classes in Finland are achieving. That is something I know works well for all members of a group, regardless of individual IQ, educational background, etc.
Good talking with you.
Intellectually bright kids who struggle socially are often told that it'll be better once they get to the next level: don't worry so much about grade school, it'll get better once you get to middle school. Don't worry so much about high school, it'll be better once you're in college. And the greater freedom at each level does help, but no one will ever tell you that the politicking, the popularity contests and the pettiness don't go away at all in the working world. Figuring that stuff out at a young age with less severe consequences for mistakes is the best thing a kid can do for their long term success.