LogFAQs > #984181514

CTrunks posted...

Yeah, as someone who was in a 3/4 split for 4th grade back in the 90s (and in Canada), that's basically what it was like. We'd have Math and Science with the main 4th grade class, and maybe go off to learn French twice a week, but everything else was basically repeating what we did in 3rd grade. All with a teacher who really didn't give half of a fuck about the older kids being bored out of their minds.

It could be that the teacher didn't care because she was explicitly told not to. Maybe those 3rd graders were weak performers and the teacher was specifically told to do as much as possible to get those 3rd graders on grade level. I am not sure how things are in Canada, but in the US, teachers are oftentimes evaluated oftentimes on test results, and a lot of the new trends in "data-driven analysis" focus on stuff like grade-wide passing rates, so there is a lot more pressure from school leadership to make sure that the weakest of the weakest student is passing. A lot of resources (money, time, teachers' attention span) are disproportionately directed towards students who are the least motivated and least interested in education.

Now, yes, struggling students need help, but it is sad to know that a lot of intelligent students aren't really getting a fair shot at a real education because 90% of the teacher's efforts and energies are spent on the bottom 10%, many of whom really do not care and do not want to learn. A solution that education researchers love to encourage is mixing classes and expecting the smarter kids to "bring up" the weak ones, and in some cases there's merit to that, but in other cases the smart kid is bored out of his mind, or worse, sees having to help the weak kids as "punishment" for being smarter than them. In a perfect world, we'd be able to actually make sure every kid is adequately challenged, but there just isn't enough time or resources available to make it happen.