Comment by AnthonyMouse

Comment by AnthonyMouse 4 days ago

Suppose you have a kid that you have reason to believe is at the 90th percentile. This isn't uncommon; it's one in ten kids.

The average kid at the average school is at the 50th percentile. Moreover, the speed of the class isn't even the speed of the average kid because then the 40th and 20th percentile kids would get left behind. To get out of this you'd need a school with a gifted program and enough 90th percentile kids to fill it, and many of them don't have one.

dijksterhuis 4 days ago

the 90th percentile of what?

sport?

english lit?

maths?

music?

socialising?

being the mother hen?

being a jock?

teaching everyone else things in the library?

class clown?

being the wacky one?

skateboarding?

acting?

rebelling?

looking after someone who has just been picked on by all the other kids?

schools introduce us to a wide range of children who are representative of the people we’re going to have to deal with later on in life.

not saying there aren’t alternatives.

but specialising for only the 90th percentile of one thing seems like a way to isolate someone later in life because they may not have learned how to deal with people who aren’t in the 90th percentile of that one thing.

and i say that as someone who hated my time at school and has struggled with the repercussions in later life.

i still learned a lot near the classroom tho.

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AnthonyMouse 4 days ago

> the 90th percentile of what?
It could be the 90th percentile of science and the 60th percentile of literature and the 40th percentile of music. But if they throw you in with the 50th percentile kids in all cases then you're being held back in science and literature and you're holding back the other kids in music.
> schools introduce us to a wide range of children who are representative of the people we’re going to have to deal with later on in life.
This is why home school families come together so their kids can socialize with one another.

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jkolio 4 days ago

As someone who was in the 90th percentile, I can confirm that it wasn't a universal quality about my entire being. I got to be in higher-level courses where I excelled. Those are generally available, even in public school systems.

And just because I was good at math and writing didn't mean that I "deserved" to be in some separate system where I got the "best" of everything (with diminishing returns). When I eventually encountered people who were afforded just such a deal ("elite" private school in a wealthy area), they were far less impressive than the top college-level facilities they enjoyed as grade schoolers; it seemed like a waste of money that could have been put to more efficient use, as far as society writ large might be concerned.

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AnthonyMouse 4 days ago

Who is talking about "deserved" or anything like that? Parents want their kids to excel, if they think they can provide that themselves better than what the school is offering then they make the best choice available to them.
> When I eventually encountered people who were afforded just such a deal ("elite" private school in a wealthy area), they were far less impressive than the top college-level facilities they enjoyed as grade schoolers
This is exactly the argument in favor of home schooling. If you just throw money at it but pay little attention to it then you get a beautiful campus with expensive landscaping and not necessarily the highest quality education, because it's easier for parents to judge the quality of the facilities than the quality of the instruction. Whereas if you actually care and you want something done right you have to do it yourself.

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- jkolio 2 days ago
  
  Hoity-toity campuses are actually more efficient than every little prince getting his own personal tutor. The problem in both cases is that the parents of these children, as a class, demand the income and social infrastructure necessary to get their children this education, at everyone else's expense.
  At some point, the masses say, "No." They realize that they're never getting a seat at that particular table, and turn from fighting over the charity spots to attempts at dismantling their exploitation. From there, you either get a robust public school system that provides a decent education for everyone, or a police state.
  Suffice it to say, no one parent's dreams for their kids should come at the expense of another's.
  
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defrost 4 days ago

Which seems to be an argument to move the child to a school with a gifted program rather than homeschool.

Many homes also lack numerous gifted children and specialist programs.

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AnthonyMouse 4 days ago

> Which seems to be an argument to move the child to a school with a gifted program rather than homeschool.
What if there isn't one within a reasonable distance, or your locality doesn't have school choice?
> Many homes also lack numerous gifted children and specialist programs.
The issue is that you need the absence of children who would hold back the class, not necessarily that you need the presence of other gifted children except insofar as you need to fill out the class, which is not an issue when the class size is one.

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- defrost 4 days ago
  
  There are boarding schools, schools of the air, etc. Serious parents can move house for catchments, etc.
  I grew some 1,500km north of the nearest city and got by .. still managed to hook up with Terrence Tao and Paul Erdős when I got to university and ran a math club. When one of my kids was ready for high school we got a house in the catchment of the only public school with an aviation program so they could build and fly a light aircraft.
  > The issue is that you need the absence of children who would hold back the class,
  I enjoyed going to school with hunter gathers in the Kimberley .. I don't feel they held me back, I did get to learn how to fish, to hunt, to swear in several languages.
  Despite a lot fighting at high school, on and off the fooball field, I managed to pick up enough abstract algebra to work on CAYLEY/MAGMA which cracked a few quantum encryption candidates recently, enough linear algebra and calculas to author a geophysical processing suite, etc.
  
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  AnthonyMouse 4 days ago
  
  > There are boarding schools, schools of the air, etc. Serious parents can move house for catchments, etc.
  Those all sound expensive. Not everyone can afford that.
  > I enjoyed going to school with hunter gathers in the Kimberley .. I don't feel they held me back, I did get to learn how to fish, to hunt, to swear in several languages.
  Is this something you'd expect to experience in the median US public school?
  
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  ndriscoll 3 days ago
  
  I did learn how to swear in several languages in US public school. I'd expect that's somewhat universal.
  
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taeric 4 days ago

I find your statistic mistake rather amusing in light of the point you are making. :D

Distributions aren't all normal, for one. And skill levels are often quantized in a way that majority of people will be above a 50% level on it.

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AnthonyMouse 4 days ago

You're being pedantic. Average in common usage means "middle" as much as "arithmetic mean", and it doesn't really matter to the point whether the mean is above or below the median because all that is necessary to the point is for the 50th percentile to be below the 90th.

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- taeric 4 days ago
  
  Ish? Even the common usage of "middle" doesn't necessarily describe where the average student is with regards to any skill they are learning in school. You can argue that we are using a common usage of "average" here, akin to how many fingers does the average human have. But, in a discussion on education, I confess leaning to pedantry seems rather apropos?
  My gripe here is the parent post is an appeal to how "average" students are quite bad. But, there is no substantiation to that point. It is, instead, taken as a given in what is essentially a culture war talking point.
  It would help if I wasn't exposed to so many parents that are convinced their kids are somehow gifted among gifted kids.
  
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  AnthonyMouse 4 days ago
  
  > My gripe here is the parent post is an appeal to how "average" students are quite bad. But, there is no substantiation to that point. It is, instead, taken as a given in what is essentially a culture war talking point.
  The point isn't that average is bad, it's that your kid probably isn't exactly average.
  You could also want to home school them if they're below average, to keep them from getting left behind. The way a lot of public schools treat kids with developmental disabilities is sadly a lot like the way corporations treat cost centers.
  > It would help if I wasn't exposed to so many parents that are convinced their kids are somehow gifted among gifted kids.
  Everyone thinks they're above average. Around half of them are right.
  
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  taeric 3 days ago
  
  I have yet to see this line pushed by anyone that doesn't view dysfunctional classrooms as indicative of what the average student would do. So, fair that I am maybe letting my experience there color my thoughts here.
  And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea of homeschooling not being an automatic terrible thing. Sold a Story went a long way to convincing me that some really bad choices were made in how to teach reading.
  My main nitpick is that that wity quip at the end is not even wrong. Not all values are population weighted, such that you can certainly have some skills where over half of the population is over what you would call average ability.
  
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