Comment by NalNezumi

They seem to lament ending up in humanities instead of a technical path. The fact that the humanities is just categorized as for less smart people and technical people are all smart is a problem in itself.

Many bright people end up in humanities and end up crushed by the societal pressure that expects them to be inferior, a huge waste.

This is probably the right solution. It seems in reality nobody does this since it is expensive (more teachers, real attention to students, etc). Also if there is an explicit split there will be groups of people who "game" it (spend disproportional amount of time to "train" their kids vs actual natural talent - not sure if this is good or bad).

So, it feels to me ideally within the same classroom there should be a natural way to work on your own pace at your own level. Is it possible? Have no idea - seems not, again primarily because it requires a completely different skillset and attention from teachers.

>But you aren't supposed to choose either or. Instead, you split the students in different groups, different speeds.

This answer is from the US perspective. I've lived in several states now, and I know many of teachers because my partner is adjacent to education in her work and family. This is what I've learned from all this so far:

This is an incredibly easy and logical thing to both suggest, conceptualize, and even accept. In fact, I can see why alot of people don't think its a bad idea. The problem comes down the following in no specific order:

- Education is highly politicized. Not only that, its one of the most politicized topics of our time. This continues to have negative affects on everything to proper funding of programs[0]

- This means some N number of parents will inevitably take issue with these buckets for one reason or another. That can become a real drain of resources dealing with this.

- There's going to be reasonable questions of objectivity that go into this, including historical circumstances. This type of policy is unfortunately easy enough to co-op certain kids into certain groups based on factors like race, class, sex etc. rather than educational achievement alone, of which we also do not have a good enough way to measure objectively currently because of the aforementioned politicized nature of education.

- How to correct for the social bucketing of tiered education? High achieving kids will be lauded as lower achieving ones fall to the background. How do you mitigate that so you don't end up in a situation where one group is reaping all the benefits and thereby getting all the social recognition? Simply because I couldn't do college level trig when I was in 8th grade doesn't mean I deserved limited opportunities[2], but this tiered system ends up being ripe for this kind of exploitation. In districts that already have these types of programs you can already see parents clamoring to get their kids into advanced classes because it correlates to better outcomes.

[0]: I know that the US spends in aggregate per student, approximately 15,000 USD per year, but that money isn't simply handed to school districts. If you factor specialized grants, bonds, commitments etc. the actual classroom spending is not working with this budget directly, its much smaller than this. This is because at least some your local districts funding is likely coming from grants, which are more often than not only paid out for a specific purpose and must be used in pursuant of that purpose. Sometimes that purpose is wide and allows schools to be flexible, but more often it is exceedingly rigid as its tied to some outcome, such as passing rates, test scores etc. There's lots of this type of money sloshing around the school system, which creates perverse incentives.

[1]: Funding without strict restrictions on how its used

[2]: Look, I barely graduated high school, largely due to alot of personal stuff in my life back then. I was a model college student though, but due to a different set of life circumstances never quite managed to graduate, but I have excelled in this industry because I'm very good at what I do and don't shy away from hard problems. Yet despite this, some doors were closed to me longer than others because I didn't have the right on paper pedigree. This only gets worse when you start bucketing kids like this, because people inevitably see these things as some sort of signal about someones ability to perform regardless of relevancy.

>What differences in teaching made Saturday school so much more effective?

I do think the smaller class and feeling more "close" to the teacher helped a lot. But also that the teachers were passionate. It's a community so I still (20 years later) do meet some of the teachers, through community events.

I can't recall all the details, to be honest, but I do think a lot repetition of math exercises and actually going through them step by step helped a lot to solidify how to think. I feel like the Japanese math books also went straight to the point, but still made the book colorful in a way. Swedish math books felt bland. (something I noticed in college too, but understandable in college ofc)

In the Swedish school, it felt like repetition was up to homework. You go through a concept, maybe one example, on the whiteboard and then move on. Unless you have active parents, it's hard to get timely feedback on homeworks (crucial for learning) so people fell behind.

Also probably that curriculum was handed to the student early. You knew what chapters you were going through at what week, and what exercises were important. I can't recall getting that (or that teachers followed it properly) early in the term at Swedish school.

They also focused on different thing. For example the multiplication table, in Japan you're explicitly taught to memorize it and are tested on recall speed. (7 * 8? You have 2 seconds) in Swedish schools, they despised memorization so told us not to. The result is "how to think about this problem" is answered with a "mental model" in Japanese education and "figure it out yourself" in the Swedish one. Some figured it out in a suboptimal way.

But later in the curriculum it obviously help to be able to calculate fast to keep up, so those small things compounded, i think.

I'm a Brit who speaks Swedish, and recently watched the Swedish TV company SVT's documentary "Sweden in the war" (sverige i kriget). I can maybe add some info here just out of personal curiosity on the same subject.

There were basically right wing elements in every European country. Sympathisers. This included Sweden. So that's what OP was getting at in part. Germany was somewhat revered at the time, as an impressive economic and cultural force. There was a lot of cultural overlap, and conversely the Germans respected the heritage and culture of Scandinavia and also of England, which it saw as a Germanic cousin.

The documentary did a good job of balancing the fact that Sweden let the German army and economy use its railways and iron ore for far longer than it should have, right up until it became finally too intolerable to support them in any way (discovery of the reality of the camps). Neutrality therefore is somewhat subjective in that respect.

They had precedent for neutrality, from previous conflicts where no side was favoured, so imo they weren't implicitly supporting the nazi movement, despite plenty of home support. It's a solid strategy from a game theory perspective. No mass bombings, few casualties, wait it out, be the adult in the room. Except they didn't know how bad it would get.

In their favour they allowed thousands of Norwegian resistance fighters to organise safely in Sweden. They offered safe harbour to thousands of Jewish refugees from all neighbouring occupied countries. They protected and supplied Finns too. British operatives somehow managed to work without hindrance on missions to take out German supplies moving through Sweden. It became a neutral safe space for diplomats, refugees and resistance fighters. And this was before they found out the worst of what was going on.

Later they took a stand, blocked German access and were among the first to move in and liberate the camps/offer red cross style support.

Imo it's a very nuanced situation and I'm probably more likely to give the benefit of the doubt at this point. But many Danes and Norwegians were displeased with the neutral stance as they battled to avoid occupation and deportations.

As for Japan, I'd just add that I read recently on the BBC that some 40% or more of the victims of the bombings were Koreans. As second class citizens they had to clean up the bodies and stayed among the radioactive materials far longer than native residents, who could move out to the country with their families. They live on now with intergenerational medical and social issues with barely a nod of recognition.

To think it takes the best part of 100 years for all of this to be public knowledge is testament to how much every participant wants to save face. But at what cost? The legacy of war lives on for centuries, it would seem.

Ok :-) Thanks for explaining. Sounds like a good school

That's a very bad-faith take on what I wrote. I'll self-quote:

>The experience made me think that it's tremendously valuable for kids to find *multiple places* (at least one outside school) where they can meet their peers.

Most people don't neatly fit in to "one" category. Trying to find many places you could meet peers can open up your mind (and also people around you)

There is a huge difference between not wanting to be around people who don’t agree with you about the benefits and drawbacks of supply side economics and not wanting to be around someone who disrespects you as a person because of the color of your skin.

Neither he (half Asian) or I (Black guy) owe the latter our time or energy to get along with. Let them wallow in their own ignorance.

That's a good point.

Maybe you can have all quiet and focused students together in the same classroom?

They might be reading different books, different speed, and have different questions to the teachers. But when they focus and don't interrupt each other, that can be fine?

Noisy students who sabotage for everyone shouldn't be there though.

Grouping students on some combination of learning speed and ability to focus / not disturbing the others. Rather than only learning speed. Might depend on the size of the school (how many students)

Counterintuitive argument:'No one left behind' policies increase social segregation.

Universal education offers a social ladder. "Your father was a farmer, but you can be a banker, if put in the work".

When you set a lower bar (like enforcing a safe environment), smart kids will shoot forward. Yes, statistically, a large part of succesful kids will be the ones with better support networks, but you're stil judging results, for which environment is just a factor.

When you don't set this lower bar, rich kids who can move away will do it, because no one places their children in danger voluntarily. Now the subset of successful kids from a good background will thrive as always, but succesful kids from bad environments are stuck with a huge handicap and sink. You've made the lader purely, rather than partly, based on wealth.

And you get two awful side effects on top:

- you're not teaching the bottom kids that violating the safety of others implies rejection. That's a rule enforced everywhere, from any workplace through romantic relationships to even prison, and kids are now unprepared for that.

- you've taught the rest of the kids to think of the bottom ones as potential abusers and disruptors. Good luck with the resulting classism and xenophobia when they grow up.

So, here's a time machine. You can go back to a time and place of lasting, enduring stability. There have been been numerous such periods in recorded history that have lasted for more than a human lifetime, and likely even more prior to that. (Admittedly a bit of a tautology, given that most 'recorded history' is a record of things happening rather than things staying the same.)

It will be a one-way trip, of course. What year do you set the dial to?

Ok, please surrender your cellphones, internet, steam, tools, writing, etc... all those were given to you by the best of the crop and not the median slop.

Go gather tubers in a forest