"A well prepared, bright, motivated kid should never have to sit through classes that are paced to
allow the slowest to keep up."
What happens when you put a "bright" kid in with other bright kids, all in the same class? What happens when you segregate the kids based on performance? Do you get better performance from both groups, better than it would have been without segregation? Or do you get the same from the lower and better from the brighter?
I'm really curious about what the findings have been. Surely someone in this forum knows of studies done that shed some light on this.
Myself, I have only anecdotal, personal experience. I was what our school considered "gifted" (as opposed to "special"). But instead of being uniformly tracked to honors classes, I had a mixture. In middle school I had one class a day that took the place of English. In it, I goofed off all the time. I played, I researched, I did little projects, I messed around on the computer, I annoyed my classmates, I read. In high school the gifted students had a special class that again took the place of English, and we also had the choice of taking honors classes for History, Science and a couple other things. The honors classes were open to everyone, but it being known and announced up front that they would be tougher than the non-honors classes, students were able to self-select. Everyone wants to be able to bring home an A or a B. So if you thought you couldn't cut it in the honors class, then you took the regular class so your grades were still good.
Since I never took both classes, I can't really say how much I would have learned in the other track. I do know that I was mightily annoyed I came in 3rd place in the final rankings due solely to a B I got in an honors class when the two who beat me both took gym (which in our school was an easy A). Oh well. I didn't feel "challenged" in the honors classes, anymore than I felt challenged in the non-honors classes (not all the subjects had honors versions available). I feel I spent most of high school goofing off, as I did in the middle school gifted class. When I wasn't goofing off, I was doing tedious busy work or tediously paying attention to a tedious lecture because the teacher wouldn't let me read ahead or do homework for the other subjects. I hardly ever brought a book home with me. First it was a quarter mile walk along a gravel road, second I had chores, and third I had plenty of free time in other classes to get it done.
What sort of system does challenge a bright kid? The times I felt challenged were with three different teachers - non-honors Science, gifted/English in high school, and non-honors History. Coincidentally that gifted/English teacher was gay, the best teacher I had, and got sacked for it two years after I graduated (got sacked for being gay, not for being a good teacher). He died of heart failure about five years ago. The History teacher left school the year after she taught me. Her son died of AIDS and she couldn't stand the way he was treated, the things people thought about him (and her) because of it. This was in the middle 80s.
As far as I know the Science teacher remained at work, unfazed by anything but the nasty divorce from his wife, who continued to teach Science the year before his. (You know that had to be a distraction!)
Maybe things would be better if we could figure out how to better retain the best teachers, and not sack them or run them out of town because of their sexual orientation or diseases their children had. I dunno. Your thoughts?
Mary Baker East Side
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