[Oz-gifted] Re: RE: Ability grouping (Kristy)

[Deidree McMaster]

Thanks Kristy: you've certainly got our email list hopping!  Here are 
some more adult gifted perspectives:

I didn't particularly enjoy being bullied at school either. However, 
once I physically developed to comparable levels, the problem mostly 
went away. I started school young, and was always less developed than 
the other boys. I believe that had a far greater effect than any other 
difference. Eventually, I was able to stand up for myself and the 
problem went away. The fact that physical violence is no logical basis 
for demanding respect is irrelevant -- it is a part of growing up that 
people test and learn about those limits. Some never do, of course, but 
that's beside the point.

I work in a somewhat streamed environment, or perhaps it is better to 
say that it is not streamed by IQ. The people I work with, being 
largely scientists, are on average smarter than most, many are 
definitely better than me at maths etc although I would often say worse 
at computer science, management and problem deconstruction which are my 
own relative strengths in my opinion.

David's comments about workplace life are about right -- I imagine that 
one would be ill-prepared for such diversity by being molly-coddled 
during schooling.

The other side of the coin is that while streaming and not using an age 
grouping might advantage the brightest kids, what would the effects be 
on "the rest"? I don't really know -- perhaps they would be better off 
-- but I struggle to think of a positive outcome of children being told 
they are in groups according to their academic abilities. This will 
simply translate into "better" and "worse" in their minds, just as 
sporting abilities and physical advancement are discriminators of this 
sort now.

I would certainly hate to teach an entire class of brutish louts! Might 
as well call 'em second-class citizens and send them to the mines right 
now?

I re-iterate my opinion that age grouping with scope for 
extra-curricular activity as appropriate makes for the happiest 
outcome.



> D B wrote:
> ...I have never had any trouble with any teacher who had an IQ higher 
> than
mine...

Yes. There are mixed reactions whenever teachers discuss strategies for
dealing with gifted children, and I suggest putting them with gifted
teachers.
Tania


T wrote:
> The other side of the coin is that while streaming and not using an age
> grouping might advantage the brightest kids, what would the effects be
> on "the rest"?


I've observed the "mainstream" children being quite accepting of the 
fact
that some children are extremely bright and often treated (academically)
differently.
I'm sorry that I can't provide sources, but I do remember reading that
research has shown that when the "top" one or two kids in a class are
removed, the "average" kids step up to the mark and blossom.
Tania

J.W wrote:

> I believe Montessori method alows for more individualistic
> developement and less regimentation, encourages self direction and
> choice.

I believe it does that too. If and only if you have a damn good
Montessori practitioner running the show. Otherwise it is just
unstructured playtime. The part of my schooling that I am bitter about
are the teachers that were incapable of and/or unwilling to do their
job.  In six years of high school English I did not learn a single
lesson (you know, where the teacher actually teaches you something you
didn't know before), we just had daily "story-writing time".  In primary
school I remember learning how to differentiate nouns, verbs and
adjectives, and then after my PhD I learned what pronouns, adverbs,
conjunctions, participles, cases and tenses are. Not in any class, mind
you, but when I started to self-teach German I soon came across this
stumbling block when I didn't understand the descriptions in my
dictionary. I am *seriously* pissed off that I passed year 12 English
and didn't learn these things and I imagine that if the Montessori
method was applied wholesale then it would only give more opportunity
for the lazy teachers in the world to really do nothing (indeed, I
believe they would see "nothing" as their job description).

In year 12 Maths I had an amazing teacher. He spent a lot of time with
me filling the gaps in my knowledge (thanks to some pathetic teaching
efforts, I made it to year 12 without any trigonometry or basic
geometry, like: the angles in a triangle add up to 180 deg), he taught
on multiple levels and catered to everyone. The class was very
unstructured, we had no text book because he believed that wouldn't
allow him to run with an idea when he thinks we are on a steep learning
curve or take it easy when he wanted to make sure the ideas were
concrete. We often went on outside the timetabled lesson time and nobody
really cared. It wasn't unstructured in the sense that I could walk out
of class if it was my desire to do so, but it was unstructured in the
right way. In my opinion Montessori would also work well with this kind
of brilliant teacher, but that the brilliant teacher is imperative to
any system working.

The biggest downside I see to Montessori is how the heck do students
know what is expected of them? For every student who is in the classroom
thinking "wow! Finally, nobody is telling me what to do anymore!" I see
a little me in the corner saying "will somebody please tell me what it
is I am supposed to be doing?" What the hell does "progress at your own
pace" mean? How will it ever push you to be your best and how do you
know if you're going too slow? It's back to good old high school Maths
and English - I wanted to be taught, but I was too immature to go out
and get self-learning skills (those started developing in Uni). Maybe
there is an argument that if I went through a Montessori primary school
I would not have needed good high-school teachers, but the same could be
said about the conventional system if the teachers were good enough to
teach discovery skills (alternatively, if my parents had taught me how
to learn on my own, I wouldn't be writing this). I still see the whole
thing relying on a good practitioner and I wouldn't trust our current
Education system to provide them.

FWOW, I think the Montessori schools that do exist now probably have a
higher-than-average quality group of facilitators. I don't think
teachers would go and work in a school that teaches radically
differently to the mainstream unless they actually care about the
methods they are using and believe in Montessori (that argument
unfortunately relies on Montessori training not being cheaper or easier
to get into than conventional training). But wholesale, I think it's
dangerous. Maybe the answer is to offer multiple schools, with multiple
teaching methods, and allow parents to choose the system that would best
benefit their child. Now when you talk about trusting the *parents* with
determining the fate of the child, well, that's a whole other rant....

Cheers,

K. (who is still bitter about qualifying for advancing schooling and
being told she wasn't allowed to go)

I find it difficult at work (teaching third year science students)
deciding just how much to penalise my students for abysmal literary
skills. On the one hand, it is not strictly in our curriculum to make up
for things that should have been learned in high school, on the other,
knowing how to express yourself will make or break a career in science.
As you can imagine from my previous post, I can sympathise with some
things, but when students (I repeat, THIRD year science) say "what do
you mean by 'write a lab report?'" I have to worry!

While I don't see it as their fault that they have slipped through an
inadequate system, the reality is we graduate them and send them out
into the world or onto postgraduate studies. Those environments are not
so sympathetic! I certainly don't want the reputation getting around to
employers that science graduates from UWA don't know how to write
reports! That does no-one any good, least of all the students 
themselves.

UWA doesn't exactly like it much when we go around failing students, so
if we don't want to lower standards then we have to get creative about
how we teach them.

One possible solution for our class that I hope to implement by next
year is to change the format a little to give students a chance to
*learn* to write scientifically, something I didn't do until post-grad.
Instead of just handing in reports and being immediately assessed on
them, however good or bad, we want to model the real-world scientific
writing scenario where the same piece of work is submitted more than
once: with back-and-forth interaction from mock reviewers (the teachers)
and a chance to improve marks. I don't remember ever getting feedback in
school, but once I started to write papers I learned damn quickly,
mostly by getting my supervisors to review and contribute to my work. It
means more effort for us (and thus my colleagues weren't exactly
thrilled at the suggestion) but I think the gains are worth it.

John, I'm not sure if your friend in QLD is still experiencing the
problem, but maybe there is a way that he can do the same (in preference
to failing 40% of a class that *someone* has obviously deemed worthy of
a chance to learn).
K.

J.W wrote:

>  Schooling suffered in my day ( and I think still does) from 
> difference in emphasis between education and childminding. Far too 
> often it is the latter and education come a poor second. I have a 
> friend who teaches Architectural design at a Qld uni and he is 
> constantly complaining that first year students come from high school 
> " functional illiterate". A few years ago he failed over 40% of his 
> 3rd year students claiming they should never have passed 1st year. 
> Many of these  were full fee paying overseas students who complained 
> bitterly to the dean. My friend refused to reassess them on the basis 
> that their work and lack of it was so substandard that there was no 
> point. The dean subsequently remarked them himself and passed most 
> into 4th year. Be very cautious when you walk into new buildings!
> Montessori is only one method. Well informed, committed and properly 
> resourced teachers who inspire children's interests and instil a 
> desire for achieving high standards are necessary to the success of 
> any educational system.
> In my early primary years I benefited from a couple of teachers like 
> this who were dyed in the wool traditionalists but for the most part I 
> hated school and most of my education occurred in spite of school 
> rather than because of it. I view it now as a cruel waste of what 
> should have been some of the happiest and stimulating years of my 
> life. Anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that things have not 
> improved. I am  append an email below recently received from a young 
> friend currently on holiday in China ( she is very bright, achieved OP 
> 1 in her final year of high school and will be at university next 
> year) .... judge for yourself whether the education system has failed 
> her.
> Regards J W
>  Email from China :-
>  > hey peoples
> >
> > i am in china right now and it is awesome. the food is great and the
> toilets
> > are excellent. well the food is very good and the toilets are really 
> bad.
> i
> > got to kunming in china and it was a crazy city with dirty air and 
> cars
> > going beep beep. from the airport we were crammed into a bus and i 
> mean
> > crammed and taken to our hotel and got our rooms. we then went out 
> looking
> > at stuff and it was crazy um we saw lots of crazy things and it was 
> really
> > funny and dirty and smelly but it was awesome. we then had dinner 
> and that
> > burnt my mouth cause of the chilli. the next day we got a train that 
> was
> > like communist style and it was like we were goin to a prison camp. D
> > ate chicken feet but he didnt realise and then he almost spewed. we 
> then
> got
> > to dali and got a bus to and went to a hotel and then went shopping 
> for
> > stuff. next day tuesday we went riding bikes and D rode into a sespit
> > and it was funny but bad at the same time cause his phone and camera 
> got
> > dead. he then had to get in again and get out his pink bike. we then 
> went
> > and looked at the pagodas and that was cool they were like 14th 
> century
> > things. it was amazing. we we wanted to go up the mountain that day 
> but we
> > couldnt cause it was booked. so we stayed at the same hotel and our 
> room
> was
> > pretty suss. the next day wednesday we got a chairlift up the 
> mountain
> near
> > dali and got a really cool hotel inn thing and we could see snow on 
> the
> > mountain wow!! some of us (not me) attempted to climb the mountain 
> even
> > though it was cloudy. about 5 hours later they returned and said they
> didnt
> > get to the top but they saw lots of snow. J was sick from the
> > altitude because it was so high like at least 3000 metres. so we had
> dinner
> > which was really good. the next day we went for a walk along the 
> clou7d
> road
> > which was cool with awesome views of mountains and we saw really cool
> > mountain streams with rock pools and waws really pretty. we then got 
> the
> > chairlift down again and walked thru markets with like tonnes of 
> chillis
> and
> > D almost got pickpocketed. we tried to organise a bus trip to
> lijiangh.
> > the bus was late and only ten of us could get on so mum and J  had to
> > wait. we got to lijiangh and went to the toilet except some didnt go
> because
> > it was so gross. we found a hotel that had real toilets and that was 
> cool.
> > then J and mum got here and so we were all together again. tomorrow 
> we
> > hope to go on a gondola ride which is claimed to be the highest in 
> the
> world
> > and is oxygenated. cool.
> >
> > having a great time everything in china is incredible especially the
> > mountains and everything is so cheap.
> >
> > thanx to those who wrote back which i think was only two so please 
> write
> > back
> >
> > have fun
>

>
That's about the standard that my 12 year old grandchild uses when she 
communicates.  Email communication is sloppy at the best of times and 
now - text messages on mobile phones!

We encourage our grandchildren to write us (hand written) letters and 
reward them by popping a fiver (or a tenner if written well and few 
spelling and grammatical errors) in our responses.
Call it bribery if you like but our communication lines with our 
grandchildren are well and truly functioning!  What's more they are 
motivated to check their grammar and spelling. :-)

P D