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Sorry, definitely not. One problem with schooling
is
that it segregates for age, creating an artificial
environment which does not resemble adult life,
where there is generally a mix of ages. The fact
that
adults have a certain impression can be overcome.
I
was, as it happens, eleven months younger than
my
peers at school, but the solution to the
perception is
to do things like improving ratios and the like, not
segregating them earlier. It's a social education
too. |
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Having said that, it's supposed to be a good idea
to have babies in the spring because they tend to
be healthier. |
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Oh, and the other thing is that each child develops
at its own rate, not in chronologically fixed stages
like, say, an insect would. |
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However, i never vote against ideas, so no bone
from me. |
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Yes, I'd say it might be better to go the other way and group children by ability rather than age. I, of course, was more than 18 months younger than the oldest child in my school class and yet was one of very few to go to university, so I would say that. |
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Just for clarification - this is a school or a nursery? |
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Assuming that we're talking about school, I've been working towards a similar conclusion myself.
I vehemently disagree with nineteenthly. Children are not adults. The comparison isn't viable, because adults are not developing at anything like the same rate.
For children starting at 5-6 years old, there's a difference of up to 20% of their total age[1]. For this developmental period, there is a significant positive correlation between ability and age - for pretty much any skill you care to look at. An important part of learning is self-evaluation of ability, and those at the younger end generally lose out - setting them up badly for adult life.
If it's a mixture of ages you want, then that happens too - at playtime, assembly etc. |
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[1] Where I am it's even more than that, since they start earlier. |
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Everyone vehemently disagrees with me, i'm quite
used to it. Nurseries are a bit of a strange idea
unless you have less control than you should have
over your work and lack a support network around
you. Unfortunately, that does seem true for most
people. So, anyway, the thing is that if you are
learning to do something, having older people who
are more competent doing it as an example around
you might help you learn it. That happens with
language, for example. Age segregation seems like
an odd thing to do to me. Children would work in
factories or on farms beside adults, for example,
and whereas child labour is not a good idea if the
child or someone with a close personal concern
with the child's own interests has no control,
being able to learn by example is more feasible
that way. |
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I was in the same position - born in late July, i was
almost always the youngest child in my year, and
at university. So that fifth of a lifespan difference
applied to me at the start of primary school, and i
spent most of my time wondering why things
weren't challenging enough. And the thing is, it's
not my intelligence because i'm sceptical about
the whole notion of intelligence beyond major
organic differences such as result from brain
damage or inherited genetic differences like
Downs, so it didn't work that way at all for this
particular unusually young moron. |
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This daycare would either have to be very large as daycares run to be able to have sufficient income to support as many staff as would be required to meet state child/teacher ratio laws, or be uncompetitive in expenses. |
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//Everyone vehemently disagrees with me// |
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//Children would work in factories or on farms beside adults,// |
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Generally going to be more extreme than age segregation, I'd have thought - effectively almost complete sequestration.
Not that it's necessarily a bad teaching method though - one-on-one tuition can be very effective. |
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Anyway, it's an effect noticable on average, rather than for any particular child. Probably it's noticable in things like sport and language or maths ability (the linked article supports this).
If you can foster a locally unique interest in your child like herbology, that won't be affected. They'll probably still get bullied, though. |
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Just playing with ideas here - many adults, one child?
I.e. not just a couple of teaching assistants and a
teacher, more like thirty adults, one child? |
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I've always thought it's unsettling how greatly children are kept away from other children. The whole idea of splitting children into tiny little groups of 20-30 of them is to make them more manageable. That's not life. Plus, it ends up being very depressing for children. All their friends will be from this tight-knit group of people all born in the same season. I don't see why schools don't encourage children associating with people multiple years from themselves. When this does happen, it is during high school--in other words, right when people truly become introverted and territorial. Mixing of the ages should occur at low levels when children tend to be innocently happy with everyone. |
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Just to be idea focused I thought Id mention that this is a voluntary private sector opportunity rather than an overarching social structure. |
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If there were say 7 "a kids place" franchises at NYC then the franchise "a kids place" could offer parents the opportunity to similar age group the kids to provide prospective social benefit. Some parents might prefer location, others peer relations |
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//more than three times as likely to be "below average"// is not helpful without more information. And what does //three times less capable// even mean? |
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/Or have half yearly groups for the first 4 years/ |
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That is bean's idea, if I do not misunderstand. It makes sense. The older we get the more alike we are developmentally. Loris said it well. I think the age structure of school was just extended down thru nursery but it does not need to be that way. Re ratios, that is an issue only for small schools. If there are 2 rooms of nursery school with 20 kids in each, you could make one the young room and one the old room. |
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I agree with letting everyone mix but not for the very little kids; the ones a year are two older are much larger and faster but not very well controlled. Even in grade school mixed recess can be scary for little ones because they are little, and it seems to me many grade schools have some sort of segregation. |
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As regards Beans observations about age and success people who want their sons to play sports have been holding them back a year for a long time. That will apply to academics too - the smartest kid in my girls 3d grade class is 2 years older than the rest of them. Maybe this sort of thing is appropriate in a society where children do not leave home until age 25. |
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