Hat tip to Krige55, who would have stumbled on this eventually I'm sure.
Assumes that schools are able to convince parents that their child or children would benefit by moving ahead a grade from time to time.-- husband_of_bath, Dec 06 2007 Dinosaurs playing with children.. http://www.religion...4/creation-museum-2this place tells you all you need to know about the American education system - hilarious, but frightening [xenzag, Dec 07 2007] The Temple of Quantum Computing http://www.toqc.com/A layman's introduction to quantum computers and the theory behind them. Contains errors but is nonetheless a good introduction to the subject. [Bad Jim, Jan 02 2009] The whole public school system is bunk. Kids should be designing computer programs or building models on solidworks by the time they turn 13. This is easily obtainable by having them "play" more advanced computer games in school. Let's face it, they get bored if they don't. [+]-- quantum_flux, Dec 07 2007 *-- normzone, Dec 07 2007 I don't understand what the actual idea is. (I seem to say that a lot these days.)-- jutta, Dec 07 2007 I think someone ought to explain how the American school system works, for those of us familiar only with the English educational system.
What exactly is "Norming", and what on earth is the point of ensuring no child has an unfair advantage? Do you drug the smart ones?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 07 2007 //Do you drug the smart ones?// - you send them to the museum in the link for re-programming.-- xenzag, Dec 07 2007 Your link refers to the "American education system" - "school system", shirley?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 07 2007 Dull students are bored students, right!? I always thought that school would be more fun if it was about playing video and computer games instead of listening to boring teachers. If school was about playing games instead of listening to lectures, then no child would be left behind because they'd always want to be at school "playing". I believe that playing computer games has a lot more to teach children than just what they get at home or at school, but it's just a matter of having them "play" or experiment with the right stuff.
Perhaps the schools of the future could hold competitions whereby children will compete against each other to be the very best at what they do, like player VS. player arcade mode, but with science and math games.-- quantum_flux, Dec 07 2007 The alarming thing is that I can't tell if that was meant to be ironic.
Actually maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and be grateful.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 07 2007 I believe that child labor doesn't have to be considered "labor" anymore if the child enjoys doing it. I don't think that children enjoy laboring in schools because it is not intellectually satisfying, i.e. it is boring for the children and therefore it seems like work to them. By modern standards, I'd say that "public schools" is a politically correct term for "child labor camps".-- quantum_flux, Dec 07 2007 //I believe that playing computer games has a lot more to teach children than just what they get at home or at school, but it's just a matter of having them "play" or experiment with the right stuff.//
Given the trend for the netizens of the earth towards unsocialized basement bunker-dwelling mountain-dew addicts with acute cases of aspberger's syndrome, I will have to vehemently disagree with most of that.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 07 2007 mmm... mountain dew.
what they really need to do is make school similar to the job world, the "assignments" actually mean something and the student who does the worst on the assignment gets fired. That way, a high school diploma will actually mean something. Today (in America, at least) students can graduate from high school without doing any work.
They just need to make school harder. Period.-- keithbrunkala, Dec 07 2007 <understanding sort of> Ah. </understanding sort of>-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 07 2007 At my primary school (in the 80's), I used to get sent up a year/grade for various subjects that I was considered good at. There was also a half-day workshop once a week for the smart-arses where we did problem solving/applied maths/applied science/economics etc. etc. Is that the kind of thing you mean?-- squeak, Dec 11 2007 If this idea made any sense, I'd MFD it as advocacy. (I'm giving rcarty a random croissant for that bus-under-the-bridge comment.)-- ldischler, Dec 11 2007 So this idea is the opposite of having to repeat a year. However it doesn't quite work in the same way, the child would miss a year of learning. The only way it could work is if there was a fast-track programme where 2 years worth of work was covered in 1 year.
I'm sure that having 1 school in every 15-20 dedicated to this would be beneficial. Each school would send the top 1 or 2 kids in a class there for a year and they would skip to a higher year when they return. I assume that most parents/kids would be willing to travel the extra distance.-- marklar, Dec 13 2007 NCLB is an absolute mockery of the ideals of education. It constrains the teacher and the student both, and enforces an arbitrary ideal of student achievment. Worst of all, the achievment goals are lackluster at best.
Following a disciplinary disaster at my son's high school - this was immediately following the VA Tech shooting, my son was involved, and absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing - I pulled both my kids out of the public schools and started homeschooling. And I've never looked back.
My kids are self-directed. They are reading books about five times faster than their former classmates, and reading three and four grades above their classmates' levels. They're taking college-level science - the chemistry is utterly incomprehensible to me, and the older kid gets it with no trouble. Where they're taking comparable courses to what their former classmates are, they're two-thirds finished with the year less than half done.
Sorry. NCLB triggers a kneejerk in me. So does public schooling.
In this era of NCLB, you'd be hard-pressed to get the school system to permit a kid to jump grades - if the kid is disinterested in class but testing well, that's good for the school's score overall, and screw whatever good or ill it does for the student.-- elhigh, Dec 14 2007 State schools exist to provide a minimum level of education to everyone. It is a parent's responsibility to provide more than that minimum if they are able. State schools do not exist to get your kids into Oxvard. It's not fair, but it's fairer than it was before state schools and is probably the best that can be done on the moderate budgets they have.-- marklar, Dec 16 2007 //State schools do not exist to get your kids into Oxvard.// They do in the UK. Not that the English system is that great, to be fair.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 16 2007 I went to a state school in the UK and one of my friends did go to Cambridge. Our school had 8 classes for each subject, so the top 'set' was the best 12.5%, which meant that even a genius would not be held back much by the rest of the class. The top maths set took the GCSE exam a year early and then did a statistics GCSE the following year. I was lucky though, I'm pretty sure it was above average.-- marklar, Dec 17 2007 See link to learn a little about quantum physics and interesting maths, young padawan.-- Bad Jim, Jan 02 2009 random, halfbakery