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Comment by stretchwithme | Hacker News Reader

The whole idea of levels where each kid should be at certain ages forces achievement down. While some kids are sufficiently challenged, others are bored and those with different learning styles are left behind.

Wouldn't it be better if children learned topics that they care about about and at their own pace? How long must the development of the mind be hampered by bad ideas?

Wouldn't it be the best possible outcome if children grew to love the learning process instead of learning to sit and regurgitate?

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Several points:

First, children aren't the best judges of the topics they should be learning.

Second, children aren't the best judges of how to most effectively spend their time and judge their own pace, nor should they be: They're children. If I were given a choice in high school, I would have skipped all literature and English classes, played videogames all day, or something else that would be equally destructive to my future.

    > Wouldn't it be the best possible outcome if children grew to love the learning process instead of learning to sit and regurgitate?

You're knocking down a straw man: Allowing children absolute freedom isn't necessarily going to lead to them love the learning process, nor is the current system completely about regurgitating facts.

Yeah, those are the two choices. learning or playing video games. straw man, you say?

He gave an example, not a false dichotomy.

At their own pace, sure, but I'm in favor of required general education for children, even if they don't care about it. These are kids, not college students, and as for high school, how many care about learning at all?

It may be worthwhile to teach high level math and science to kids wanting to be astronauts, and a solid Statistics base for kids who like sports, though.

Hear. Hear.

http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html

This has been a pet issue of mine ever since I was offered a take-it-or-leave-school grade skip that I didn't request from fifth to seventh grade.

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