Are Top Students Getting Short Shrift? | Hacker News Reader

Are Top Students Getting Short Shrift?

nytimes.com

44 pointstokenadult43 comments

Life is short-changing those who are not top students.

We like to think of education as an equalizing part of our society. No matter how poor you are, you can go to K-12 (or nearly all those grades) and get educated. Likewise, we generally try to accommodate people regardless of income at the third level - especially at elite institutions whose endowments can carry them. However, education isn't socially equalizing.

Smart people generally learn easier and an hour of teaching them creates a bigger difference than an hour of teaching someone less smart. So, if we allocate the same resources to the smart and the less smart, we're creating inequality. In effect, we're taking people who had the most inherent advantages and giving them even more advantages. This gets quite pronounced at the third level. While different school districts have different resources K-12, our elite universities have vastly more resources than our mid-range ones. Not only that, but they become a network for those who are already advantaged to meet the other advantaged people.*

Is a smart person slighted by getting less attention in school? I would argue no. I personally like living in a society that's a little more equal - one that helps those with fewer inherent gifts to achieve more while also helping those with great gifts, if just a little less. I also acknowledge that there are benefits to me of helping those who have a little more trouble achieving to become more educated.

Yes, it can be annoying when one sees those who don't put in the work, don't learn as easily, or act out being given extra attention/help/resources. However, this isn't that different from our tax system. The Republican argument against taxing the rich more is that they created that income and should get to keep it. However, some of what we achieve isn't our own. We have gifts that we have received from birth that are unequal. Likewise, we see the "lazy" and "trouble-making" students in much the same light that people on public benefits are painted by politicians. Society is taking resources from us and spending it on them?!? How outrageous!

So, do I feel like we have gotten the short shrift? Sometimes (I'm only human), but I try to remember that I've been blessed with so many advantages (being born into a rich, western economy, having a high ability to learn things, having the time and resources to study things, etc.). Would you trade your intelligence or ability to concentrate for the additional resources offered to those with less? If you were to sit down today and design how the educational system should allocate resources knowing that your intelligence would be randomly re-assigned afterward, would you allocate more resources to the smart (knowing you might not be smart afterward)? I'm not posing the question as a hypothetical with a clear answer - I genuinely believe that people have to explore this in their own conscience.

I don't like paying taxes either, but I see a certain fairness in it - I've been blessed with gifts that are not entirely my creation. But it's completely reasonable to find it incredibly annoying - those are resources that could be used to help smart adolescents achieve better things. Still, I'm not sure it would create a society that I'd rather live in.

*In this case, "advantaged people" doesn't mean economically advantaged, but intellectually advantaged. For example, Harvard doesn't generally care if you came from money, but isn't generally taking people who don't have a lot of intellectual advantages.

Perhaps "short shrift" is the wrong way to argue it, then.

It's not that we should separate the smart children because that's what's best for them, but that we should separate the smart children because that's what's best for society.

Exactly! mdasen should be thinking about this problem as a SimCity / Civilization problem. What's the best way to have the most collective ability & prosperity in a nation?

It was kind of sad that he was willing to intentionally shackle smart kids in order to have more equality.

> Smart people generally learn easier and an hour of teaching them creates a bigger difference than an hour of teaching someone less smart.

While in principle I agree with this, I think there are many other factors that figure into a student's success in school that his "intelligence." Students may have different aptitudes for different subjects, care more about certain things than others, or have access to better resources.

> So, if we allocate the same resources to the smart and the less smart, we're creating inequality.

This assumes that both the smart and less smart students both pay attention diligently for the one hour session.In reality, when confronted with a topic that is trivial for them, a smart student will often learn the concept in twenty minutes and spend the next forty minutes sitting there bored. In contrast, the less smart student, assuming they care, will have the full hour to learn the material and ask any questions they have. In the end, they will both have learned the same amount. For this reason, education can be said to be equalizing.

> Is a smart person slighted by getting less attention in school? I would argue no.

I would argue that there's no moral distinction between paying more attention to a less smart person or slighting a smarter person. Are you punishing them for being born smart? Restraining the potential of smart kids in order to make society "more equal" seems quite unfair to me.

> In this case, "advantaged people" doesn't mean economically advantaged, but intellectually advantaged

Except that there's a remarkably strong correlation between the two.

Do note the difference between "giving someone less free stuff" and "punishing someone". Schools do not prevent students from seeking other educators.

Any mass-production or limited-resource system will be relatively more beneficial to someone than someone else, and there are many incompatible but defensible ways to measure benefit.

Yes, I agree, there is an important distinction between those two things. However, schools still aren't providing each student an opportunity to reach what their potential allows. From my personal experience as a student, I learn new things in many of the classes that I take, yet the information is taught at such a slow pace that it become mind numbingly boring. By forcing smart students to be in classes with their less intelligent peers, schools are imposing a ceiling on what level these students can reach. Even after being a year ahead in nearly all of my subjects, I still feel like I could be so much further than where I am today if I had had better, faster-moving instruction in elementary and middle school.

>Schools do not prevent students from seeking other educators.

Except to the extent that locking the student in a jail for 6.5 hours every weekday would be considered preventing the student from seeking other educators.

Schools do not prevent students from seeking other educators.

Being a farmer now, I feel I missed out on a lot of education because of school. Planting and harvest season in my part of the world is May and September/October. Having grown up on a farm, there were lots of opportunities to learn, and I took in what I could, but many years of learning were wasted because of the requirement I be in the classroom during these key times of year.

On the other hand, I spent my summers and weekends learning about technology, how to program, etc. It didn't come with the same timeframe limitations so I was able come away with a much greater understanding. With that, you are right that you can always seek education, but sometimes school gets in the way. That is a problem.

>If you were to sit down today and design how the educational system should allocate resources knowing that your intelligence would be randomly re-assigned afterward, would you allocate more resources to the smart (knowing you might not be smart afterward)?

I am not sure if you are aware or not but that's called the veil of ignorance. One of my favorite ways to think about social issues.

>>Is a smart person slighted by getting less attention in school? I would argue no.

Taking your whole post into account, you might like to read this version of utopia by the late great Kurt Vonnegut titled "Harrison Bergeron":

http://www.nationalreview.com/nroriginals/?q=MDllNmVmNGU1NDV...

I host the text of this story that isn't broken up into 8 pages with ads in the middle:

http://simonsarris.com/lit/kurt-vonnegut-harrison-bergeron

You're seeking equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. One of those is both possible and compatible with a free society and the other is on the road to serfdom.

Well, this kind of "lets treat dumb people equally" talk is good until you get your own children, and then it will become "screw dumb, I want my children to be educated only with the best in the most efficient way".

Right, at which point you'll send them to a private school. Even better, maybe you could decide to take a more active role in their education.

Also there's the possibility that your kid might be one of the dumb ones.

This is absolutely true. As a current sophomore in high school, I can say that this is how it has been for my entire educational career. It was more of a problem in elementary and middle school, where I bored to tears by how slow the classes were moving. It has gotten somewhat better since I've entered high school, where I have been able to test out of classes so that I'm now a year ahead in mostly everything. However, even in my honors and AP classes, the struggling students get the majority of the attention, and I have to make a point to ask thoughtful questions to expand my learning that the teacher may not have covered.

What's really sad about this is that what it has done to the motivation of some of my friends. Being in classes with lower performing students also means that you are surrounded by their attitudes, which are usually not too favorable towards learning, and by extension, school. This creates a sort of stigma around learning that its something that you "have to" do and it's very uncool to do on your own.

I have channeled my frustrations about school towards learning programming and other topics outside of school, but it's sad to see many of my friends, equally as capable as me, become totally turned off from learning by being in clases with people who don't care. They barely resemble the curious and inquisitive children they used to be.

Absolutely. My jr/sr high school transitioned from the old-fashioned "tracked" strategy to the current, mixed trend when I was in 8th grade.

The result: lots of downtime for me. The idiots continued to be idiots, except that parents complained about "elitist" teachers. In response, the school board dumbed things down. I had to spend most of my time in one class transcribing a team-mate's paper, because he didn't know how to write.

The hack that schools introduced to deal with this is AP classes. So you let the top 10% of students (or best connected) get a quality education, while the rest of the proles spend 6 months reading "Where the Red Fern Grows"

Yup. As a top student in K-12, I really disliked how the trouble-makers (who had no discipline, repeatedly acted out, etc) seemed to get coddled by the teacher. It seemed like a disconnect, and like the trouble makers actually had a stronger connection than I did, and of course it also slowed down the speed of learning in the classroom. (In college, where attendance was optional and a large amount of learning happened outside of the classroom, it was much less of an issue.)

It's actually kind of a problem for me now. I have very little empathy for people that I perceive to be the kind of people who wasted my time in elementary/middle/high school.

I think you need to look at it bigger picture. Ask yourself, why they are not disiplined, and why they repeatedly act out?

This notion that people are born smart, and others are just born morons, is a false dichotomy.

We shouldn't be asking the question "Should we seperate dumb kids from smart ones?" we should be asking the much harder question of "what socio-economic issues are causing there to be a divide in the the first place, and how do we combat that?"

Of course top students get screwed. It's a fundamental problem with schools in general, a flaw in design.

The main problem is that we set grades by age and not skill. This causes a couple problems. Kids might be better serviced by staying behind a grade, due to something as simple as maturity. The flip side is that the 'smarter' kids for their age, those who are able and ready to move up can. Right now, educators are hesitant to do either, especially given how it is frowned on to hold a kid back by parents. So they just move them on, put them into remedial classes that move slower. How are you supposed to catch up when you are moving slower? The more able are just stunted into sitting their while the teachers help the slower kids.

The system is designed as a lose-lose scenario.

Is it still possible to be held back a grade in the US? I've heard stories of it happening in the distant past but I've never seen it happen. Usually they get promoted to the next grade and placed in special ed or remedial classes.

I think it happens more frequently at lower grade levels, especially Kindergarten through 3rd. Usually, by the time they reach higher grade levels, they will have been placed at a class with which they can keep pace.

It's generally largely frowned upon nowadays -- largely for social reasons. I recall talking to some folks in Texas about this, and they said, if you could hold kids back for academics, a lot of parents of football playing boys would push to do that. You'd probably see a lot of 18 year old freshman QBs in high school.

At least in Ohio, where I live, one must be under 19 years old to be eligible for high school sports.

I think 19 is the most common cut-off. I think some 20 still exist. So this 18 y/o QB may only get 3 years of eligibility. :-)

I knew a guy who transferred schools halfway through his senior year because it put him far enough back that he could play another year of high school football.

There are some really strange motivations out there.

Yeah. There's a term called kindergarten redshirts, where parents hold their child back to be older for athletic reasons. You end up with these weird kindergartens with some boys just about to turn 7 and all the girls are 5.

I don't understand. Remedial classes are exactly the solution to the problem you posed. The only difference is the number attached to the "grade level".

Remedial classes? We don't have those any more: Putting a child into one of those might damage his self-esteem.

School is a social experience as well. Children get along best with children of their own age, and sticking precocious six-year-olds and dumb-as-dishwater thirteen-year-olds in the same classroom is just asking for trouble.

We should arrange by age and then by ability. Split each year into three streams: 10% "smart", 70% "normal" and 20% "dumb". The smart kids get whatever they need. The normal kids get a good solid education. The dumb kids get ponderously taught the basics of life, to make sure they can read, do basic mathematics, and avoid vastly stupid life decisions.

Is this a problem only for smart poor kids in regions with no magnet/exam schools?

My parents moved to one of the wealthier (per-household) cities in America (not the wealthiest neighborhood; they had a professional services small business on the high end of work-for-a-living income from paying customers, and a few assistants in their employ) and my seemingly ordinary high school was one of the best neighborhood schools in the country in terms of student performance, non-crime, etc.

One could certainly raise a family in that school zone on an engineer and teacher's salary if one would forgo a big house and new car lifestyle.

I was in a "poor" region that had magnet schools, and IB school even, and it was still a problem.

regions with no magnet/exam schools

Most regions of the United States (and perhaps of some other English-speaking countries) are regions without magnet or exam schools to concentrate able students for challenging programs. I had a lot of praise for my state's practice of allowing public school open enrollment in a recent HN comment,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3064665

but even at that there is NO middle school (as contrasted with an elementary school) in my state actively selects students for their demonstrated readiness to take on a challenging academic program. Meanwhile, the expectations for AVERAGE learners in several countries are higher than they are for gifted learners in most parts of the United States.

http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf

(See Exhibit 1.1 on pages 34 and 35 for an excellent data chart on academic achievement in different countries.)

I'm glad to hear that there are places where parents can find a suitable school just by moving their residence, but not everyone can move their residence, and those schools are nonexistent in whole states of the United States. And even at that, it's debatable whether those schools are really up to a world standard of academic performance.

After edit: Another comment under the submitted article here is quite correct that the core idiocy here is the idiocy of dividing up students into grades by age, which is actually a rather recent practice historically, and a practice that never had a favorable research base showing that it was effective for learning.

http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html

But my FAQ on this subject immediately above cites sources from a CENTURY ago, which are still widely ignored, about how idiotic it is to divide up students by age into school grades, and I'm still learning about sources from various eras that agree with that conclusion, all ignored by educational planners.

I attended a rural K-12 school, where one teacher taught 3 grades in the same classroom. Sometimes, while the teacher worked with one grade, students of the second grade would help the students of the third with their class work. The "gifted" program was that occasionally you were allowed to grab advanced homework out of a closet.

I can't really say that this has held me back later in life.

There's a terrific paper by Christopher Jencks in Ethics called "Whom Must We Treat Equally for Educational opportunity to Be Equal?"

http://www.cems.uvm.edu/~sweaver/educationalequality2.pdf

His point is that equal opportunity is not as easy to define in education as you might first believe. It's worth reading before claiming to know the answer, in my opinion.

I don't consider myself much better than average. However, it seems that a lot of time was wasted in school going over simple concepts multiple times just so the whole class could get it. That made it seem like a waste of time.

Sadly, the trend has continued into University here (Pakistan).

Answer: maybe. Daniel Singal wrote a 1991 Atlantic article on the subject called "The Other Crisis," which asks the same question: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/educatio/singalf.ht... .

I suspect the bigger problem in K - 12 education at the moment is simpler: the system isn't really able to optimize teachers at all. For more on this, see the article collected here: http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get .

Yes, absolutely. (from my experience and those of my relatives)

Anyone else reading the OP (and these comments), think it's completely elitist?

A bunch of privileged kids wanting more privileges... LOL. Right, we should tax the poor more, and the rich less as well (oh wait...)

Two ways to take this. Is the purpose of school to educate students at maximal effectiveness? Or is it to train them for the real world (i.e. corporate jobs, many of which require people to do work below their level of intellectual ability)?

If it's the first, then yes, absolutely, because differences in learning speed are substantial and kids are going to get bored in classes catered toward the slowest learners.

If it's the second, then no, not really. Why? Because most "real world" jobs involve a slow track where one doesn't get to do the interesting stuff until one has put in time and paid dues. Saying, "I shouldn't have to pay dues because I'm smart and already know how to do more interesting work", in the first 6 months of a job is not a way to succeed.

If we want to train obedient, dues-paying workers, we should be putting them in classes that bore them, setting the track speed according to the slower learners in the class, and making them do mountains of repetitive, uninspiring busywork.

I would prefer the tracked, "elitist" system from an educational perspective, but the reality is that 95% of "real world" life is conforming to rules and expectations designed according to the least skilled and most untalented people. If the role of school is to make people successful in the workplace, tracking could be argued (though I would disagree with such an argument, on the basis that education has long-term subtle payoffs that mere training does not) to be a disservice to students.

Well put.

The purpose of the US educational system is a combination of daycare, cultural assimilation, and vocational training.

The top students end up going to Harvard where they get vocational training to work in the banking industry or government, the bottom students start with basic daycare until they eventually end up on welfare, in the prison system, or fighting in Iraq.

This accounts for the range of people with IQs of 80-120. Generally speaking, the existing social and geographical partitions of society result in individuals from each subgroup feeling as though they "belong" in their cohort.

Sometimes there are outliers... people with higher IQs or aspirations that are not vocational in nature, or simply large amounts of intellectual curiosity. These people do not fit into the system as a whole, and some are able to excel (perhaps finding a niche academic area) while others innately rebel against it and do rather poorly in school, often end up being self-taught engineers, inventors or entrepreneurs.

It's crucial to realize what the intent of the US educational system is before we critique it. Considering its goal it is a tremendous success.

When you try to force everyone to have equal results, naturally the top-tier gets brought down. High school really sapped my motivation, from my perspective why work hard when you don't have to? So adjusting to college was rougher than it should have been. It would've been easier if teachers pushed me according to my abilities in high school.

I went to a selective school, where it was like this for everybody. They put all the smart kids into one school, but didn't actually give us work that was any more challenging than you'd get at another school. Too much brains plus not enough challenge equals a culture of laziness. Competitive laziness. It was okay, at my school, to do well, provided that you didn't actually put any work into it.

As someone who is only a couple years out of high school, yes, abso-frigging-lutely, and as much as the top comments here touch on some practical implementation matters, teachers are frankly too over-worked to be able to care.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com