You know how some people don't want to call children gifted or advanced because they want to call it something else? I was thinking maybe if you kept calling advanced, but you called the other kids novice and beginning. Would that be less offensive? That implies that all children are on the same path to being educated.
Or is it not the word gifted that irks some people, just the idea that some kids are ahead of others? Like, does everybody have to quit being ahead to make it ok?
This train of thought is in response to this article Bostonian posted "equality vs excellence"
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/InequityInEquity.pdfAnd this "anti-ability grouping PSA"
Posted by Mon.
http://www.tolerance.org/blog/students-beware-ability-grouping-aheadEta: still reading the article.
It seems that some people feel that identifying high-ability students is used to impede rather than support. I just thought of a new way to track kids. You could have one class that wants to learn and one class that wants to do the bare minimum. The teacher that likes to differentiate can have the students that want to learn, whatever their abilities, and they support the students and don't hold them back. The students are self selected.
