Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Toxic Educational Practices-- a rogues gallery

Though he denied it I am pretty sure ds7's teacher prevented going to the toilet at least once - not much in most case but the kid has encopresis and started holding on with predictable consequences.

The one I came to report is this years effort. The school has decided instead of streaming for maths everyone will work at the same level but they will offer extension classes (just one offs I think) in various things. The problem is rather than the teachers selecting the children who will benefit the kids are given the option of applying then a certain number are selected from each class. My son has developed strong risk averse tendencies (he always had them but I used to make him do new stuff when he was preschool age - I dropped the ball thinking the school would try to challenge him), he has spent two years being completely unchallenged and is now scared to fail. He is not going to put himself forward for something he may not be chosen for especially if he has to write a letter saying why he should be chosen for the science course. The teacher brought up his perfectionism in out interveiw but still doesn't see that vague "you can do this if you want to" is a bad approach.

And why is it my just turned 7 year old son gets to decide what schooling he does. The parents weren't even told about the change and I only heard about the extension classes through third parties

Neither of you should be surprised by unwillingness to acknowledge differences in cognitive abilities, because the instruments that measure individual differences in those abilities also reveal substantial group differences in those abilities. A society that does not want to admit that there may be group differences will not be able to think clearly about individual differences, unless by a happy coincidence all groups do about the same on the tests used to measure those differences. They do not.

+1. This seems to be one of the root problems in US in particular.

I give the same argument -1 for straw man, so I guess we're back to zero. US society clearly acknowledges group differences, there's just a divide as to why they occur.

Wait... doesn't that also mean that special ed isn't special ed anymore??



WOW. I'm guessing that high-achieving and high-ability students aren't the only ones getting stiffed the education our society promised them.