Quote:
Originally Posted by devilsadvocate
It's neither new nor novel, unfortunately. Back in the '90s making sure no one hurt Johnny's widdle feewings took precedence over whether he could read, write, or add. We've been lagging behind ever since.
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Ah, yes, "social promotion". Being left back will give Johnny a stigma, so we promote him with his class regardless of whether he knows the material, and wind up graduating semi-literates, some of whom even get college degrees through the same mechanism.
That particular bad habit pre-dates the 90's, and likely originated in the 60's.
I recall reading an article years back about a Russian educator attending a conference in the West. He described the curriculum in his schools, and was told it had been "scientifically proven" that kids weren't capable of learning things that early, that much, or that fast. He replied he didn't know about that, but in the Soviet Union they were expected to do so or judged mentally deficient.
Ultimately, learning is what childhood is all about. You learn to be a member of your society and learn skills to make productive contributions to keep your society functioning. Kids are sponges soaking up knowledge, and you can't
prevent them from learning. You
can do a good job of insuring they don't learn the stuff you want them to learn, and
do learn all the things that tend to wind up in incarceration, hospitalization, or death, and we are doing all to well at that.
Part of the problem is a social taboo. We accept and even glory in the fact that some kids are faster, stronger, and better athletes, and reward them with professional sports careers and multi-million dollar contracts. We accept and glory in the fact that some kids are talented entertainers, and can sing, dance, act, and/or play music, and some go on to multi-million dollar careers as entertainers. We shy away from any thought that some kids are simply brighter and learn various things faster, and set the pace to the one the slowest kids can match.
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Dennis