On 2008-07-26 08:40:01 +0100, stuart noble said:


and expecting the 6 year olds who had completed set work to help out
with the 5 year olds and those who hadn't.

they learn from that.

Most kids like teaching others.

To a point. It is not appropriate when it's deleterious to their own
advancement. I should add that there were numerous complaints from
parents and a number of children were moved by their parents.

I understand that some time later, the head teacher resigned from
teaching and the arrangement was terminated.


It's a natural instinct to give the stragglers a hand, just as those
who are more physical help the boffins to skip and do handstands.

Within reason this is true. It is not reasonable when those with an
ability in a direction (any direction) are held back, not by their
peers but by the deliberate mismanagement of those entrusted with
helping with part of their education. Notice that I used the
expression "helping with". I'm not even suggesting the
subcontracting of education to the teachers. The first responsible
party in terms of educational development is the child themselves, the
second is the parents and the third is the teachers and the school.
In our cases, the first and second of these was working extremely well
but the state system and in particular the politically motivated
actions of certain individuals were falling way short. For that
reason, after much trying to persuade the third element to do its job
properly and failing miserably, the decision was taken to replace.
It was undoubtedly the correct decision.




It's the beginnings of SOCIETY!

No it's the beginnings of making dumbing down acceptable at the expense
of the able individual.



For my daughter, who at the time had a reading age of 8+, a maturity to
match and should have been in the year ahead, this was intensely
frustrating. Children aren't stupid.

No, parents are though.

The parents should perhaps have told her that she wasn't the centre of
the universe.

The parents did and do, not that this was ever an issue in the first place.

It's the main lesson they learn at primary school.

If that's the main lesson that you or a school feels that it should be
delivering, we are in even worse trouble than I thought.

The main lesson that should be learnt at primary school is how to go
and find out about things for yourself and how to process and use that
information. Schools should not be imposing artificial boundaries
around learning in order to make the less able feel more able. That
is cruel for all concerned apart from those in the middle who will not
notice a difference. It should all be about pursuit of excellence,
keeping in mind that excellence is achieved in different ways for
different people.