Divisions in School

A few weeks back, class was focused primarily on what advantages are given to certain children in the school systems. Primarily it helped draw the lines of class and racial distinctions between disadvantaged youth who then fall further. The bottom line was, and is, should we divide children into “gifted and talented” programs or let them all be equivalent learners?

There has been a lot of psychology research done specifically on the development of children and how they learn that supports the idea of division. Children must be taught in their zone of proximities meaning that, in order to effectively teach children the information must not be above their understanding, or be things that have already learned. Children who are bored in school have a tough time sitting through hours of material they have already learned and spend more time socializing. Additionally, if children aren’t being challenged, they aren’t actively learning and thus are not moving forward.

However, there are social implications to dividing children which mostly hurt those who are not defined as gifted. When children are consistently told they are not as smart as other children, a mental block is formed and most children tend to believe they are not as smart. Additionally, when teacher’s expectations of children are low, statistically children perform much worse than their counterparts. This was also shown in the Riceville video clip when the children were substantially slower at the card deck when they were defined as the lower group. These divisions especially affect those who were disadvantaged from the beginning. Low SES children are generally disadvantaged in their pre-k years due to stressful family situations and lack of resources. Additionally, low SES parents are usually less educated than their middle class counterparts and thus may not understand how to teach children prior to starting school. As well, many middle class parents spend a lot of time and money placing their children in well respected day care and pre-school facilities that foster cognitive development. Competing with these prepped babies on the same level is just not feasible since their education levels are substantially different.

Yet, how can you justify not letting children thrive and succeed to their full potentials? When school systems have the resources to allow children more diverse and challenging educations, why shouldn’t they? Personally, I was divided from my math scores during the 5^th grade and those followed me throughout all of high school. I know I would not be where I am unless I had been pushed along and challenged all of high school. Our gifted group was established by my middle school principle whose wife worked in an inner city Milwaukee school who wholeheartedly believed in teaching to a child’s level of understanding. She felt it wasn’t fair to the children who showed a high level of cognitive development early on to hinder their abilities. Thus, our school system was held up by the idea of challenges, success, and excellence. Our school district upheld the belief of the “gifted” and it was tested by the school board numerous times. I was given above and beyond opportunities to dissect sharks, study plate-tectonics, read college level books, participate in math competitions, and later take college level courses. I know I would not be where I am without the class divisions I faced early on in life and thank those who fought to give me those opportunities.

However, who is to say that boy who was not chosen as a “gifted” student at 10 years old, wouldn’t have excelled in the same way with the extra opportunities? How can a teacher divide 10 year olds up and say, “Sally is college bound, while Sam….Well, he might become a plumber?” Parents always say, “You can be anything you want to be,” except when you live in socialist societies like China, whose babies are pre-determined to have careers. How is it so perfect that their predictions are almost always correct? That makes it pretty clear that the training you receive in your education can make a huge impact on the type of career one will have. This brings back the concept of a behavioralist’s approach to learning in that children are blank slates that must learn from others doing and teaching. This is the sharp contrast from the innate version of learning which emphasizes that children are pre-wired to their abilities to learn, and thus teaching before school age is a waste of time.

Overall, the socioeconomic and racial status of a family defines education of young children which follows them their whole lives. Separating children and teaching to their level of understanding is crucial to effective learning in children. Children set at the lower half of their class are destined to stay there according to current approaches yet those are the children who need the most help. Funding is the largest part holding these children back as explicitly seen in both “Life on the Mississippi” and “Children of the City Invincible: Camden, New Jersey.” I believe that there should still be gifted programs that allow children to expand their knowledge and abilities but the need to bring the bottom up is a greater concern.