One reason that modern education is in trouble is that our leadership has not been taught to think. They are good at filling out forms and passing out prepared statements, but they don’t seem to be able to see past the party line. One of the mantras that we have in education is “heterogeneous grouping.” What this means is that any kind of unit is supposed to be totally diverse. In a class that means that you are supposed to have the students evenly but randomly enrolled so that you have low, medium and high ability students in the same class. Thus, even in our “gifted” classes we have people who cannot read, write or sit quietly. The fact that this defies logic, violates common sense and does not work is ignored. The politics of education say that you must have heterogeneous groups.
Of course this is ignored when it is convenient. At our last “in-service” day, our principal joined my group to make sure we were not just acting like students who are assigned group work. In the discussion, she started by saying that we had to have totally heterogeneous groups. She was following the official party-jargon line. When it was pointed out that she was not actually doing that because of parental pressure she back-peddled and said, “we still have heterogeneous groupings, it is just a more narrow heterogeneous.” This explaining why we are not tracking after claiming first, that the totally mixed group worked and then, backing down and saying it didn’t.
So what we have when parents scream loud enough and threaten to pull out of our school is a semi-heterogeneous group.
About the only advice I can give you as parents is be loud, pushy and vocal. I don’t like it but I have observed that it is the only thing that motives professional educators to respond.
If you wonder why your children aren't learning as much as they could it might be that they are in a small group with a student who can’t read and two would just want to text their friends. That is not much motivation to do your best.
Welcome to modern education.
homo unius libri
Heads should roll, but they won't.
ReplyDeleteWas it the Queen of Hearts who expressed that so well? Maybe there is a place for monarchy.
ReplyDeleteIt could also bring new meaning to "high rollers."
Grace and peace.