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United States24740 Posts
On October 05 2011 13:34 ghrur wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 13:21 DNB wrote:On October 05 2011 11:00 ghrur wrote:
Idk how much I trust this because while their average test scores are better, their top students might be suffering more than in US or China.
Looking at recent International Olympiads (be it Math, Linguistics, Physics, Bio, etc.), the Finnish seem to be doing quite poorly at them. Meanwhile, USA actually tops the list in most of them. I would guess the 300 million population difference between the US and Finland had something to do with that Not really because Singapore does quite well on these with an equal population and India doesn't do well despite having an enormous population.
This doesn't logically follow to me. Having a larger population does give you a larger pool (confirming the validity of what DNB said). Having a larger population doesn't guarantee you will do well (debunking India example). Having a smaller population due to cultural differences, statistical variation, etc, could still lead to a better than expected performance.
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On October 05 2011 13:45 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 13:34 ghrur wrote:On October 05 2011 13:21 DNB wrote:On October 05 2011 11:00 ghrur wrote:
Idk how much I trust this because while their average test scores are better, their top students might be suffering more than in US or China.
Looking at recent International Olympiads (be it Math, Linguistics, Physics, Bio, etc.), the Finnish seem to be doing quite poorly at them. Meanwhile, USA actually tops the list in most of them. I would guess the 300 million population difference between the US and Finland had something to do with that Not really because Singapore does quite well on these with an equal population and India doesn't do well despite having an enormous population. This doesn't logically follow to me. Having a larger population does give you a larger pool (confirming the validity of what DNB said). Having a larger population doesn't guarantee you will do well (debunking India example). Having a smaller population due to cultural differences, statistical variation, etc, could still lead to a better than expected performance.
Yeah, I understand that, but population does not explain away the disparity in results between these countries. Nor does statistical variation considering Finland's been consistently behind in these competitions. I don't think cultural differences should be used because I thought the Finnish had a similar attitude toward education, especially since they value their teachers highly. I mean, if cultural differences can cause Singapore or Romania to rise, why not Finland? And why doesn't the US fall considering our disregard toward education. Why doesn't India rise considering they value education too, and they have the population pool to back it up?
I feel it might be that Finnish schools are better for the average but worse for the top. Education in the US has huge disparities between rich/poor and white/black, but it seems to foster the talent found at the top.
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I was drooling while reading the OP and watching the video. Finishing my 4th hour of hw :-\
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On October 05 2011 14:13 ghrur wrote:
I feel it might be that Finnish schools are better for the average but worse for the top. Education in the US has huge disparities between rich/poor and white/black, but it seems to foster the talent found at the top.
I think this is certainly a valid point with some truth to it.
Having thought about it and experienced most of the Finnish school system by myself, I would certainly agree that while the Finnish education does a great job on educating the students to an overall higher medium than others, we actually lack the drive to encourage truly talented students to reach their highest possible level.
What I mean is that talented students often lack the options to truly showcase their abilities, resulting into a pretty much non-existent arsenal of talented people noticed on the world stage.
I don't know about Singapore though and how they do it there. Perhaps someone can elaborate.
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On October 05 2011 14:13 ghrur wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 13:45 micronesia wrote:On October 05 2011 13:34 ghrur wrote:On October 05 2011 13:21 DNB wrote:On October 05 2011 11:00 ghrur wrote:
Idk how much I trust this because while their average test scores are better, their top students might be suffering more than in US or China.
Looking at recent International Olympiads (be it Math, Linguistics, Physics, Bio, etc.), the Finnish seem to be doing quite poorly at them. Meanwhile, USA actually tops the list in most of them. I would guess the 300 million population difference between the US and Finland had something to do with that Not really because Singapore does quite well on these with an equal population and India doesn't do well despite having an enormous population. This doesn't logically follow to me. Having a larger population does give you a larger pool (confirming the validity of what DNB said). Having a larger population doesn't guarantee you will do well (debunking India example). Having a smaller population due to cultural differences, statistical variation, etc, could still lead to a better than expected performance. Yeah, I understand that, but population does not explain away the disparity in results between these countries. Nor does statistical variation considering Finland's been consistently behind in these competitions. I don't think cultural differences should be used because I thought the Finnish had a similar attitude toward education, especially since they value their teachers highly. I mean, if cultural differences can cause Singapore or Romania to rise, why not Finland? And why doesn't the US fall considering our disregard toward education. Why doesn't India rise considering they value education too, and they have the population pool to back it up? I feel it might be that Finnish schools are better for the average but worse for the top. Education in the US has huge disparities between rich/poor and white/black, but it seems to foster the talent found at the top.
Population makes a HUGE difference. Having 50 times the population means we will have 50 times the people that are naturally gifted. I tend to agree that the U.S. is very good at segregating students based on their ability and I think this is something that is very important since dumb kids can slow down classes by asking stupid questions that teachers have to accommodate. But population plays a massive role in any international competition, just like in the Olympic Games where China and the US win the most medals time after time.
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United States24740 Posts
On October 05 2011 19:07 BlackJack wrote:
I tend to agree that the U.S. is very good at segregating students based on their ability and I think this is something that is very important since dumb kids can slow down classes by asking stupid questions that teachers have to accommodate.
Hm.
With each passing year schools in the US are segregating students based on ability less and less. There's still some advanced classes in high school (such as AP or IB) but through most of k-~10 there are more and more cases of gifted students and learning disabled (or just slow/unmotivated in general) students being in the same class.
As for the disadvantage of this for the stronger student... the problem isn't as simple as the teacher needing to accommodate stupid question. The teacher needs to plan every aspect of the class keeping mind that they want the weaker students to keep up. They'll present the same material more ways, do more reinforcement activities, do activities which have less opportunity to apply critical/higher thinking, etc. You are of course still correct that this 'slows down classes.'
There are ways to teach a class to reduce the negative effects of these. It's possible to challenge gifted students while helping weaker students keep up, but it's very difficult and there are practical limits to this. I could start a large discussion on TL about this topic probably lol
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On October 05 2011 19:21 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 19:07 BlackJack wrote:
I tend to agree that the U.S. is very good at segregating students based on their ability and I think this is something that is very important since dumb kids can slow down classes by asking stupid questions that teachers have to accommodate. Hm. With each passing year schools in the US are segregating students based on ability less and less. There's still some advanced classes in high school (such as AP or IB) but through most of k-~10 there are more and more cases of gifted students and learning disabled (or just slow/unmotivated in general) students being in the same class. As for the disadvantage of this for the stronger student... the problem isn't as simple as the teacher needing to accommodate stupid question. The teacher needs to plan every aspect of the class keeping mind that they want the weaker students to keep up. They'll present the same material more ways, do more reinforcement activities, do activities which have less opportunity to apply critical/higher thinking, etc. You are of course still correct that this 'slows down classes.' There are ways to teach a class to reduce the negative effects of these. It's possible to challenge gifted students while helping weaker students keep up, but it's very difficult and there are practical limits to this. I could start a large discussion on TL about this topic probably lol
Word. From my personal experience K-5 wasn't really segregated at all. For middle school and high school I went to some pretty ghetto schools but they did a real good job at keeping us nerds in "advanced/gifted" classes When I got into 6th grade there were 4 rows of classrooms with room numbers 40-45, 30-35, 20-25, 10-15. 40s were for smart kids and 10s were for the dumb kids. I used to help teachers in the 10s for my peer counselling class where I would grade papers and stuff, it was really sad. I never saw what I thought was a "great teacher", I'm not sure if it's because they gave worse teachers to the dumb kids or if the teachers just lost motivation to teach kids that were hopeless because of their IQ. I always thought that was some pretty harsh segregation - imagine what it's like for a kid to know "I'm a 10s kid."
Anyway, interesting story.. about halfway through the year we got a knew student in our gifted math class, and he was a black kid and he really seemed average intelligence or maybe a little above, and seemed like he was struggling. One day we were waiting outside of class for our teacher to arrive and he said something like "I shouldn't even be in this class" and I said "What do you mean, how did you get in then?" and he said "One word my friend: Blackmail" I didn't prod further but the impression I got was that his parents pressured the school to change the demographics of the class or something along those lines.
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On October 05 2011 02:20 DusTerr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2011 18:48 jamssi wrote:On October 04 2011 18:26 AnxiousHippo wrote:
Finland just generally seems like a great place to live. Only if you like 7 months of cold and darkness each year. I do - I moved from California :D
How long have you been there? Are you going to school there? How's life there?
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On October 05 2011 19:21 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2011 19:07 BlackJack wrote:
I tend to agree that the U.S. is very good at segregating students based on their ability and I think this is something that is very important since dumb kids can slow down classes by asking stupid questions that teachers have to accommodate. Hm. With each passing year schools in the US are segregating students based on ability less and less. There's still some advanced classes in high school (such as AP or IB) but through most of k-~10 there are more and more cases of gifted students and learning disabled (or just slow/unmotivated in general) students being in the same class. As for the disadvantage of this for the stronger student... the problem isn't as simple as the teacher needing to accommodate stupid question. The teacher needs to plan every aspect of the class keeping mind that they want the weaker students to keep up. They'll present the same material more ways, do more reinforcement activities, do activities which have less opportunity to apply critical/higher thinking, etc. You are of course still correct that this 'slows down classes.' There are ways to teach a class to reduce the negative effects of these. It's possible to challenge gifted students while helping weaker students keep up, but it's very difficult and there are practical limits to this. I could start a large discussion on TL about this topic probably lol
This is what I really want to learn and learn well (I'm a 2nd year primary/elementary teaching student).
What it seems like to me is that a lot of teachers really lack the effort and motivation to extend themselves to catering for the higher achieving students (as well as the lower ones too, however remedial help seems more available to them at least in the school's I've been to). Being able to differentiate my lessons so that everyone is learning and achieving at an optimal level for their personal ability, despite the amount of work it would involve is highly appealing to me.
Btw, isn't the consensus from research that segregation is (generally) advantageous to the higher achieving students but disadvantageous to the lower achieving students?
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United States24740 Posts
On October 05 2011 23:46 Phenny wrote:
Btw, isn't the consensus from research that segregation is (generally) advantageous to the higher achieving students but disadvantageous to the lower achieving students?
I'm not familiar with the research in this area but my guess from experience would be that what you said is correct overall.
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If you think the US system is segregating gifted students from average ones, you should reconsider. It certainly happens somewhere in-between graduation and PhD but not during normal school cursus. Of course there are disparities regarding social classes and the area kids live in but that's about it.
If you want to see a segregating (and totally assumed) school system, you should in interest yourself to the french one. It's completely designed to breed elites in every single field.
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I really envy Finland's school system.
The Singapore education system, while it has worked in the past, may has run its course in today's modern society. We need to really emulate the model, while putting it in a Singapore context.
I'm having my National's in a month, and today, I had class till 5, went for "tuition" till 8, and am studying at the moment. I won't want my child to be in a system like this in the future.
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EPT
