Um, yeah? Teaching is not about awarding those who game the system the best. It's all about making sure that the "lowest common denominator" gets every chance to succeed.

It's not a fucking leaderboard.

Signed,

a salty fucking teacher who will defend those students to the end.

[–] name_NULL111653@pawb.social -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So taking time out of your summer as a student and sacrificing fun for the love of learning is "gaming the system," and needs to be abolished? No wonder the United States school system is messed up...

[–] pthaloblue@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I explicitly said that the love of learning is great.

And I'm not saying that learning extracurriculars is bad, in fact, it's wonderful!

I'm talking about summer schools that literally just teach a class curriculum ahead of time. In that respect, yes, it is "gaming". The only thing those students learn is to get ahead and stay ahead.

[–] Reddit_Is_Trash@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those students should be placed in more advanced classes then

[–] foo@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Who's going to teach them? We can't even hire enough teachers for the shitfestival that education is now, how do you find more teachers?

Once you get those teachers who are skilled at driving advanced classes, would you require them also work in the poor performing classes?

That's a conditions trap, now that good teacher is dealing with the administration and trauma burden of the low performing class making it complex for them to perform in the advanced class.

Would you make them specialists? That's an equity and human resources management nightmare. Whid want to work in a class of hard students when classes of dreamy well behaved engaged kids is a possibility

Do we keep it the same and continue to systemically disadvantage everyone?

There are no easy answers. The entire education system needs to be invented and rebuilt from the ground up.

[–] imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why take these summer breaks in the first place? Are your kids needed on the farms still? Or is it because salty teachers are underpaid and having summer breaks is th only way the US can convince them to work. Where is the data that summer breaks help any students at all? Poor or rich smart or lazy? What about the kids that don't get lunches when they are not in school? Summer slumping is a detriment to all, to society. I don't see many teachers willing to stand up to that as the underlying issue, and I don't see how it's fair to blame those that are either willing or able to fight it independently with additional learning. They are not the ones to aim your laser at.

[–] pthaloblue@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I don't live in the US. I'm adequately paid, and the summers are short where I live. Take your strawmen and throw them back whatever hole you dug them out of.

I can't speak about US problems, but what I'm talking about is education in general. I'll give you an example: I was teaching some students to read the other day, about 8 years old. One student clearly has the leg up on the other one. She goes to after school programs, short summer programs, the works. She can read about two levels higher than her classmate. Hey, that's great. And actually when reading is concerned, I'm happy that she can do that. But what happens is that when I need to slow down and actually teach that other student to read (at a level that's perfectly fine for her age), she groans, she gets impatient, she makes fun of that kid. And what happens to that other kid? She feels stupid, she feels inadequate.

And ok, you might say, an intensive reading program is good! But one thing it does not teach these kids is that they are not better than anyone else, and even if they learn more, they need to also learn to be respectful to their fellow students.

Tl;dr we're teaching them to be competitive, not good human beings

[–] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Smart and lazy aren’t opposites.

[–] imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yep, that's correct. You must have been in a good school system.