The Suburb Of The Future, Almost Here

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

I think the problem is the perceived quality of schools in the US is partly due to student demographics.

FWIW this is why I don't like vouchers or charter schools and am skeptical about school choice. Private schools can admit and expel students at will. Also if people use the vouchers to supplement paid tuition, money will still be a barrier to entry for the majority of students who wouldn't qualify for a scholarship or grant. The end result is that difficult students are segregated from easy students.

I know a lot of elitist people favor this outcome, because they think the difficult kids are keeping the gifted kids down, who are god's chosen salt of the earth and clearly entitled to everything. But its bad for society as a whole to deny opportunities to difficult kids.

A well run public school system will make reasonable accommodation for both difficult and gifted students, allowing both to flourish as much as possible. I am a firm believer in integration of students (if not in the same class but at least in the same school) to better prepare them for life as adults when they will have to deal with all sorts of people.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Reverberation

I really like the density model in the UK and Pennsylvania in the US. It's a nice balance between space and yard if it could be adapted to larger home sizes.

Of course it can be adapted to larger sized homes. There are enormous houses in central London. They're just expensive as hell.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-...-68799509.html

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-...-50592258.html

But there's no real reason that the same urban form couldn't be adopted in places with less desirable real estate (on a global basis). The construction costs for something like that, while higher than the average Tyvek-wrapped McMansion in America, are certainly not prohibitive.

[10023]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

A well run public school system will make reasonable accommodation for both difficult and gifted students, allowing both to flourish as much as possible. I am a firm believer in integration of students (if not in the same class but at least in the same school) to better prepare them for life as adults when they will have to deal with all sorts of people.

You absolutely have to separate classes and curriculums though, or the slower students do keep the "gifted" ones down. It's a real problem in American schools and they don't start this separation early enough (really not until AP classes are available in high schools). As a result primary school, at least after the first few years, is largely a waste of time for more talented students.

Originally Posted by llamaorama

I think the problem is the perceived quality of schools in the US is partly due to student demographics.

Not perceived... actual quality of schools is largely down to demographics. Not on racial or ethnic lines, but along social and class lines.

That's what I meant when I said that local schools improve when gentrification occurs. They are not perceived to be better, they actually become better, because they become filled with kids whose parents have 4-year or graduate degrees. Those kids are generally much farther along before they even start Kindergarten, and generally progress faster throughout their education, because their parents can participate in it. They are learning every day at home, and in their parents' social environment, much more than they do in school.

Funding is important, but it's only part of the story and giving more money to struggling schools can't fix their problems on its own. There is no way to fully eradicate inequality of opportunity, not without taking all kids out of their parents' homes.

[photoLith]

Oh no, millinials are now ruining cities, everything is our fault.

[llamaorama]

You absolutely have to separate classes and curriculums though, or the slower students do keep the "gifted" ones down. It's a real problem in American schools and they don't start this separation early enough (really not until AP classes are available in high schools). As a result primary school, at least after the first few years, is largely a waste of time for more talented students.

What about students who are merely average- neither gifted nor struggling? Are they lumped into either group against their will?


This can be done inside one school. I think students should be able to mix regular and advanced classes based on their ability in individual subjects or ability to handle the workload. Regular and gifted kids could still be in the same homeroom, do the same PE activities, eat lunch together, etc.

I don't see what's so complicated about this. Honestly I'm pretty sure that's how it was when I went to plain old public school in a kind of meh town in Texas. Starting around 6th grade some students advanced to algebra while others took another year of basic math, and in high school you could mix and match AP and regular classes.

If you balkanize education with a bunch of charter and magnet schools that have maybe 300-400 kids on campus, how can we provide a diversity of class choices? How can we set up schedules so that kids who fall behind or get ahead can easily retake or bump up a grade? Seems harder to do. I never thought of school choice as really offering choice. Instead of being zoned to a school, now your kid goes to the school that takes them, and they are stuck in the limited track the school offers.

[lrt's friend]

Many moons ago when I was in school, the smarter kids in elementary school skipped a grade.

I think it is a mistake to channelize kids too early. This means that late bloomers are side-tracked perhaps permanently and there may be too much pressure from dear Mom and Dad to achieve when that may not be their thing.

Elementary school should be about learning to socialize with your peers and finding out where your talents and interests are.