Grouping Students by Ability - Day 391

“It was once common for elementary-school teachers to arrange their classrooms by ability, placing the highest-achieving students in one cluster, the lowest in another. But ability grouping and its close cousin, tracking, in which children take different classes based on their proficiency levels, fell out of favor in the late 1980s and the 1990s as critics charged that they perpetuated inequality by trapping poor and minority students in low-level groups. “

 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/education/grouping-students-by-ability-regains-favor-with-educators.html?pagewanted=1&ref=education>

 

Interestingly enough, 20-30 years after and without anyone noticing, grouping children by ability is very common in today's world despite of research showing that grouping children by ability perpetuate inequality and increasing the gap between the poor and the elites of this world.

 

I mean even for myself, from elementary school to high school I was always placed in the smart kids groups and I was very confident within my learning capacity although, I was very judgemental towards those who were under me, I saw them as worthless and stupid and inferior. Everything turned around when I started high school and according to my previous marks, I was placed in the smart kids class and now, everyone were the best and I was slowly but surely moving down the scale from being the best to being one of the worse student in my class and with that, my confident disappeared, my self esteem crashed and I saw myself as stupid,  worthless and inferior exactly as I judged those in the lower groups up until high school. This had created severe consequences in my life because I lost my own trust in myself to a point of absolute compromise, giving up and self defeat. I saw myself as  nothing that is worthwhile. I did as little as possible to excel, I trusted my look to open the doors for me, which for a while it did, but eventually my looks wasn't enough as I had to also prove my skills and I couldn't because I didn't believe that I can be good in anything and when things were a bit hard, I gave up and quit because that was the habit that I created through the high school years.

 

In a way, I am lucky for having to walk my process for the past few years where I could let go of this self defeat that I got myself believing that that is who I am and so, I stood up again, made my stance in this world, found a the positions I am naturally good at and enhanced these skills with consistency, over time; I was suddenly motivated to live and I could only do it within the support I received not only from myself through my writings but also the support I received and still receiving from the group that is walking with me. But not everyone are lucky as me and are able to really take the time to sort themselves out when it is already way to late, not many are lucky enough to grow in an environment that is supportive and thus preventing these future problems in personal character development and once we stigmatized a child and defined them as a slow learner or with learning difficulties or with low IQ, we doomed the child to live unsuccessful and unsatisfied life.

 

But the point that I want to make here is that the research that was done from my perspective is counterproductive because the problem of inequality does not start when the children are already in school and now being graded to groups according to their level of learning - the problem of inequality start much much sooner, at home, wherein the welfare family cannot give the child the equal opportunity the child deserve of having as a human being in this world because the parent are not educated enough and do  not have the basic life skills of words in place. The welfare families also cannot provide the children with additional support in their informative years to be able to stand in alignment to the children coming from professional households. A research that is actually very well done and valid is shared here: The Early Catastrophe. In this research it is clearly shows that by age 3, dependent on the socio economic status the family stand as, the child would either be successful or not. Age 3.

 

So, if you followed my blogs thus far, you would know that there is a solution for this problem of inequality and that is to equalize the economic world system through the Equal Money System that is based on substantial application of human rights and within that, equal opportunities, proper education, health care and so on. No child should be left behind can only be applied within a system that is bases on the value of life that is best for all and that is in essence the Equal Money System.