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.

The Early Catastrophe - Day 375

A research conducted by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley regarding Poverty and Academic Growth have proven the effect of Unequal opportunity in this world.

 

The table below represent one dimension within the result achieved within years of research, data record, observations and analysed:

 

As you can see, by age 3, children from welfare families are exposed 2.23 times less words/vocabulary than children from Professional families. As a result, a child from a welfare family would speak half the vocabulary size than a child from a professional family.

 

What was also interesting in this research was that the language growth of a child is not only dependent on the words/vocabulary the parents speak at home but also, the experience of the child towards the feedback the child receive, a feedback that is spoken with words. The research shows that in Professional households the children are being positively encouraged by their parents within a ratio of 6:1 meaning - for every 6 encouragement feedbacks, one prohibiting feedback were spoken. However within the welfare families, the scenario is very concerning with the ratio of 1 encouragement to 2 discouragements feedbacks. That means that in the first 4 years of a child life, a professional family would expose their child to accumulated amount of 560,000 more instances of encouraging feedbacks while the welfare family would expose their children to 125,0000 more instances of discouraging feedbacks. It is safe to imagine the psychological problems children from welfare families face within their informative years where their vocabulary is far less advance and their personal character  is unconstructively built.

 

The research also shown that children would most likely to become the exact duplicate of their parents:

 

"By the time the children were 3 years old, trends in amount of talk, vocabulary growth, and style of interaction were well established and clearly suggested widening gaps to come. Even patterns of parenting were already observable among the children. When we listened to the children, we seemed to hear their parents speaking; when we watched the children play at parenting their dolls, we seemed to see the futures of their own children."

That indicate that the cycle would repeat itself and thus, their children would also be exposed to discouraging feedback and lack of vocabulary growth.

 

The research concluded the following:

"Estimating, as we did, the magnitude of the differences in children's cumulative experience before the age of 3 gives an indication of how big the problem is. Estimating the hours of intervention needed to equalize children's early experience makes clear the enormity of the effort that would be required to change children's lives. And the longer the effort is put off, the less possible the change becomes. We see why our brief, intense efforts during the War on Poverty did not succeed. But we also see the risk to our nation and its children that makes intervention more urgent than ever."

 

So understand - the cycle of ineffective human being will continue for generation after generations unless we create a system within which, everyone can be the best through effective training and education system.

For many, there is no equal opportunity to become something that is worthwhile in this world when one is doomed to a life of poor vocabulary and ineffective character building as that is what prevent one from being successful in this world.

Within the Equal Money System, a reform of education will take place where parents would be train to enhance their vocabulary through restoring their natural learning ability with advance technological tools. Once the parents developed effective vocabulary and communication skills, they could stop the cycle by standing as an example for their children, speak wide and expanded vocabulary within the correct context, content and meaning. Here one must understand that we cannot base hopes on the educational system to remediate old vocabulary that was placed ineffectively within the child body. For instance:

"So, a student hears the word 'transportation' in a book about trains," said Ms. Silverman, who was not involved with the Michigan studies. "If the teacher doesn't explain it in a general context, the student might not get the full sense of the word, and might think it's just related to trains."

(Source: Students Must Learn More Words, Say Studies - By Sarah D. Sparks)

 

This is why, to change the world to a world that is best for all, we must start with ourselves, expand ourselves and become effective communicators, effective example for the generations to come and the ones responsible for the production of a better human being. The Education starts at home and without understanding how the human physical of the child naturally learn vocabulary.

SO - would you be part of the solution or part of the problem? You decide.