For a while now, Americans have been complaining about how the country’s students compare poorly to the students of most other countries, even Third World countries.
So far, not many solutions have been suggested, or they just don't fit with our PC modern society.
I am almost positive it has something to do with America's new way of taking a lot of things like school to the absolute extreme. In most schools, students are placed in one big group of kids in their respective grade (mostly based on age than actual capabilities), and that is just about as separated as it gets. Students are not categorized by how well they do or how fast they learn, instead all must fit inside a one-size-fits-all box.
There might be many politically correct reasons for this, one of them for sure is that they do not want anyone’s feelings hurt (students and/or parents alike) by being placed in a "below average" class based on performance and level of responsibility (not doing homework, English is not the primary language, illness kept the student out of school, for example).
I am also certain if everyone was separated based on how fast or slow they learn, children in either category would learn more because they don't have to wait for a slow learner to "get it" or wind up left behind because they are slower learners and got frustrated because they couldn't catch up.
The faster-paced learners would be happy and do great in school because they would be going at a faster speed and wouldn't grow bored and uninterested in school.
Those faster-paced students wouldn’t be bored because the teacher teaches one lesson one day on, let’s say, three digit multiplication, and by the end of the day the fast paced learners “get it” and are comfortable with it.
The slower-paced learners would do better in school because the teacher would teach the lesson until everyone got it, ideally around the same time. Schooling might take a little longer for them, but in the end they would grow up to be successful.
I would be very grateful if schools were separated this way. If this was how, or close to how our schools were divided, I am positive the U.S. would “conquer” and be back to the very top at least in the matters of education.
Angelina Gervasio is a seventh-grader at Redwood Middle School. She writes on a variety of topics when her mom says she is caught up on her homework. She can be reached by contacting the Register's Multimedia Producer, Dan Ross, at dross@napanews.com or 256.2264.
