Two Questions

[davywavy]

There's always a temptation for me to editorialise on my LJ. Often I'm the soul of discretion, presenting facts unblemished by my own opinions, with neither slant nor spin. That's not to say it's easy for me to do so.
There are certain philosophical/political ideas with which I disagree for what I consider to be perfectly good reasons and what I have to realise is that the people who agree with those idea do so for what to them appear to be good reasons also.
So, in order to try and understand the thinking of others, I'm going to ask two questions of my lefty chums. I might not agree with your answers and I'm sure that my comments section will quickly degenerate into mudslinging as usual. However, I'm asking the questions because they're points which seem to be articles of faith to many, but the arguments presented in favour to me have never made any sense. It may be that I'm just missing something, so I'll give it a go.

1) What is wrong with streaming children according to educational ability?
2) What is wrong with requiring people to work in order to receive state benefits?

Comments

[susanofstohelit.livejournal.com]

I don't believe it's possible, reasonable, or moral to determine a child's future at 11 years old.

Out of my 4th grade class (11 years old), less than half of us maintained the track we were on. The couple of us who were ahead on reading and math stayed on that track, graduated high in our ranks and went to college, and the couple kids who had trouble kept having academic trouble, but there was a lot of movement in the middle 60%. The person who went to the most elite college out of my graduating class would probably have not been considered in the top 20% when we were 11.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I was giving background to help you understand the context. Like I say, these days it is a convenient shorthand for a top-streamed education for any school agegroup.

[susanofstohelit.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't understand how comprehensive you want streaming to be. do you want separate schools, or separate placement within schools for specific subjects?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Depends which works best; under some circumstances, seperate schools will work better. Acknowledging a need to educate kids according to their abilities, which our current system doesn't really do, is the first step to that.

[susanofstohelit.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's unreasonable to do so within schools, but separate schools would, to me, make it harder for the kids to understand and respect each other, and calcify class structures.

I tend to think that any vocational or job training should be post-secondary, and that up to 18 should be about academic learning (however far it's reasonable to take it).

[susanofstohelit.livejournal.com]

Also, who should decide what works best? in an ideal world, teachers and administrators would know each student well, and understand their strengths and weaknesses, but very few schools I've encountered have enough staff for that to be possible.