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Re: Finland
Posted:
Feb 20, 2012 3:22 PM
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On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 9:25 PM, Wayne Bishop <wbishop@calstatela.edu> wrote:
> At 12:47 AM 2/19/2012, Paul Tanner wrote:
>
>> Perhaps this point about parents shows that democracy makes what you
>> talk about impossible without the mechanism of a legal mandate under
>> which you as a parent of a gifted child could easily sue if a
>> degradation you think is bad for your child happens in these special
>> classes (just as it is for the parents of children in those special
>> classes for the opposite end of the giftedness spectrum)?
>
>
> My apologies if I am not reading your response correctly but why would one
> expect a degradation in such classes? That degradation occurs because of
> inappropriate assumptions of inability and lack of appropriate direct
> instruction and more routine practice than regular students need to achieve
> comparable level of competence but at an appropriate pace for the child. It
> would seem as if the analogy would be to pace the classes too fast (which I
> do not believe would be the case) and an assumption of too great of an
> assumption of an ability to discover that which it took geniuses centuries -
> even millennia - to discover (which probably would be the case).
> "Mainstreaming" to an outrageous level - instead of running those lower
> courses appropriately - degrades the education of the masses as well as
> those at the high-end who deserve to be appropriately taught and challenged
> by their peers instead of, at best, being used by them to be taught what
> should've been taught in the classes themselves.
>
> Much easier than special classes, however, is simple advancement of students
> who can handle the material at a faster pace and easily fill in any needed
> missing pieces. Of course, the misconception of democracy requires
> mainstreaming (i.e., holding back to inevitable boredom) them as well.
>
> Wayne
>
I was talking about Robert's point about parents. Read it again. He
was wondering how it is possible to avoid degrading the classes he was
talking about by keeping out of those classes all those kids who
according to Robert should not be in those classes but according to
all their parents in this democracy should be in those classes.
The same kind of problem exists with respect to your desire to see all
gifted kids advanced at an accelerated rate through the grade
placement you speak of. We still have all those parents in question in
this democracy and even though you would say their kids are not
qualified for such acceleration, they would say otherwise.
It boil down to this, generally: I'm just saying that it should be
clear that one is mistaken if one thinks that it is possible to avoid
the serious legal implications dealing with all those said parents
when we are talking about giving special treatment to one set of kids
over another. All those very many parents in this democracy whose kids
are not getting special treatment will have something to say about it,
some of them with lawyers.
That is, without some sort of legal mandate that contains within it
legally grounded rules as to who is and is not qualified for the
special treatment, what you guys talk about is the opening of a legal
can of worms that just ain't gonna be opened. (Just look at the
history of special education. All the changes that took place was were
based on legal mandates that contained within them legally grounded
rules as to who is and is not qualified for the special treatment.) I
just don't see why you guys are unwilling to see things from a
lawyer's point of view and see that from that point of view, you are
mistaken if you think that any school system would be interested in
going down a road of giving one group of kids special treatment over
another group of parents without some sort of legal protections from
those many parents in question in this democracy of ours - and all the
lawyers they could hire that would claim that these parents' kids are
being unfairly excluded from this special treatment.
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