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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30708 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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I do think age segregation is a problem for all the reasons you observe. One room schoolhouses were once the norm, with older kids helping younger. Larger families and tribes were once the norm, with older children contributing to raising younger children. Children working alongside parents was once the norm; they learned labor at their parents' side, by doing (badly at first, then better as they grew).

But segregation is, or is at least believed to be, efficient. Adults can get more work done if they aren't simultaneously tending to children. Children can be educated en masse if they are sorted by approximate ability. Age is an efficient approximator of ability--far from precise, but adequate for factory-style education.

I assume that we could probably have the civilization we do without the age segregation, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I bet there is a charter school or private school out there somewhere experimenting with mixed-age classrooms; it would be interesting to see how those operate in modernity.

Montessori age groups are 3 years each starting age 3 and up. But under 3s are separate into 2 groups, little babies and toddlers.

So yeah, plenty of Montessori private schools don't segregate year-by-year.

My elementary school gifted program combined 1st-5th grade into one classroom with two teachers. The child had to have a IQ score of 130+ to be assigned into the classroom. I can't really say if the age mixing was very beneficial. There's the obvious cofounder of everyone having a high IQ. It wasn't disastrous, at least. I think I had trouble learning spelling compared to my peers in normal classes, but I was ahead in reading and logic.

I believe a lot of the Montessori schools do this.

That's a definition of Montessori teaching. There are a few multi-year age groups. If a school segregates year-by-year then they aren't Montessori.

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