[ExI] Peer review reviewed

[William Flynn Wallace]

Back in the olden days, they never worried too much about hurting the
feelings of the students.  spike

Nowadays they give participation trophies.  I wonder what the kids think
about them a bit later in life.

"What did I win?"  "You got a trophy for showing up."  "Well, I knew that I
was there.  So all I had to do was show up alive?"   "hmmmmmm.........."

As I have posted, kids entering first grade think they are the smartest
ones in the school. They soon find out, just like they do on the playground
where the fastest, strongest kids rule, that they are not - maybe not even
close.  Should we work on self-esteem when kids are average or below?

I say NO.  It has to be earned to be meaningful.  The kids soon know who is
the smartest.  We find these things out all through life:  what we are good
at, what we are poor at, what we might improve, what is hopeless, and so
on.

And self-esteem can be too high - egoism, Dunner-Kreuger effects and so
on.  Teaching an average kid that he is worthy of high self-esteem ranks in
the category with teaching that Santa is real.

Hurt feelings?  Learn to deal with them.  I am NOT suggesting that we be
rough with kids, that we need to put them through boot camps to toughen
them. But I am insisting that kids need to learn reality asap.  Far too
many adults are not that well acquainted with it!

bill w

On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 11:13 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 10:37 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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> >… separated by ability or 'mainstreamed' is a hot topic and I do not
> know the current status of those ideas in actual schools.  …  bill w
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> Billw, there was an educational tool that went in and out of favor over
> the years.  As a student I loved em: SRA Reading Lab.  Students could go at
> their own pace within limits: they were reading cards and doing reading
> comprehension tests to move up to higher levels.
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> Naturally it was motivating: the higher levels had more interesting
> reading material.
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> Controversial: everyone could see where everyone else was in their
> progress, the fast risers and the ground sloths.  Back in the olden days,
> they never worried too much about hurting the feelings of the students.
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> Today they have a version of that called Personalized Learning.  It is
> similar to SRA in many ways, but a student’s progress is not visible to the
> other students.  There is nothing analogous to different colored cards.
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> It might be supposed this is a form of separating students by ability.
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> spike
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