Your Age Does Not Reflect Your I.Q.

A predominate feature of the structure of school is their need to place children with the same age (sometimes a year or two older) in the same class. The mistake in this monstrously stupid idea is the thinking (or lack of) that a child of seven years has identical intelligence to that of another child of seven years. In case you like school too much to notice what’s wrong with this assumption, I’ll be clear. It is ferociously rare for a child of seven years to have the exact same intelligence to that of another seven year old.

So what’s the problem Dangerous David? The problem is that within a class where there are contrasting intelligences, the material being ‘explored’ is all the same. Therefore a more intelligent person has to deal with work that is not challenging because some child is not smart enough to comprehend harder work. This is particularily noticeable in the early years of schooling, but it does not fade into non-existence in the later years, and this should not be acceptable.

But hey Dauntless David, wouldn’t the smart kids just do challenging material in their own time? Yeah, I’d like to see that happen. Only one to two percent of children would study at home of their own free will, I think. And due to the lack of mental nutrition that accomodates their presence in school, their skills will deteriorate to the level of the stupid kids, so it evens out nicely.

Now now Daring David, these smart children will just be put up a year, wouldn’t they? No. They won’t. And it’s not a good idea anyway. Especially what with the supposedly valuable social skills the would be lost. Somehow you learn social skills by doing crap with people your age. But how is a thirteen year old going to cope being in a class that contains fourteen year olds, or a six year old in a class of seven year olds? Chances are that child will not fit in and therefore not get these social skills.

Overall, schools (even though damaged beyond reasonable repair) should learn that being seven years old does not mean you have an I.Q. of seven like every other seven year old.

But schools are stupid, so they won’t learn. So they’re futile.