In Jeannie Oakes article on tracking
in our school systems, she talked about how we as a society place our children
into groups early in life that basically predetermines their futures. Oakes
discusses how children’s intelligence is determined early in their life and
when they appear to be above average intelligence they are put into classroom
with other students who are deemed to above average. The same goes for the
children who are deemed to have low abilities in the classroom. The issue that
is being made here is that by placing these children in groups you are helping definitely
helping the students in the above average levels however you are subsequently hurting
the majority of other students. There are three quotes that I would like to use
to help to convey this point in Oakes article.
“A number of studies have found
that top-track classes spend more class time on learning activities and less on
discipline, socializing, or class routines.”(Oakes p1)
This line to me truly stood out
because of how important focus and the ability to lock into material are to me.
I have been in both types of these rooms in high school myself. For my math
classes I was initially placed in a general education level class that was far beneath
my skill level. When I was in this class we were handed worksheets and the
teacher walked around the room trying to keep order and keep kids on task more
often than trying to teach new or harder material. As it became clear to the
teacher that I was doing the worksheets and other materials in minutes and then
was bored looking for things to do, she decided to talk to administration about
bumping me up into an honors math class. After a few weeks I was transferred into
this class and things changed drastically for me. Rather than worrying about
what the students were doing the teacher was doing problems on the board asking
for the us to get involved in the problems and how we might solve things that
might be just slightly ahead of what we are learning to see if we can think
logically using what we already have known.
The class became more challenging for sure however; I pushed me to
become better in math than I already was. This is a perfect example or what
Oakes was talking about when she talks about tracking. Sadly not all teachers
would have noticed that I was ahead of the rest of the class or even if they
did they might not have done anything about it. This would have caused me to
sit and be bored and more than likely not have learned as much in math as I did.
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| http://educationnext.org/tracking-improve-learning/ |
“In low-ability classes, for
example, teachers seem to be less encouraging and more punitive, placing more
emphasis on discipline and behavior and less on academic learning.” (Oakes p2)
Again just to relate this back to
my own personal life this sentence makes a strong impression on me. When I was
in high school we had 3 floors the lowest floor being called the “basement” The
only class’s that were held in “the basement”, were the heath classes for
everyone, and the low-ability classes for the kids who were extremely
disruptive. The example of tracking started from their early childhood when
most of the kids were placed into special programs they use to be taken out of
their classes for extra help and which would take away from their time with the
other students to interact. Once at the high school level these kids seemed to
have lost all desire to do anything school related and would just mess around.
Within the school they were known as a “basement kid”, which was a term that no
one used in a positive way. It meant that you were stupid. Other children would
be fighting about a problem in a class and use it in conversation saying “are
you stupid? What are you a basement kid?” and no one would think anything of
that. The classrooms were known for being loud and extremely out of control.
The students were curse out their teachers, throw things across the room as
other people, and just flat out refuse to do work in the classroom. Most of
their classes from what I saw when I would pass by for health, were the
teachers just trying to joke and reason with the kids to keep them calm. It’s
no wonder why a vast majority of those kids dropped out of high school or were
expelled. The sad thing is I lived next door to one of those kids for a few
years before his family moved to the other side of town and he was an extremely
intelligent person he was just placed into this class early on and became cynical
toward schooling.
“Recent work of cognitive psychologists suggests, for
example, that academic ability is not unchangeable bud developmental and grows throughout
childhood.”(Oakes p3)
This point argument brought up by Oakes I found to be really
interesting to the piece. It discusses
how as a child grows their ability to
learn can become better with age if taught be others or
themselves. In other
words even if you start off not being able to read well or understand math
well,
you can work hard at it and the ability to learn it will come in time.
This is extremely interesting and
relevant to her point because if the child
can learn the materials later in life but they are placed in a
low-ability
classroom and never taken out, they will be deprived or an education.
