I think it’s that yes, schools do something, but that something may have less to do with the things everyone usually thinks and hopes schools do, and more to do with “change how well they teach different students as a function of initial maturity in a way that locks them into better or worse future trajectories, based on an essentially random variable, namely their birthday.”
Which is admittedly entirely consistent with your post as written, taken in isolation, but also very much at odds with the as-usually-understood spirit of what people around here who say school isn’t that valuable are actually trying to say. Sorting people into buckets by birthday range and then using that to lock them into better or worse life paths, with little relationship to anything like the innate levels intelligence or conscientiousness that two different kids would have if each were evaluated at the same age rather than the same point in time, is technically schools “doing something.” It is not schools doing what proponents of schooling, as it’s currently done, want you to believe school does. It is not schools doing something socially or economically valuable.
I agree that that wouldn’t be a valuable thing for schools to do. I would be interested though in a gears level explanation of how they lock in the older students, and whether the effect is a positive one for the education of those older students. If so then we have an obvious technique to improve schools—get that effect for all students not just the older ones.
I suppose that in the first few grades of elementary school, the difference of almost one years matters a lot. Going by the old model “IQ = 100 × mental age / physical age”, being a 7 years old child in a group of 6 years old children is like getting +16 IQ points. You are also physically stronger, emotionally more mature, etc.
So it’s kinda like getting a magical pill that makes you 16% better at everything when you start school attendance, and then the effect of the pill slowly expires… but you still get the secondary effects of prestige, self-confidence, special opportunities received when you won some competitions, higher motivation, etc.
To get that effect for everyone, you would have to somehow make everyone older than their classmates.
On the flipside framing, currently the younger kids have a magical curse that makes them 16% worse at everything, and ideally we would be able to get rid of that.
I’m not sure what the point you’re making is?
I think it’s that yes, schools do something, but that something may have less to do with the things everyone usually thinks and hopes schools do, and more to do with “change how well they teach different students as a function of initial maturity in a way that locks them into better or worse future trajectories, based on an essentially random variable, namely their birthday.”
Which is admittedly entirely consistent with your post as written, taken in isolation, but also very much at odds with the as-usually-understood spirit of what people around here who say school isn’t that valuable are actually trying to say. Sorting people into buckets by birthday range and then using that to lock them into better or worse life paths, with little relationship to anything like the innate levels intelligence or conscientiousness that two different kids would have if each were evaluated at the same age rather than the same point in time, is technically schools “doing something.” It is not schools doing what proponents of schooling, as it’s currently done, want you to believe school does. It is not schools doing something socially or economically valuable.
I agree that that wouldn’t be a valuable thing for schools to do. I would be interested though in a gears level explanation of how they lock in the older students, and whether the effect is a positive one for the education of those older students. If so then we have an obvious technique to improve schools—get that effect for all students not just the older ones.
I suppose that in the first few grades of elementary school, the difference of almost one years matters a lot. Going by the old model “IQ = 100 × mental age / physical age”, being a 7 years old child in a group of 6 years old children is like getting +16 IQ points. You are also physically stronger, emotionally more mature, etc.
So it’s kinda like getting a magical pill that makes you 16% better at everything when you start school attendance, and then the effect of the pill slowly expires… but you still get the secondary effects of prestige, self-confidence, special opportunities received when you won some competitions, higher motivation, etc.
To get that effect for everyone, you would have to somehow make everyone older than their classmates.
On the flipside framing, currently the younger kids have a magical curse that makes them 16% worse at everything, and ideally we would be able to get rid of that.