| No child left behind? |
By: Bob Berry
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With no child left behind our government is trying to reduce the education gap between the high achievers and the low achievers. It's like going on a hike and keeping the group together. The faster kids are held back to allow the slowest ones to keep up. That does work well for hiking as a group but it does hold back the faster ones. This doesn't work well in an educational setting. The brighter children get bored when held back to the speed of the slowest ones and their potential is not fully developed. This happened even before Bush's no child left behind program. When I went through school in the 50s and 60s i got so bored with the slow pace set in the classroom that I didn't learn even half as much as I could have.
What's needed is an education system that will help each child maximize his/her potential. The slower children need extra help to learn to their full potential but so do the brighter children. The brighter children need to be able to advance at a much faster pace than classrooms full of mixed potential students allow them to or they are held back and bored.
The current system serves the average students pretty well but leaves the slower children behind and keeps the brighter students from learning as fast as they could. Our country looses out on the full contributions that could be made by both the slower and brighter students with our one size fits all system and with the changes being advanced by no child left behind it will only increase the problem. |
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