top of page
​The Inbuilt Failure Factors of chronologically age based classrooms which make them very Iffy!
​
Since1848 schools have imposed a simple yet detrimental to their learning a structure for how children are grouped, nay graded. At the commencement of each school year all learners are grouped into a pre-determined date of birth classroom to commence their learning journey. This immediately puts many children at an advantage over some of their fellow learners, others immediately at a disadvantage to their fellow classmates as the spread in chronological age alone is more than a full year, possibly up to fifteen or sixteen months, depending on parental decisions. What is not realised nor considered to be important to grade based teachers is that the learning ability spread across the whole class of six year olds or yet to turn six year olds is at least three years, often more, and after six years of schooling the spread in any area of learning readiness is at the very least a six year spread. From their very first day at school there are already winners and losers so the great fallacy of a standardised curriculum is set in concrete, set to fail a large proportion of any class so structured.
Curriculum makers supposedly pick an arbitrary "middle of the road" imaginary point on which to base the milestones must be reached and year after year the age based class moves forward in two hundred day steps, which hampers and hinders about one in five of the brightest and keenest and most challenging and frustrates and bewilders and disappoints one on five of the children who can't cut the mustard and every year drift further and further behind. Amazingly it would seem that three in every five seem to manage and cope and get along with the middle sweet point that curriculum makers, text book developers and all of the ancillary "Educational services" have chosen as the Grade Five Standard. And that's still the best we can do after 177 years of schooling. What a farce!
Then we can look at the nemesis of Bullying, which once started, even in the earliest years often, continues on and on with the same group of power brokers, bully leaders, who make life hell for fellow classmates, every year becoming more perverse, more subtle, more pervasive, and it is embedded in the age based graded classroom model. You saw it in your classrooms. You knew which of the kids was always way ahead of the pack, but maybe not in every subject all of the time. You were probably that person, bored to death going over and over stuff you already knew. You also can remember those kids who just never seemed to be able to get to the top, well not in every subject and each year drifted further and further behind. You may have been that child and lived with the frustration and belittling school gave you. We even once had dunces hats and a stool in the corner to make your embarrassment complete. You probably never liked school very much.
​
​
​
​
bottom of page