No this is a good thing. Kids develop at different ages and being around kids their age build up confidence. If they mixed classes too much then the older kids would dominate everything and the younger kids would learn to just shut up.

Especially with girls it’s important for kids to learn self esteem and agency, and they can’t do that when bigger, stronger, smarter and faster older kids are dominating everything in the classroom.

Sounds like post-hoc rationalization to me.

With that reasoning, you could also decide that classes shouldn't be mixed-gender, because boys might bully girl or girls might bully boys, and it's better to keep everyone in a group of people exactly like them.

It’s obvious you don’t have children because this is actually an issue that is starting to come around.

Educators are finding that mixing genders actually puts a lot of pressure on boys to behave like girls, ie less excited etc so when they act out, they are medicated or sent to the principals office. Separating boys from girls in the classroom might help boys when they are younger.

And girls benefit from being separated especially during puberty. My friend just sent her daughter to an all-girls middle school that specifically targets girls this age so that they can learn to be more confident during the most awkward age of their lives.

This really isn't true though. Some schools have mixed-grade lunches, clubs, some classes, etc. and how can you not categorize interactions with teachers and other faculty as not being in a different age group???

> interactions with teachers and other faculty

Interactions, yes, but I wouldn't call those interactions socialising.

In my entire time as a child and teenager at multiple schools, I don't recall spending any time socialising with teachers and other faculty. Not once, and not even with my favourite teachers who made the most lasting impressions through their teaching, and willingness to teach me more advanced things than on the standard curriculum.

It was pretty minimal at university too. Socialising was with other students.

Social education is not just socializing. It's important for children to learn social dynamics with people who are a different standing as them and their immediate peers.

I agree those things are important.

But the post by inglor_cz you replied to was specifically about socialising being limited to peer ages as a child, not social eduction in general.

Therefore your reply "this isn't really true though" and "how can you not categorise .. teachers" implied socialising with teachers and faculty, not just formal social interactions.

It really is true that many children don't have the opportunity to socialise with people outside a narrow age range at school, and that seems like a legitimate thing to dislike.

"how can you not categorize interactions with teachers and other faculty as not being in a different age group"

These are interactions, but form just a very limited subset of socializing. Most teachers remain fairly distant and unknown. Or at least that was my experience when going to school.

YMMV.

Almost nobody is building meaningful relationships outside of their year group. It's an unhealthy state of affairs that wasn't this way in our ancestral past. A side effect of going for economies of scale in schooling. It contributed to my own immaturity as a teenager. I would've been better off with actual friends older than me and especially some actual friends older than 25.

This is one thing home schooling has going for it, where the social life is built around activities with other home schooled kids who likely differ in age. It's much harder for kids to get caught up in the typical pet immaturities and stupidities of their age group.

In my American public school, and likely where the parent is from, there are not mixed-grade lunches, clubs, or any classes, until around 9th grade or 14ish years old. Interactions with teachers and faculty is extremely limited by the ratio (at least 1:20) and the context ("You need to remain quiet and do as we tell you").

Kids that have siblings, neighborhood friends, or social activities like boy scouts, which generally include children over a range of ages, really appreciate it.

It sounds like your school had access to this stuff already though, do you think it was valuable?

Yeah - mosr schools are frankly missocialization. It "works" because it is a largely synchronized one which sets the norms which are accepted.