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A comment on Ways to save American education. Parent comment

Re:Ways to save American education by count on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @07:59PM (#3354534)
Regarding #7: Why? I would have absolutely hated that in school. How does having a kid who's good at Algebra teaching a younger kid who's not so good at Algebra help the kid who's good at all?

If he's already good at it, teaching it shouldn't help him that much, and now he's wasted time he could be using to learn more things himself (see your own #6).

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Re:Ways to save American education by gfodor on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @08:25PM (#3354611)
The best way to be sure you understand something is to teach it.
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Re:Ways to save American education by Anechoic on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @09:12PM (#3354741)
> I would have absolutely hated that in school.

Agreed. I was the smart kid on the high school football team, so I was tasked by the coach to tutor some of my lesser-performing teammates and it was an absolutely miserable experience.

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Re:Ways to save American education by eof on Thursday December 15, 2011 @03:11AM (#3355403)
Right; but what if you were tasked with spending time with 'the smart kid' from 3 years below you? That is an entirely different experience.

I would not want smart kids wasting their time with dull kids; but smart older kids imparting their wisdom on smart younger kids (where it won't be wasted)

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Re:Ways to save American education by zinkem on Wednesday December 14, 2011 @09:15PM (#3354744)
Because learning to communicate the thing is just as important as learning the thing itself.
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Re:Ways to save American education by eof on Thursday December 15, 2011 @03:09AM (#3355399)
First of all, its bright students teaching other bright students--if that wasn't clear.

Second, you are only looking at half the equation. That 7th grader spending time with a smart 6th grader is also spending time with a smart 8th grader.

The benefit comes from the (fact? hypothesis?) that bright children within a couple of years from each other will get a hell of a lot more bang for their buck than the time they spend with their (statistically) relatively average teachers that have lost touch with that part of their development cycle.

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