The tendency of educational institutions to separate students based on their learning velocity at a young age causes unneeded harm.
Children who are identified as “gifted” or advanced are separated from their peers into enhanced classes. Contrastingly, those who struggle are placed in less advanced courses that hinder the learning pace.
Separating children based on their academic prowess hurts everyone. It gives kids the false idea at an impressionable age that the ability to succeed in school is solely dependent on innate talent. Placing these unjust labels also makes children undermine the value of hard work.
While kids in advanced classes tend to be more successful than their counterparts, this comes at a serious cost to mental health. Children who have high expectations placed upon them will have their self-esteem and motivation directly linked to how they perform in school.
Higher expectations often create perfectionist children who are deeply stressed and anxious to maintain their gifted status. This makes them more prone to burnout and less accepting of failure, which is bound to occur as the child’s educational journey becomes more difficult.
Similarly, the top scholar in one school might become an average student once they transition to a competitive university. For some students, transitioning from being special to average is something that can shock a student’s self-worth.
The logistical advantage of separating children is understandable. It’s difficult to cater to the different learning speeds of various children, especially in underfunded schools. However, this is not the way to solve the problem.
Smaller classes combined with more supportive teachers would help address the individual needs of students without separation. We can’t sacrifice our children’s development in the hopes of putting a bandage on the issue of overwhelmed teachers.
If we don’t fix the issue, we will continue creating self-fulfilling prophecies of burnt-out gifted kids who believe they are a failure at the first sight of adversity and struggling students who believe they will never achieve anything in life.
We are dynamic individuals whose abilities change depending on various factors. This is particularly true for children, who are still early in their development.
Separating children based on their learning pace fails to grasp this concept. It reinforces a toxic belief that educational success is a fixed quality that deprives children of interacting with different students who are gifted in different ways.
