Sunday, November 20, 2011

#8 Tracking: why schools need to take another route. By Jeannie Oakes

Tracking is a terrible way to teach kids in school.  I strongly agreed with Jeannie Oaks and her article.  The purpose of tracking is to put kids in groups from the smart kids all the way to the kids that need a lot of help.  Once these kids are put in these groups they then end up learning the same material only in different ways.  For example the kids in the lower class are usually given a worksheet in the attempt to learn the material while the kids in the higher learning classes are treated with more respect and have discussions about the learning material.
In my eyes tracking is like a hidden version of segregation, maybe not by race but by how smart a person is.  When I was in the high school there were honor classes that were for the kids that learned at a faster pace then others and general class for the kids that took a little more time learning the material.  I was stuck in the general class, as for my brother he was in the honor classes. Everyday when we would come home from school my mom would ask us how was school.  After I told my mom about how boring my day was my brother would start saying how exciting his day was and how his classes were filled with long discussions about the material.  When I would here all of this I would get very mad wondering why weren't my classes having these discussions?  Just because someone takes longer to learn something does not mean they are incapable of having discussions or  can not do an activity someone that can learn faster can do.  If we could stop tracking and have students mixed into classes I believe discussions could help everyone benefit from them, and kids will feel like they are treated more equally then being separated into classes.

No comments:

Post a Comment