Grades and Grades: Age Segregation in Primary and Secondary School

We began to touch on this in class on Wednesday, but I wanted to give a more explicit treatment to this: "grades" in the sense of age segregation (first grade, fifth grade, etc).

Perhaps one of the most strikingly illogical aspects of our K-12 education system is this arbitrary division of children by age. Nowhere else in society are people segregated by age as they are in school. In an office, we do not have separate areas and expectations of a 22 year old versus a 45 year old. We do not maintain separate grocery stores for 30 year olds and 50 year olds. Even in universities, such age segregation does not happen. Any given class in university can have a spread of ages, from the 18 year old freshman to the 60+ year old non-trad taking a course simply for the joy of learning. And yet, in K-12, we box up all the 6 year olds with 6 year olds, 9 year olds with 9 year olds, and we consider this to be normal.

I will touch more on the issues of age segregation later. For now, though, I would like to relate this to our discussion of grades, for this is but one useful example of the downfalls of age segregation. By giving grades, we expect a certain level of performance from students. We have a notion of what a 10 year old child SHOULD know, and give grades to measure that. The problem comes when we realize that the grading rubric comes to an average. The average 7 year old SHOULD be able to pass this. The danger of averages is that you have extremes at both ends, and both of these are punished. The child who is not quite up to our level of work expected of his age is made to look stupid, ridiculed for his inability to maintain the level of work expected of his age. The above average student fairs no better. The child who is above average is held back, forced to do work she has already shown herself more than capable of completing, and she finds herself locked in to her grade because of her age, denying her the advancement of her education that she is more than capable of achieving should we give her the chance.

To end with a question: How might we equitably address differences in academic ability in children in regards to their education?