There was one full time teacher, and a second who was part time. That's actually a pretty good student to teacher ratio compared to the overfull classes of today.

Perhaps half the days activities were done in a single group and the other half we would be split in to two groups to do academic work.

I think that having mixed age group was very positive. It allowed kids to learn from the older ones but in addition everyone moved forward at their own pace. The school had to be designed to handle each student being at a different place in their education by it's very nature.

When I moved to a larger secondary school at age 11, I was miles ahead of my new peers. It was at least a couple more years before any of the content being taught caught up to what I had learned in primary school.

This might be impractical now, but in the future as technology gets better, I think that kids would benefit from being directed from their own personalized computer teacher, with a real teacher there just to manage the environment and address any circumstances that the computer teacher can't deal with, and for necessary group activities. That way each kid has an education that is tailored to them and nobody is lost in the cracks, bored kids becoming lazy, or overwhelmed kids learning to hate school and thinking of themselves as inferior or stupid.

I fully agree. That is the topic of my very oldest online FAQ, first composed in 1992.

http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html

Dividing up children into school grades by age is a modern form of insanity, which would have astonished educators in any earlier era.

The outcome is something resembling a lowest-common-denominator education for all. Outstanding students don't pull a class upward, but unproductive or struggling students do slow a class down. That sucks for the student who's ahead of the class, because her potential is being wasted. It also sucks for the student at the bottom of the class, because he shouldn't be there. (That sounds harsh, but it's true).

Solving this problem will require implementing a scalable way to aggregate students by some level or set of criteria other than age. We need to organize them somehow, because it's currently impractical to teach them all individually.

And it's tricky to organize them by any "potential"-based criterion at an arbitrary age, because the brain is changing almost continuously throughout childhood. Plucking a group of "gifted" students apart from the pack at, say, age 2 is poorly predictive of who actually turns out to have high potential later on. So we need to do better than that.

These are nontrivial challenges, but the solution would represent a giant leap forward in our society.

For each discipline, there would be defined different levels of ability. To attain a level, you would have to go through exam. If you would fail, you could repeat the level (even multiple times). Each level would be attainable in about half-year of directed study. So there would be no grades, only levels - you couldn't get best grades, because there would always be some level above you which you would attempt to attain.

Now kids would be grouped into circles primarily based on ability at the discipline, not age. So you could be older in one group and younger in another, depending on how good you are. That way, the typical social hierarchy in classroom would be limited. I also think presence of the older kids could prevent lot of bullying, and kids could make more connections with other kids that are better or worse in different disciplines. Of course, there should be ingrained a culture of helping to learn (those with higher levels should help those with lower levels).

You could select yourself which levels in what disciplines you want to attain each semester, however there would probably be some basic total curriculum you have to go through. Also you couldn't opt for less total work; if you fail the level, you would have to repeat it, so you would be motivated not to fail.

I was in a gifted program in for elementary and middle school, and now that I think about it, in 8th grade, of the top 5 academically performing kids, 4 had birthdays in January or February, and 1 was redshirted... hmmm

I wonder if their parents planned that, or if it was a result of their developmental advantage/other environmental factors/own personality/aptitude?

Anyways, fascinating idea.

For example, if your school told you your 5 year old is smart enough to start 1st grade, you'll likely enroll it into 1st grade, making it younger than the average 6 year old 1st grader.

Unfortunately this has the problem of straining the kid, and rather than seeming and being exceptional, it'll appear average. Later on in life when grades, extracurriculars, become important for college admissions, the kid will be disadvantaged because of this, since age is usually never considered.

Moral of the story: it's better to be a big fish in a small pond.

In Freakonomics, the idea is that older kids will be more physically developed, thus get more attention and skill development. Those kids will end up being better, get picked for the junior teams, who then get picked for national teams, etc. As a result, on any given professional team, you have a roster of players whose birthdays statistically favor the earlier months of the year.

In our culture, laziness and curiosity are considered two of the three virtues of a programmer. (Hubris is the other, but I don't think that's as important)

Anecdotally, I know I for one got away with being lazy in school years. Generally I would do work in class only until I understood what was going on, then stop. Homework was avoided wherever possible. Requests from teachers for repetition of essentially mindless acts was considered a form of condescension and actively subverted wherever possible.

However, my curiosity meant that self-directed learning in my free time outside of school (computing, photography, geography, history, etc.) more than compensated.

My advice to children is this: Spend time on what you feel like (but don't waste opportunities to learn, and don't tread on other people's toes), feel free to ignore authorities (with modes of peaceful resistance), do something physical if you get the chance, but use the internet to satisfy your curiosity about the world. Never let it die. Most adults you see have let it die, and sometimes they are like husks of true people... never a free moment, never an idle thought, never a playful tangent. Avoid that fate, and you will always be knowledgeable, always be fed, always be respected.

While I don't disagree I do think the statement itself is amusing for its inherent assumptions: that we can usefully generalize about all people, that it is logically coherant for strangers or society at large to attempt to value the activity of individuals, and that actions should be directed towards some commonly agreed upon goal. There are many cultures and philosophies out there that would reject such assumptions.

Effort in education and experiences can make all of your future time more valuable.

It depends how you choose to value your future time. Would you value it now, guessing at what you want in the future? Would you value it in the future, admitting that you may be totally ignorant of or worse - outright incorrect - about your future wants and needs, here and now?

If you go the defacto route of economic rationalism, then you'd usually be right (ie. 'education leads to more income' is still true in many circumstances, but more weakly of late) though one could draw in to question the associated costs in non-economically rationalizable experience, skill and thought, such as art and philosophy.

If you just relax about decisions in life, adding effort where curiosity deigns to dangle its carrot, would you be any worse off?

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

"Don't think that you can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

"Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good.

"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

In other words, if you are content with being mediocre, there is no problem with being lazy. Lots of people all over the world are lazy. But if want to accomplish something in life, don't rely on "genius" alone--roll up your sleeves and do plenty of work.

In reality, the hardest things to come up with may be the ideas, and he solicits those for free. It's a bit of scam, really.

I don't understand how else an investor-founder relationship would work. Should he pay to listen to ideas/pitches before deciding whether or not to invest? Do you think NDAs should be the industry norm? Please elaborate.

"in any elite group of hockey players the very best of the best 40 percent of the players will have been born between January and March,30 percent between April and June, 20 percent between July and September, and 10 percent between October and December."

"The explanation for this is quite simple. It has nothing to do with astrology, nor is there anything magical about the first three months of the year. It's simply that in Canada the eligibility cut off for age class hockey is January 1. A boy who turns ten on January2, then, could be playing along side someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve­ month gap in age represents anenormous difference in physical maturity."

I don't think it was an issue at all academically - I was able to skip another grade, starting 2nd grade at 5. However, the school and my parents decided to stop it at that point, which was probably a good idea. However, I ended up starting middle school at 9, high school at 12, and college at 16, which made things difficult socially. Although things worked out, being any younger would probably have been detrimental to the experience.

But it is a bit annoying that now there are conflicting statements: some research seems to claim the disadvantage of being the younger kid is statistically significant throughout the whole life (or at least university, not sure about jobs), and now this which claims the opposite.

I guess they cancel each other out. Perhaps it is best to not think about it at all and just let things run their "natural" course, and leave it to the kid to deal with whatever the world throws at him :-/