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Thoughts.
For some reason, when passing from about fifth grade to sixth grade, American children's interest in science and math plummets. I don't actually have any statistics on this, but it's true, and it matches my personal experiences. I wonder:
1. Is this true across cultural barriers? Do schools in Canada, Europe, and Asia find the same 'puberty dip', or is it for some reason isolated to America? If it's true for some and not others, are there commonalities to school structure or curriculum in those places? Do the places that don't have the dip (if there are any) also have commonalities?
2. Why is it? It could be the introduction algebra for the first time for many of the students. Moving into higher math can be a traumatic thing. It could be the emergence of puberty, and a sudden dearth of time that students /want/ so spend studying math and science, which tend to be the hardest subjects to BS, and thus they dislike them. It could be that the change of school (in America, you typically (but not always) go from elementary school in grades K-5, to middle school 6-8, and all the cliques and routines are shaken up. (A good way to check for this may be to look at schools that don't have this structure, and see if the dip happens the same.) Is it because adolescents are especially open to influence by a culture that increasingly views science, and intellectual pursuits, as elitest and hostile to traditional values? (A check for this might be to divide schools up by prevaling community views on science, education, and intellectual pursuits, and see if children from the most hostile communities do worse or not, and if they do worse than the national average, or just in line with it.) Is it a confluence of two or more of these factors?
3. How do we stop it? Increasingly, the world is becoming one that demands knowledge of science and math. Unskilled labor, and even skilled manual labor jobs are dying, and I predict that in the next three decades, they're going to keep dying as robotic technologies become more common and the trend of globalization continues. There's no use in complaining about the jobs going away, any more than the complaints of buggy whip makers stopped the rise of the car. This is not a century in which we want our children to become /less/ educated, /less/ technically minded, and /more/ fearful of science and math.
1. Is this true across cultural barriers? Do schools in Canada, Europe, and Asia find the same 'puberty dip', or is it for some reason isolated to America? If it's true for some and not others, are there commonalities to school structure or curriculum in those places? Do the places that don't have the dip (if there are any) also have commonalities?
2. Why is it? It could be the introduction algebra for the first time for many of the students. Moving into higher math can be a traumatic thing. It could be the emergence of puberty, and a sudden dearth of time that students /want/ so spend studying math and science, which tend to be the hardest subjects to BS, and thus they dislike them. It could be that the change of school (in America, you typically (but not always) go from elementary school in grades K-5, to middle school 6-8, and all the cliques and routines are shaken up. (A good way to check for this may be to look at schools that don't have this structure, and see if the dip happens the same.) Is it because adolescents are especially open to influence by a culture that increasingly views science, and intellectual pursuits, as elitest and hostile to traditional values? (A check for this might be to divide schools up by prevaling community views on science, education, and intellectual pursuits, and see if children from the most hostile communities do worse or not, and if they do worse than the national average, or just in line with it.) Is it a confluence of two or more of these factors?
3. How do we stop it? Increasingly, the world is becoming one that demands knowledge of science and math. Unskilled labor, and even skilled manual labor jobs are dying, and I predict that in the next three decades, they're going to keep dying as robotic technologies become more common and the trend of globalization continues. There's no use in complaining about the jobs going away, any more than the complaints of buggy whip makers stopped the rise of the car. This is not a century in which we want our children to become /less/ educated, /less/ technically minded, and /more/ fearful of science and math.
no subject
These days they're doing some experiments. A couple of schools are offering IB programs directly - if you do well enough in internal assessments in some of the top secondary schools, you can enter a program where you do some IB variant, skipping the O levels, or they just set up an affiliation program with a junior college and let you skip it too. Supposedly this causes less stress, therefore, less kids hopping off buildings. (It happens. Not a lot, but significant.) As for the polytechnics, apparently a diploma from one of those is currently worth more, market-value, than a university degree in some areas. I have no clue.
My personal case was rather odd. I don't know if they still do it now. Back in my time, there were exams in the third year of primary school (that is, around 9) to put students into different streams. There's EM1, which is 'does the normal subjects, plus 'mother tongue' (defined as, 'whatever's assigned to the race of your father'. mother tongue. father. ha.) as a first language', the second is normal subjects, plus mother tongue as a second language, the third is simplified subjects. (But this goes onto the record, and, um, no chance at doing anything academic. Ever. Again.) This happens...at nine years old. I think they're not too happy about this scheme. And then there are /completely separate/ streaming exams, which are gone now. 'gifted education program', it's called, supposedly to train the future leaders of the country, which is what I was placed into. (Yay.) Unfortunately, the quality has really declined since the beginning - the experiment sort of failed, oh, a year or so before mine. They're being replaced by the above 'possibly do IB, etc' schemes.
I'm...rambling a bit much. Er. Also, it's three in the morning, if this is unclear, or if you want me to expand on bits (why you would, I have no clue, but!), or hit me for talking too much, tell me.
no subject
I actually find this very interesting! Here in America, we're strong opposed to 'tracking' (putting kids into an academic level early and then keeping them there), or at least, we're opposed to /calling/ what we do tracking. But most high schools (about years 13-17) have 'technical' tracks, 'college prep' tracks, and 'advanced placement' tracks, that you get into based on grades, teacher recommendation, etc. These can, and have, been abused...a kid can have a bad first year, get stuck in the technical track, and find it VERY hard to find anyone willing to elevate him. Or a kid can be very bright, but not interested in college, wanting instead to become a carpenter or a mechanic, and find himself discouraged from taking tech courses.
But all that happens mostly in high school not middle.
no subject
Ah, yes, that happens here a lot! "Study hard or you'll be stuck with no university options and will have to sweep roads for a living!" They're declaring the tracking system, as you call it, too stressful, and trying to find ways to fix it. It's mostly due to the economic conditions of twenty, thirty years ago - rapidly industrialising little dot, they needed to churn out large numbers of mathematicians and scientists, also techpeople. And recently, it's worse - labor? We can import labor, we need entrepreneurs! Etc. But apparently the demand for non-academic skilled work is going up.