* remedial and the kids who were really trying would never be sent to remedial because that’s where the true losers were sent (in a different building) where they couldn’t disrupt anyone else’s learning.*
This just isn't true. Do you honestly believe that a kid with a learning disability is simply not trying? I know that was the attitude of the schools of yesteryear - but they were wrong.
There are lots of reasons for remedial classes: Dyslexia, for example. A kid might have anxiety issues that make finishing homework near impossible: ADHD is a real thing that folks struggle with. All of these can be worked through - but back in history, they would be sent away to rot. Lots of them are bright kids, and a fair number of them can be a future surgeon or researcher.
OP mentioned not “showing up”, not “putting in effort”, not doing homework and disruptiveness as indications that a child is a loser and not worth the resources it would take to make them productive adults. All those things are either signs of a difficult home environment or a learning disability.
I haven’t read all the replies yet but I’m surprised at the lack of reactions to OP classifying some children as losers because of their performance at school.
Equating low effort and disruptiveness with "the kid has a learning disability or a broken home environment" is certainly an interesting way of absolving schools for the broken, chaotic environment they put kids through. Could it be that not enforcing meaningful school discipline might also be a factor into students "not showing up", being disruptive and not putting in effort?
> All those things are either signs of a difficult home environment or a learning disability.
That's not true, some kids are just shitheads and don't feel like listening to anyone or doing what they're told. Personal responsibility has to come into play at some point, you can't just blame every problem on external factors.
As an extreme case re: your point, OP mentions students who were actually setting stuff on fire at their school. Why the heck is police not getting involved at that point? We're talking actual, serious criminal behavior that can also be predictive of further crimes later in life if unaddressed, so some very real consequences are definitely called for, to try and set these kids straight. An ounce of prevention can save a pound of cure.
We had kids regularly setting trash cans on fire in my school. Police got involved sometimes (we had an officer on campus at all times). Those kids definitely received consequences, and they would be put into programs to help turn their lives around, but it did them no good. Just further cemented their fate. A good 20% of the school of about 2,000 kids were way beyond help. The parents, their home life, and the kid's upbringing are really the issue here. The school can't do anything about that. I always felt so bad for the teachers, the abuse they had to put up with was something nobody should go through.
This right here is the thing that nobody wants to say but is just true.
I had some good friends in high school (a large, below-average public school in CA) who were solidly middle class or better, had supportive parents, and were just shitheads when it came to education. They were disruptive in class, didn't do homework and just generally didn't care.
I'm all for giving kids who are struggling the benefit of the doubt and trying to help them, but if they don't want that help, at some point you have to weigh the cost of trying to force it on them against the cost of wasting the time of the students who are actually there to learn.
“Remedial” was for the kids who disrupted class, started fights, were frequently absent. I am saying that the kid who was making a decent effort no matter how incompetent they were, was kept at the standard level.
This just isn't true. Do you honestly believe that a kid with a learning disability is simply not trying? I know that was the attitude of the schools of yesteryear - but they were wrong.
There are lots of reasons for remedial classes: Dyslexia, for example. A kid might have anxiety issues that make finishing homework near impossible: ADHD is a real thing that folks struggle with. All of these can be worked through - but back in history, they would be sent away to rot. Lots of them are bright kids, and a fair number of them can be a future surgeon or researcher.