Um, yeah? Teaching is not about awarding those who game the system the best. It’s all about making sure that the “lowest common denominator” gets every chance to succeed.
It’s not a fucking leaderboard.
Signed,
a salty fucking teacher who will defend those students to the end.
Edit: I’m gonna keep going on this because it’s a subject that pisses me off to no end.
I live in a place where the rich kids can afford to tutor during the summer, and some take extra classes to “get ahead” of the school year. And you know what those kids do?
They sit in the classes, bored, because someone paid for them to do all this stuff early.
And I’m not saying that learning extracurriculars is bad, in fact, it’s wonderful! But if you paid somewhere to just take the same math class that you would have done anyway, well congrats. You got nothing. You beat Mario before everyone else.
And even that would be fine, except the attitude that comes from them – some as early as 6 years old! – is that these fucking “remedials” are slowing them down, and they are “smart” all while a mountain of money and privilege supports them.
And do those kids feel like they should help their fellow students learn? No! They just punch down harder, because no one in their families teaches them that learning is cooperative effort. Just get to the top of that fucking leaderboard and stay there at all costs. From fucking kindergarten onwards!