> Other learning disabilities (dyslexia, dysgraphia, auditory processing problems, etc.) also seem to be on the rise - again, for what reason, we don't know. I know you were raised in N.Z., B-G: I wonder if the school system there is still in the place we were about fifteen years ago in Canada, when we still were having difficulties figuring out why kids learned differently, and when we just put those who did in "Tech. Classes", and moved on.

That was an interesting and informative post, thanks for it. As for the NZ school system, I can't really say; I finished high school in 1988 and I have no idea what's going on in New Zealand schools nowadays. When I was at school, though, I don't remember that there was ever a "slow learners" class; I know, however, that kids were never divided out by the teachers into vocational or academic streams. This tended to happen later in high school through kids' own choice of the optional classes, but the system seemed geared towards ensuring that everybody learned core academic AND vocational subjects to a good standard before they were allowed to specialise in whichever subjects they personally favoured.

At intermediate school (ages 11-13, more or less) everybody did all the same subjects all the way through. I can't remember exactly, but I think these were maths, English, social studies, science, art and phys ed. The four technical subjects were woodwork, metalwork, cooking and sewing, and those were all compulsory too. You did two of them for half a year and then swapped to the other two for the second half of the year.

I'm wracking my brain trying to think whether anything was done for the kids who couldn't cope with their classes; I'm almost certain I would have noticed if there had been a special or additional class for slow learners. There was an advanced class, which I know about because I was ordered into it and went about three times before I decided that doing creative drama with the Weird Teacher once a week wasn't worth the number of times I would probably get beaten up by the other kids for going to it. I don't even remember the Weird Teacher's name now, but it seems every school has one. I used to wonder if the other teachers teased him and beat him up in the staffroom at lunchtime, just like the normal kids did to the geeky kids.

At high school, the year-round core subjects which were compulsory for everyone from age 13 through 14 were maths, English, science, art, music and phys ed. It was also compulsory during those years to choose one shop subject and one home-economics subject -- I did woodwork and cooking, because one thing I learned from intermediate school was that there are probably things living at the bottoms of ponds which could do better sewing and metalwork than me -- and there were language options too. The fifth-form year (when I was 15) was the one that felt like The Big One to us at the time, because for the first time we got to choose almost all of our classes, and there were more interesting options, such as history and art history. I took both of those. English, maths, science and phys ed were still compulsory that year. In sixth and seventh form, maths and science diversified into statistics, calculus, biology, physics and chemistry, and all of them were optional.

The only reason I know even the pathetic amount of maths I do, is because maths was compulsory for the first three years of high school. I just barely passed it in fifth form, and finding out it was optional in future years was one of the happiest moments of my life. So that would be the point at which non-academic kids would fling themselves into purely vocational subjects, if they stayed at all; at the time, it was legal to leave school after fifth form if you wanted to take a job or an apprenticeship, although I don't remember anybody from my school who did that.

What I *do* remember is the terror of becoming that dreaded creature, a Second Year Fifth. Doing badly enough in your exams that you had to stay back a year and do fifth form all over again was something that happened pretty often, I think. Being a second-year fifth former was guaranteed social death. There were even dark and horrifying rumours that if you sucked bad enough, you might get held back TWO years, and I'm pretty sure we all secretly planned exactly how we would flee the country, get plastic surgery and live the rest of our lives under an assumed name if it ever happened to us.

The population of high schools back home are divided into houses, and each house is divided into home-room classes with a particular teacher in charge of each class, so you go through high school staying in the same class of maybe 25-30 kids. You all troop around to your compulsory subjects together, and because it takes the first three years before optional classes start shuffling you in with kids from other home-room classes, you stay very much as a member of that original group. I think home-room classes were arranged by ability or potential in our first year -- certainly my class all through school contained a frightening amount of high achievers, and I know some other classes had a heck of a lot of slow kids. (I never had a clue that this might have been a deliberate arrangement until years after I'd left -- I also had no clue, at the time, that I was in there with all these terrifying intellectuals because I *was* one. Dur.) So I think that must be how it worked -- everybody did the same subjects, at least until they'd reached the required level of competency in the compulsory ones, but they did them in groups which were more or less sorted by ability.

I don't know if that's a good idea or not. I taught music for three years part-time, and it would certainly make it easier in some ways if all the kids in a class were at about the same level of ability, but then again I think it makes it harder in other ways. Anyway, that's the way it was done when I went to school.

Brunnen-"and yes, I was my school's Weird Teacher when I was teaching"G