Sorting

Before I hit high school, I knew I would be “sorted” by ability (depending on the grades I brought from the previous schools.)

Turned out I was wrong. And right. You see, my brother had been sorted by ability, but by the time I hit high school we were some years post leftist revolution, and past various kinds of socialist/communist/turn a different shade of red governments, so sorting had been banned for school kids.

For those of you scratching your heads… There were no hats involved, and no omniscient entity sorting us into houses. In fact there were no houses. (There were buildings, one of which was an expropriated earl’s palace from the last time Portuguese politics had got exciting. This is why although I wasn’t reared in a stable, I did attend 9th grade in one.) In fact, “high school” is a matter of speech, because this was grades 7 through 11. 12th was literally added in just ahead of my hitting it, and I was in the US for it, anyway. (Yes, people used to graduate from secondary education in 11th grade. It just was a thing.)

But high school (for lack of a better term. The transitional “middle school” was grades 5 and 6.) was completely different than in the US. For one, in the beginning of the year you were sorted into “forms” which were supposed to be 21 people, but were always around 30 t0 38 people. These forms got assigned a classroom, and it was your teachers who came to you. (Because we were experiencing exuberant socialist progress, one year the classroom was in the cafeteria (they were out of FUNCTIONAL classrooms, as there had been some problem. Another year they assigned us an art classroom, and were shocked and surprised that our form wasn’t grateful for the favor. This was after 9th grade, and the form I was in specialized in… languages. We didn’t even have any art classes. But we were lectured after some trouble (no, too long to explain. We’d broken up an attempted strike. That’s all) for not being “grateful” for our special classroom. Socialists give you what you don’t want and are shocked you don’t thank them for it. The classroom in the stable was actually a proper classroom. the stables had been converted. The classroom in the attic… we’ll get there.)

Anyway, because someone wasn’t utterly stupid at some point the system was created of people being sorted into forms by ability. Look, having experienced this from both sides of the teaching desk, a well-sorted class, particularly a class formed of all high-performers is a joy for both students and teachers and the learning really happens at an accelerated pace.

And while I suspect a well sorted class of low-performers isn’t as much fun for the teacher, it probably also results in students learning more, because teachers can/have to slow down and teach at the pace the student will learn.

But it is unequal. It definitely is that. Even in our system, it’s been judged hurty or something and studies have “shown” that integrated classrooms are better for students. Somehow. I’m not sure how, because one of my kids went through elementary with a kid with an IQ of 68 who was ‘normalized’ and integrated in normal classes, and let me tell you, it wasn’t better for anyone. Okay, the kid had his own “aide” who in fact did all the school work for him (I never understood what THAT was supposed to accomplish) but even with a dedicated aid, there were entire days lost to his having a freakout and screaming at the top of his lungs, or the like. His mother finally removed him and put him in a program for kids with extreme disabilities, when he learned skills like, oh, washing his hands, and going to the bathroom by himself which was far more useful to him for his future life, than having someone pretend he could write essays. (She was in fact one of my best friends among the mothers, because it turns out profoundly mentally retarded (look, it was the official classification at the time) and profoundly gifted had the exact same problems and mainstreaming wasn’t helping either of them.)

Anyway, by the time I entered seventh grade we were so advanced in the warmth of collectivism that we couldn’t possibly be sorted into different ability levels, because that was a) hurty b) unequal.

But you see, the teachers were used to sorted forms. So what actually happened was that they didn’t sort us for 7th grade. (Actually they did. Alphabetically. I was in the class were everyone’s initials were A. A. (first and last name.)) Then in eighth grade something mysterious happened. I came in late for the very first class which was my “I get this for free” class, which was Portuguese (“language arts.”) I sat down just as they finished reading a text, and the teacher asked a question. Look, I didn’t even know I was doing this until it failed. Apparently, I was in the habit of waiting just long enough that no one else put their hand up. So, I put my head up after a calculated pause, and put my hand up, and every single hand was up. Turns out what the teachers/administrators had done was sort people by the level displayed in the seventh grade.

Anyway, I have very fond memories of eighth and ninth grade (in tenth I got put in the language form, which was the only one, and therefore not sorted. I don’t have fond memories of tenth or eleventh.)

I’m not going to discuss how effective sorting students is as a rule, or how well students do under one system versus another. Look, I haven’t dug through the studies and the data. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t know any different, since all those studies are corrupt.

What I’m going to say, though, is that my form in 8th grade was composed of the best students in other forms the year before. Almost… universally. Almost but not quite. I don’t know if by some weird error or as a lame attempt to hide that they were sorting, there were two completely normal students in my form in those two years.

It took me years to figure out they were normal too. Because the rest of us were feeding on each other and flying away ahead of expected curriculum. And the two of them… lagged. Often they didn’t seem to know what was going on, and they — on the regular — had no idea what we were talking about. When forced to participate in the class they usually said something that seemed to come from another planet. A really dumb one. And they just in general seemed completely lost.

But they were probably perfectly normal.

Yeah, they failed the college entrance, the only 2 in the form that did, but then that was just normal, since only about 0.5% of people made it in.

Why am I telling you this? Not to say I was a gifted kid. Though you probably know the syndrome. If I was so gifted, why am I not rich and famous? (Well, I never wanted to be famous. I wouldn’t mind the rich, though.) It’s not the most useless thing in the world. It can help in lots of circumstances, it can give you that extra lift over the wall at the last minute. (Of course you come to rely on it, and push things to the last minute.) And there are a million other things that would really help that I don’t have, like an easy manner in company or an ability to concentrate on anything for more than ten seconds, or the ability not to fall down rabbit holes that have nothing to do with what I’m supposed to be researching or doing at the moment (five while writing this post. No, I swear, d*mn it.)

I’m telling you this because now that I’m a grown up I can put myself in the place of those two girls. They might have been good students, part of the group, happy, but they were stuck in a form with misfit geniuses (and we were all misfits to some extent) who read stuff they had no interest in, talked of things they’d never pay any attention to, and in general drove them nuts.

Do I think it blighted their lives? G-d. I hope it didn’t. It would be very difficult for two years to do that, even two very formative years.

But this is why I oppose the whole DEI (DIE DIE DIE) system. It does this to people, over and over again.

Remember that essay by Michelle Obama, the anger, the feeling she didn’t fit in? She attributed it to her race, and I guess it actually did have to do with her race, because she was accepted to Harvard due to her racial status and being “underprivileged” (I’m going to assume since that essay was written at about 9th grade level.) She was resentful and felt like an outsider. It was only attributing it to racism that was wrong, but what else was she supposed to do.

Worse, she was taking the place of someone else, who would have thrived in that environment and those classes, and that too is terrible. As useless as it was, I loved those two years of intellectual challenge. Most of all, I loved knowing I wasn’t abnormal. There were others like me, and the intellectual facility and curiosity came with quirks and challenges… that other people also had. But someone might have missed out on that, because they put those two girls in to muddy the waters. (I should point out they were both girls because we were ALL girls. It was an all girl school.) Doing this on purpose, to people, over their entire lives, not just high school, is evil

It is evil to put people out of their natural element, the area they would naturally sort into by competence or ability (which always has an element of interest, too, because we’re humans) and to stick them where they either can’t perform or are bored out of their gourd because someone decided they need people who tan there, or who don’t tan, or who have vaginas instead of penises or whatever criteria that has absolutely nothing to do with doing the job.

One of my challenges, when it comes to interacting with life, is that I am all about doing the thing. What do I mean about doing the thing? Well, if I’m in a course, I’m there to learn. If I’m in a job, I’m there to do the job, whatever it is.

I have very little understanding of interpersonal power games, and even less interest in them.

In this case, my obsession with doing the thing makes me furious and righteously angry at whoever thought that sorting people out because of truly irrelevant characteristics, and removing them from jobs they could do, from situations in which they could thrive, from the groups they would normally interact with to … make the groups more color balanced? or whatever.

Humans are not objects d’art. They’re complex creatures where interest, intelligence and ability all interact.

For instance my quip of “why aren’t I rich?” — I know precisely why. Because I didn’t stick with a profession that would have made me if not rich extremely well off. Because I want to write stories. And I want to write the stories I need to write. And if those aren’t the stories that sell a million, that’s too bad. That’s the stories I cam here to write.

I suspect most of us are like that — even if most people are saner — and to try to force people into outcomes they’d never reach on their own for what’s ultimately aesthetics and the rats in someone else’s head?

That’s evil. You are blighting someone’s life, perhaps making it impossible for them to ever find the magical spot that Pratchett referred to as being “yourself as hard as you can.”

Human life, and finding your way is hard enough without people messing you about treating you like a collection of marbles and sorting you by characteristics that have nothing to do with the real you.

And sometimes this type of thing ends in death. That’s how badly it can go.

But even when it doesn’t, it still ends in death. How many geniuses would have found themselves in a truly demanding college (back when Ivy League still meant something) and didn’t. And didn’t have the right contacts to make their key invention.

So many things can improve life for everyone. A better motor, a better fertilizer… that never happen, and therefore some lives that might have been saved and improved aren’t.

And how many people who would have been, oh, natural managers or salesmen, or teachers, got pushed into an ivy league education in law or whatever, and just emerged resentful and feeling that everyone is out to get them… And sometimes went on to be president and first lady and blight everyone’s life as a consequence?

It’s time to do away with the whole twisted mess. If you’re going to sort sort by characteristics that have something to do with what you’re trying to achieve. If it’s a classroom, better learning. And if it’s a job, people best able to do it.

And let people find their way and sacrifice to get what they want.

All the rest is evil nonsense and illusions of omnipotence.

You’re not a hat. You don’t get to sort people according to characteristics that have nothing to do with the job. Stop it. Just stop it.