Grouping by Age or Abilities?

Grouping By Age or Abilities?
In Canada, there are a few schools that group their students not by their age, but by their abilities. They believe that some children may have advanced abilities, and some may have weaker abilities, so they group the students by these criteria of abilities to provide different students with different kinds of help. Although differences in ability do exist between students, traditional group-by-age schools have already provided the best method of education.
Physical differences are the first factor that affects students’ learning, and group-by-age schools have minimized these differences. As we know, older students are able to concentrate longer than younger ones. To require younger students to focus as long as older ones in the same class is a challenge for teachers. The traditional group-by-age schools minimize this gap between students. Teachers may focus more on developing lessons, but not on appealing to different students. In addition, older ones who have stronger physical abilities may judge the younger ones who have weaker physical abilities in the same class. This may cause a psychological umbrage for the younger ones. This is reason of why traditional schools also have less trouble with classroom violence. Mental differences are another factor that affects students’ learning other than physical differences.
Traditional group-by-age schools also minimize the mental differences. Students derive their sense of self-worth from their abilities. Older ones who are not doing as well as the younger ones in their class may wonder if they have disabilities. In opposite, younger ones may be over-confident when they do better than the older ones in the same class. Traditional schools assume that students with same age have similar learning abilities, and most of the students in those schools are comfortable learning with same-age classmates. Some people may still argue about the differences between the best ones and the weakest...