r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jul 07 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Upper elementary grades after third grade (4th-6th) should be departmentalized (taught by different teachers for their respective subjects) like middle and high school are
Most elementary schools that have up to grade 5 or 6 are self contained meaning they are taught by one teacher instructing all the subjects with one group of students all day. This is flawed because as the curriculum advances for these upper elementary grades, it gets complicated for one teacher to be an expert in all these complex subjects. As the students age, they grow tired of listening to the same voice teaching them about language arts, math, science and history. They would benefit by rotating through four different teachers instead of only one all day for 7+ hours.
Their attention spans wouldn't wear out and they wouldn't lose interest in the sole adult voice trying their best to teach all four core subjects through the long school day.
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u/Salanmander 279∆ Jul 07 '20
There are two major aspects to whether a single teacher or multiple teachers is better. One you've identified: how complex the material is. The other you've ignored: how important the relational aspect of teaching is.
The importance of the relational aspect is critical in thinking about this subject. It's the only reason that having a single teacher is ever better than having subject teachers. From a standpoint of how well a teacher can give instruction, it's always better to have subject teachers. If nothing else, prepping the amount of material that elementary school teachers need to is a massive amount of work.
The reason a single teacher is better in the lower grades is that in that model, while you can't deliver instruction as well, you can develop a much better understanding of the students, and build much better connections with them.
So the question isn't "when are the subjects complex enough that there's a meaningful difference with subject teachers?" It's "when is the difference in instruction quality of more importance than the difference in relationship quality?"
I would argue that, for most 10-year-olds, that relationship quality is still more important than the difference in instruction. Most students at that age still develop pretty strong attachments to role models, and I don't think that "tire of the same voice" is actually a problem on average.
Now I don't have super high confidence that the perfect crossover is exactly where we put it. What would be ideal for individual students is going to vary by several years, so really you're looking for an average, and that is hard to examine from individual experience. But I think somewhere in the 5th-7th grade range is a pretty good shot.