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Saturday, July 30, 2005

More social class mix, more social skills development - so claims a new study 

I wonder if this is true:

YOUNGSTERS perform best in school if sitting side by side with people from different social classes, a new report has claimed.

Researchers at Heriot-Watt University have found that children benefit from interacting in the classroom with those from different backgrounds.

However, youngsters in all-middle-class schools, or ones in predominantly deprived areas, do not learn social skills as fast, they claim.

Researcher Noah Kofi Karley said: "The important thing is the social mix - they learn from each other.


I think this class mix for younger kids could be beneficial, for example, to diminish prejudices regarding money and status. However, I wonder if the kids wouldn't reproduce all these status hierarchies in the classroom, as older kids and teenagers often do.

I went to pretty homogeneous schools in terms of family income. And the kids were stupid about everything, i.e., one kid or clique looking down on another kid or another group for all kinds of infantile reasons. It makes me think that adding class differences would only accentuate all those stupid dynamics between the kids. Than again, it might depend on the teachers and how they dealt with it, the type of environment they are able to foster, etc.

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