IELTS, TOEFL and PTE Academic Writing Task, the Essay
The Essay Question:
Some people think that schools should select students according to their academic abilities, while others believe that it is better to have students with different abilities studying together.
Discuss both views and state your own opinion.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
The Essay:
There are varying opinions about whether schools ought to choose pupils based on their capabilities or enable students of multiple capabilities learning alongside. Certainly both these situations provide merits as well as demerits.
To commence with, the level of competition soars when students in a class are at par in intelligence since they experience a sense of challenge and try to outshine others. This draws out the best in them and they often discover hidden talents. Thus we see that most institutes such as the Harvard, Oxford or the Indian institute of Technology Delhi, where the brightest students are enrolled after rigorous selection process, are often picked up by world-class leading multinationals during placements.
Besides, weaker students do not feel inferior to more intelligent ones in a school with everyone of the same caliber, hence these students are normally more confident. Students with lower intelligence may hesitate to answer or clarify doubts, due to fear of being ridiculed, by smarter peers. Moreover, time is saved since teachers need not repeatedly explain concepts to weaker students.
As opposed to this, valuable life skills can be learnt in a class with a mix of students of all grades of sharpness, since there would be a dynamic interaction amongst students. They would learn cooperation, assistance, acceptance and interpersonal skills, in such a blended classroom learning. Moreover, students will have exposure to real life situations where one often deals with mixed intellegence levels of people.
To conclude, according to me, a classroom with learners of similar standard of brain development, has the benefit of extracting the best in them apart from fostering confidence. Although, learning amongst students with a variety of intelligence levels would teach them important life skills.