From: lee@bostech.com (Leon Story)
Subject: Re: Demise of honor programs in public high schools
Organization: Boston Technology, Wakefield, MA
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 23:12:44 GMT

Herman Rubin writes:
> Lee Story writes:
>
>>If it's so impossible to provide superior education to a class which
>>contains very bright (and motivated) and very slow kids, then why not
>>give the supposedly bright ones the assignment of getting the slow
>>ones up to speed (in motivation, in skills, and in comprehension)?
>>Surely that's one of the greatest challenges they'll ever face. 
>
>Some of this can be reasonable, but not that much.  Should a bright
>student learn a small fraction of what could otherwise be learned and
>spend the bulk of the times attempting to teach the slow ones?  Should
>we diminish the learning that much?  And how much of this can be
>accomplished anyhow?  If, as some have maintained, and have even
>presented data to support, a concept is learned all at once, can 
>we expect bright children to deliberately not tell the slow ones how
>to do problems so that they are forced to work them out themselves?
>And will this even make the gap greater?
>
>It might help if bright children helped the not-quite-bright, but 
>not the really slow.

Okay, this makes sense to me, though only because trying to help the
"really slow" is probably too difficult and discouraging.  But I think
you (Dr. Rubin) mistake my premise, or choose to ignore it, when
you respond with "Should a bright student learn a small fraction of
what could otherwise be learned..."  There is a logically
unsubstantiable and perhaps pre-rational notion on my part that
helping other people is at least as educational, at least as
challenging, and at least as worthwhile as learning mathematics or
physics or engineering.

You, on the other hand, seem to criticize the current educational
arrangement on the grounds that it doesn't provide maximum-rate
learning opportunities in technical (I'm tempted to say
'capital-producing') fields like the sciences.  I'm not at all
convinced that formal education should even have that as a major goal,
no matter what Bush and Bennett and their corporate supporters are
trying to sell.

>>Now my personal experiences with other students came from a time
>when students were expected to work at learning and those who refused
>to learn were just flunked. [...]

Let 'em into the Academy if they want to try to learn.  Throw 'em out
if you find they really don't care about learning.  But "flunking"
(and as you've said, grades) is irrelevant to the main argument.

Once again, implicit in these comments is the view of learning as
something that almost everyone can enjoy (not that it's easy---a
mountaineer can enjoy a climb though it may be strenuous), and of
schools (especially universities) as PAID SERVICES which CLAIM to
enhance that enjoyment.  Wholly absent from my view is any desire to
target the institutions _specifically_ toward the optimization of
geniuses, or toward the production of scientists and technologists for
the material betterment of "society" through increased economic
product, or even the advancement of our knowledge of the universe.  I
don't think these are goals which matter much, and I think that those
people (the "geniuses") are very much the ones who can take care of
themselves---by definition!

>SOME of this may be a good idea.  But cutting the learning of the bright
>child by that much, no.

> Possibly in such areas as literature, and even
>conceivably in history, enrichment can be used.  But in the sciences, and
>especially in mathematics and language, it must be essentially "damn the
>torpedoes, full speed ahead." [...]

Ah, the mythology of science!  Of course it's impossible to get one's mind
around algebraic geometry after the age of 22, while historians labor on
effectively into their nineties.  I guess there's some implication that if
a person's most serious study is in the humanities, she isn't really THAT
bright---after all, she'll probably only be able to get a secretarial job,
or maybe a tech writer position at best.  Bunkum and bigotry!  Grrrrrr...

Look, I'm sorry about all these burning strawmen.  I think that Herman
Rubin's effect in this and other forums has been salutary.  We'd like
to have more Kolmogorovs and Dieudonnes and Cartans and McLanes, but
can you really claim that institutional changes are particularly
relevant to producing them?  And I still think that the attempt to
motivate the unmotivated, teach the less-than-brilliant, and help
another human being to enjoy intellectual activity, is far more
important (and could be the finest "lab" experience the bright
students will ever have).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lee Story                 Boston Technology                lee@bostech.com

                      (Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lee Story                 Boston Technology                lee@bostech.com

Newsgroups: boulder.general,co.general