From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: Demise of honor programs in public high schools
Date: 13 Sep 92 19:53:46 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department

In article <1992Sep11.231244.9093@bostech.com> lee@bostech.com (Leon Story) writes:
>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.

The current education arrangement does not provide fair-rate learning 
opportunities for even fair students when it comes to the sciences, 
foreign languages, grammar, geography, or history.  

|>>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.

At the present time, the Academy does not exist.  There is essentially
no opportunity to learn at the rate of 50-60 years ago for the more-or-less
typical students of that time.

>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!

The geniuses should at least have opportunities; the bright who are not
geniuses should have more easily accessible opportunities; those who are
"normal" and wish to learn should have very accessible opportunities,
taught by teachers who understand the subjects.

|>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...

This is not the case, nor is it what I am advocating.  But what I am 
advocating is that a student be able to take courses which require thought
and generate understanding.  I am not convinced that even in the humanities
the enrichment approach is proper; I said "possibly" and "conceivably."

>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).

As I said before, possibly some of this, but not 75-90% of the time.
Where are the black mathematicians and physicists and biologists and
chemists?  We have had a fair number of good to outstanding ones 
produced when discrimination was rampant; what is happening now?
It is my belief that they are so brainwashed by the dumbing effects
of the system that very few can recover.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!pop.stat!hrubin(UUCP)