From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Demise of honor programs in public high schools
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 15:54:02 GMT

In article <1992Sep9.213509.7219@bostech.com> lee@bostech.com (Leon Story) writes:

>Herman Rubin writes:

>>Nobody is suggesting that the education of any significant part of the 
>>population be chopped off.  

>>One does not learn to work with people with vastly dissimilar abilities
>>by being placed in a position where all are expected to do the same thing.
>>THIS is essentially what the current school system is trying to force.

>>Also, not much is gained by restricting the 10% to what the 90% find 
>>relatively easy to do.  Maybe some of that 90% might be able to do much
>>more if given the opportunity.  As the slogan states, "A mind is a
>>terrible thing to waste."  Putting a mind in an environment where it
>>cannot be used to the fullest is wasting it, and our excuse for an
>>educational system is doing its best to accomplish this wasting.

>Though I've half-heartedly agreed with Dr. Rubin on this point in the
>past, I do adhere to the previous poster's position that learning to
>work with people is critical.  It was all too rarely learned by the
>Harvard and MIT students of my college days, many of whom were
>products of elite prep schools or public honor schools (Boston Latin,
>Bronx HSoS, etc.).

>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.

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.  But I doubt that one could expect a child
to do other than show how to get answers.  

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."  Even that is not enough; it may be very
desirable to jump ahead in a different manner.  I can remember when I
took the advanced physics course; I would not have had any difficulties
with that several years earlier, and it was essentially necessary to 
rethink my whole approach.  But how many do that?
-- 
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)
Newsgroups: misc.education