From: chenowet@rd1632.Dayton.NCR.COM (Steve Chenoweth)
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: Demise of honor programs in public high schools
Date: 11 Sep 92 15:58:32 GMT
Reply-To: chenowet@rd1632.Dayton.NCR.com (Steve Chenoweth)
Organization: NCR Technology & Development, Dayton, Ohio

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.  ...
> 
>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. ...
>
>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.  Once
>the bright student has had the satisfaction of helping someone to an
>appreciation of abstract mathematics, ... I don't think Herman would 
>claim that we should be developing technically- trained nerds to 
>compete with the {Japanese/Russians/Chinese/Martians/...}
>

The authors' arguments show how emotional this issue can be. And, like 
many of us, they undoubtedly have personal experiences, and those of their
friends, to think about.  In my own case, I had several friends who were
originally highly motivated as well as highly gifted, but eventually
concluded, say, in eighth grade, that they just couldn't do one more problem
that they knew how to work in first grade. I'm sure many of the contributors
to this thread have seen similar things seemingly result from mainstreaming 
these people.  In the same way, pampering those already most qualified to
learn can cause much resentment and justified concern, as we see.

Equally emotional related points have flavored discussion about this 
from time to time.  Teachers, for example, may have a vested interest in
the outcome of the discussion, since some plans must make it easier for
them to teach. 

I've been following the thread for a bit, and I'd like to suggest that
many of the contributors' arguments sound like ideas which could be tested.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine that studies don't already exist on some of
the  points, since honor programs, separate tracks, and so on have been
around for several decades now.
 
Here are examples of arguments which sound testable (although I haven't
tried to hone them down to specific experiments):

1. If 60 students are divided into two classes, how does their performance
differ depending on whether they are grouped for ability?

2. How much is gained by each party if stronger students spend much of their
time helping weaker students (versus alternatives to this)?

3. What percentage of high ability students in other countries end up
making specific kinds of contributions, versus in the US?  (Where there
are measurable differences in how they were tracked in school.)

4.  What is the long-term psychological impact on the mainstream and select
groups, when honors programs are used?  We all know you can create some
real intellectual snobs doing this, but it would be nice to study the
thing seriously.

Any scientists out there care to comment on this "challenge to be objective"?



-- 
Steve.Chenoweth@Dayton.NCR.com
Newsgroups: misc.education