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From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Universities, and high school education
Message-ID: <14792@onfcanim.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Mar-86 23:44:10 EST
Article-I.D.: onfcanim.14792
Posted: Sun Mar  9 23:44:10 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Mar-86 20:24:21 EST
References: <162@pyuxc.UUCP> <588@hoptoad.uucp> <1119@burl.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: ONF, Montreal
Lines: 62

This is a followup to two articles.  In one, Laura Creighton (hi Laura!) says:

>I cannot help but think that 14 years is a long time to wait for your
>intellectual peers, and that some very good minds are being wasted
>because university is not challenging enough for them.  The notion that
>``college is a minimum requirement in a field that will afford a 
>middle-class income'' is the problem.

She goes on to argue that an environment that trains the middle class is
not a good environment to stimulate those interested in and capable of
original work.

My immediate response was "university is already too late".  For me, at
least, undergrad university was, on the whole, a lot more stimulating
than high school.  And I was perhaps lucky in high school, in having
the encouragement of some teachers and access to computing facilities
at the local university - I did have something to keep me interested, but
it often wasn't high school classes.

So maybe people should get to university sooner?

Curtis Jackson writes:

>Except for the last semester (25 semester hours of
>all nasty stuff) I managed to work 20-30 hours per week, do a LOT of
>partying, and GROW UP A LOT!!!
>
>I cannot begin to stress the latter, I don't think there are *many* people
>who can do heavy-duty work before about age 20 and not miss some of the
>finer points in life; often they end up severely depressed individuals
>by the time they are 30.

Well, I think he's probably right.  Getting to university early isn't
often a good thing.  So, given that every one has to put in their time
in high school, and it's important that people be able to be challenged
while there, how do we ensure this?  How is it possible to ensure that
high schools provide a stimulating environment for the "bright" students,
as well as the average and below-average ones?

I was a "bright" student in high school, and looking back on that time,
I feel I wasted a lot of time - that the time I spent sitting in classrooms
and writing out homework when I already understood the lesson, could have
been much more productively spent - either learning the same stuff at a
faster rate, learning different stuff, or just socializing!  At least when
I got to university, there were challenging courses available if I wanted them,
and peers to toss ideas around with.  And I didn't feel *quite* as socially
unacceptable for being bright - partly because I didn't stand out in the
same way, but also because it was ok to be intelligent.  (Grad school was
much better than undergrad in this respect.)

So, if I ever have children, and if they are "bright", how do I prevent the
same thing from happening to them?  Send them to a private school, assuming
that it can be afforded?  What happens to bright kids who don't have
at-least-middle-class parents, so private schools are an impossibility?

Or perhaps spend as much time as I can with them, trying to provide
stimulation, and trying to convince them that being intelligent is a good
thing in the long run, even if it seems to be a handicap sometimes at the
moment? This seems more like wishful thinking than a practical alternative.

	Curious about others' opinions,
	Dave Martindale