Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!brahms!jablow From: jablow@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Eric Robert Jablow) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Re: Universities, and high school education Message-ID: <12576@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 04:05:34 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.12576 Posted: Sun Mar 23 04:05:34 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 03:30:56 EST References: <162@pyuxc.UUCP> <588@hoptoad.uucp> <1119@burl.UUCP> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: jablow@brahms.UUCP (Eric Robert Jablow) Organization: Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Lines: 194 Keywords: gifted, educational philosophy, society, bad schooling Summary: The effects of bad education on society In article <3207@sdcc3.UUCP> ewa@sdcc3.UUCP (Eric Anderson) writes: >In article <12426@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> I wrote: >> >>1. To educate people so that they can read, write, do arithmetic, >>think logically, and so they have the historical background so they can >>affect the society around them. >> >A worthy cause, no doubt, but how does memorization teach logical thinking? >Even at UCSD I am depressed by courses like Math, Economics, and Physics, >all of which require one merely to memorize formulas, not to have any under- >standing of how these formulas were conceived, or how to conceive new formulas. > >>2. To instill in people a love of learning and a love of craftmanship >>and a sense of honor so that they will want to find some interesting >>purpose for their lives. >> >Another worthy cause, but as far as high school goes, forget it. Any of you >over-21 types should go visit a nearby high school. Not for the weak of heart. > >Anyways, that's my two cents worth. Maybe someone can propose a solution to >our educational system? You don't understand my point. I have had problems because of my precociousness, but I do not feel that the social problems that hurt me are just a matter of society's mistreatment of the gifted; I think the problems lie in the decrepitude of the whole educational system. Please note this, Ann Muir Thomas. I am *not* a snob. I have had a problem, and I thought the readers of this newsgroup might have had suggestions. I do not feel that I am superior to anyone else because of my educational history, but my educational history has been the greatest influence on my life. When I discuss the problems of the gifted in society, I discuss it much more expansively. I wrote this letter to a net correspondent. The mail path seems broken, and it is relevant, so I will reproduce it here. To: ulysses!ihnp4!ihuxf!features@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Subject: Re: Universities, and high school education You do not understand my point. I am not claiming that the school system mistreats the gifted; I claim that the school system mistreats everyone. Let us take the situation case by case. Many mentally handicapped children can still be educated well enough so that they can live out a reasonably happy life. Yet society abandons many at the age of 18. A mildly retarded child should have the ability to do more than to work in a sheltered workshop, making knick-knacks, and earning a pittance. Society treats the severly retarded even worse. Physically handicapped children have worse problems, I think. Again, because we do not envision them as having the opportunity to fulfill themselves in life, in love, and in work, we neglect to teach them what they need to know, what we would expect anyone else to learn. My mother was a substitute teacher in the NYC school system, and for a while she taught a class for the physically handicapped. Once, near the end of the school term, the classes in that grade prepared small class plays, and so she had her class prepare one too. They did a very nice, sweet play, and then the assistant principal led the grade in a song: "My dame hath a lame tame crane." Soon after that insensitive act she quit. We ignore the handicapped, and thus they become more of a burden to themselves and to society than is needful. How many of the handicapped have access to the various computer aids that we read about? How expensive is the Kurzweil Reader? We even stop the blind from getting their issues of Playboy! (A blind friend of mine, Lisa, is quite steamed about that.) We just don't care. The "average" child, not handicapped and not gifted, is also not taught well. We abandon the child who starts off badly, who lives in a poor inner-city school district, whose family pays little property taxes, who has no political pull. Students are put into "tracks" and then treated as though these classifications were preordained. We make no effort to see where the problems the students may have are. We do not ask parents to read to their children, and we give many children no sense that they are capable of attaining any higher status in society than that of drug-dealer. I do not acknowledge the validity of IQ tests; I do not think any test can measure how much a student can learn, and I think that all students should be treated with respect. We should not abandon them to the maw of a statistical category, nor should we forget them when the 3 o'clock bell rings. If we give students a reason to learn, and if we give them hope that their learning can improve their ways of life, and if we give them a sense of pride in themselves and their achievements, then they **will** learn. And what of the gifted? Many students do better than their peers in some aspect of school. Some read earlier and better. Some understand arithmetic more clearly. Some have innate artistic talent. Too few schools care. Either political groups decry "elitism" or teachers don't make the effort. Some teachers are just ignorant. I remember arguing with my sixth grade math teacher after she explained that "there are more whole numbers than there are prime numbers." This was after she gave a whole unit on sets and cardinality. I am sure that others have similar experiences. I do not feel the solution I essayed, that of early advancement, is the best solution. It cause many social problems, as I explained in an earlier posting. However, it is sometimes the only practicable one. Just as schools neglect the average child, they neglect the exceptional one, of whatever type. Learning should be a joy, yet teachers render it dull. As I said, give a student reason to learn and he will learn. Don't abandon him once he does, though. The problems of the American educational system are not particular to the gifted; they are universal. Respectfully, Eric Robert Jablow P.S. I belonged to MENSA for two years, but I dropped out. The other members felt that not only did they have a monopoly on intelligence, but that they had one on wisdom too. I became disgusted and left. ----- We should expect that most gifted students are not taught well. After all, most students are not taught well. What are the special dangers of this, and why is that relevant to us in net.singles? What happens in a bad school? Few students learn more than the minimum, and few students strive for anything great. What then makes a student respect another student? Not the respect we feel all men owe each other; the bad student never deals with problems of ethics and morality, and never thinks about philosophical and historical questions. Not learning; so few students in the school care about learning that knowledge and intellectual ability seem irrelevant to him. Appearance and athletic ability become the criteria. (Not that this is not an unnatural impulse--I am a baseball fan; I should know about hero-worship.) The problem with this is that the students gain no respect for diversity. We know that a computer programmer can be as interesting as a concert pianist, a mathematician as a housewife, a physicist as a sculptor. We don't believe in the egg-head bugaboo. These poor students do. With little future, with Neanderthal attitudes, these people grow up with attitudes that corrode the foundations of our society. What happens when most people feel contempt for their fellow man (or for themselves)? With our inadequate educational system, many people find nothing of interest in their fellow man. That can destroy our polity. What about the reasonably educated student, who nonetheless gains no feeling of pride in anything outside himself, who cares only for himself but cares little for craftmanship? Well, this is where Laura Creighton's Type C programmers, in the profession just for the money come from. This is where Harvard MBAs who become corporate executives for firms they know nothing about, mismanage them into the ground, and float away on golden parachutes are born. Why do you think American industry has become so fragile? Because style has become more important than substance, perception than reality. And that hurts us as singles too. If we want a just society, and if we want singles to treat each other with honor, without harassment, and if we want singles to feel free to do thing without being subject to ridicule, then we had better increase the level of respect in our society. Schools are a good place to start. Perhaps in a school system where all students were thought worthwhile, and where teachers tried to teach everyone well, I would have been able to have a more normal education, and I would not have had some of the psychological problems I now have. But I do not think schools should be improved just for the sake of the gifted; they should be improved for all our sakes. About your objections to my goals, I have these comments. 1. To learn any field of study, a student must memorize much material. Yet the teacher who depends on memorization is a bad teacher, by definition. To teach well, the instructor must motivate his students, and he must be evocative in manner. He must not bore them. The best textbooks are not dusty and dry; they present their material as an adventure. There is a universe of difference between Feynmann's Lectures on Physics, or Knuth's Art of Programming, or Thomas Costain's Pageant of England, from a Serge Lang two-week special. Dick & Jane are boring. Horton Hears a Who is not. A teacher can choose between boring his students or interesting them. Which would you prefer? 2. If our high schools are not places where students learn about society, where slovenliness of effort is applauded, where no one develops a purpose in life, or at least realizes the importance of finding such a purpose, then we must change our high schools. --------------------- Two asides: would someone from the University of Georgia care to comment on how attitudes on scholarship have changed there after the Jan Kemp trial? Also, to help my shyness, does anyone have any powdermilk biscuits? Respectfully, Eric Robert Jablow MSRI ucbvax!brahms!jablow