Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!dykimber
From: dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Keywords: student segregation skipping grades
Message-ID: <4956@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 19 Dec 88 18:24:52 GMT
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 52

Our rn barfed on trying to reply to this message from Oliver Juang, so I'm
responding sort of manually.  He writes:

>	I still don't know about segregations, but I definitely am _against_
>"skipping" grades.  The students may have the aptitude, but what about the
>emotional maturity?  I really don't think a thirteen-year-old should be put
>in a classroom with eighteen-year-olds.  He/she would be eaten alive.  No,
>this is not a hypothetical case, I knew a kid like that in high school.  I
>think "skipping" grades should be based also on emotional/social maturity,
>not just intellectual.  Let me tell you, (oh well, I'm gonna tell you
>anyway), it is a real pain to have to play games to get into a movie, or a
>disco, bar, etc. when you are underage and _all_ your friends are not.

Look, no one's arguing that there aren't problems with this, and anyone who
voluntarily skips 5 grades is either extremely naive, or just plain deserves
whatever social difficulties they have.  The majority of people who skip
grades, I suspect, skip two or fewer.  I think the real problem with skipping
grades is that first of all, the higher grade won't be taught at a faster pace
or a more appropriate intellectual level, just the material will be more
advances.  So it'll take a little longer to catch up, and then there will be
all the same problems over again.  And in addition, skipping grades implies a
sort of package deal, where a grade is skipped in all classes.  Just because
someone is a high achiever in one area, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the
best thing for them to skip a year of every subject.  I don't have any really
brilliant ideas about what the best compromise would be, but I don't think the
right thing is to force people to sit through years of "education" that isn't
really educating them.

>	One more argument against "honors" courses.  Of course, having your
>child in an "honors" course is/was a very desirable thing.  Twenty years ago
>they implemented the "honors" program at my high school, with a limit of I
>think _two_ honors courses to be taken at the same time.  Of course,
>mommy and daddy want their child to be "better" and take more than one
>honors course.  Then the students complain because taking all honors courses
>means that they have too much homework.  The level of instruction in the
>"honors" courses falls.  The requirements become almost non-existent
>(teacher recommendation or parent "permission" (gee, I think the kid really
>wants to take the course.  I'll let her).  So what happens?  Now the school
>is beginning an "Advanced Placement" course/track/whatever.  Care to take
>bets on the quality of that course in a decade or so?

This is a problem with parents and schools and administrators, not with honors
courses.  The problems you mention are due to two things, as I see it:
1) people are in these courses who don't belong there, due to parental and
administrative screw-ups; and 2) these courses are being taught like shit,
because the teachers apperently feel that higher level material must mean more
work for the students.  If things were being done right, students would be
there because they were smart enough, not because they whined enough, and
the courses would correspondingly be taught at a higher level, with the same
or comparable amount of work.

                                              -Dan