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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <19245@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 20 Jan 89 00:07:56 GMT
References: <605@ucrmath.EDU> <6578@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <19252@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <15007@srcsip.UUCP> <1104@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
Organization: EECS, UC Davis
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In article <1104@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <15007@srcsip.UUCP>, shankar@haarlem.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Son of Knuth) writes:
>> In article <1088@bird.ldgo.columbia.edu> hough@ldgo.columbia.edu (sue hough) writes:

*> >American education has this pie-eyed premise of equality:
*> > Every student can be a rocket scientist if he/she is taught
*> > right.  Rather than ship the less promising students off
*> > to some sort of trade school (where they won't embarrass
*> > your national statistics), everybody gets the same classes
*> > up to at least eighth grade.  
 
%> Perhaps because every student *can be a rocket scientist if he/she is thought
%> right and works hard at it.  Let's see, who was it that said genius is 1%
%> inspiration and 99% perspiration.

%> I would rather not see elementary school kids tested, classified into
%> one of many professions, and then sent to an appropriate school.

>         There are massive innate differences of ability.  Having seen
>promising-looking graduate students run into a stone wall strikes a fatal
>blow to the idea that students are even approximately equal.  

This reasoning ("There are massive ...") just doesn't hold water.  The
question was, "Is variation in X due to Y?", and you are answering, "Yes,
because I have observed that there IS variation in X."

Yes, many promising-looking grad students do run into a stone wall.
But I would contend that there are nongenetic (i.e. non-"innate") 
reasons for this.  In grad school, we emphasize (or should emphasize) 
insight and creativity.  In undergrad school, high school and grade school, 
we generally do NOT have this emphasis; in fact, the lower the level, the
less the emphasis on these aspects.  There are two consequences of this:

  1.  A grad applicant may only APPEAR "promising," but actually be 
      someone who has done well in the undergrad courses that don't 
      emphasize insight and creativity; in fact, he/she may have even
      deliberately avoided the courses/professors who had this reputation.

  2.  Since the lower-level schools don't emphasize insight/creativity,
      only those students whose personal attitudes toward learning
      stress these aspects will cultivate it, RESULTING IN THE VARIATION
      THAT YOU (AND I) HAVE OBSERVED AMONG STUDENTS AT THE GRAD LEVEL.
      So here would be a nongenetic source of that variation.

If Point 2 above were somehow "proven" to be correct, then the "different
schools for different kids" idea would not only be wrong, but actually a
tragic opportunity cost.  If Point 2 were correct, we should be making 
sure our schools DO foster insight, instead of shaping schools around
incorrect notions of what traits are genetic.

 -- Norm