🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BzwqHE.HGB@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> blumb@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Bill Blum) writes:
>In article <Bzvn8D.JB4.1@cs.cmu.edu> roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes:

>>Has anyone had personal experience with magnet schools? I'm curious about 
>>whether they provide any benefit.

>Well, I did not attend a magnet school, but I was part of a gifted/talented
>program in grades K-8.

>My only complaint was:  Some programs (such as the one I was subjected to)
>do not take into account that not all students will be interested in the
>same things.

>We were taught Spanish, we produced plays, we saw nature films.
>A friend of mine and I grew immensely bored with the material presented and
>spent our time in the library, reading books like Issac Asimov, etc.  I was
>never given a reason to WANT to learn Spanish, or to learn about nature, or
>to care about drama.  

Is what is taught there of interest to anyone other than prospective
dramatists and others with a totally non-scientific approach?  You were
being taught trivia, not important content.  If you were taught linguistics,
so that you could get an understanding of the structure of language, rather
than memorizing vocabulary with no rhyme or reason, it MIGHT have been
worthwhile.  If you were given the mathematics, then the physic, and 
then the chemistry, to understand nature, this might have been worthwhile.
But the garbage given in the gifted/talented programs is at a level far 
below what the typical students were expected to be capable of before 
those responsible for the attitude that "we teach children, not subject
matter" got in control.  What you were taught in these programs supposedly
for those who are capable of a first-class educations should have been
considered recreation, rather than education.

>I'm sure that magnet schools would fare better in this regard---they are
>aimed towards what some students WANT.

Fat chance!  This is the best the teachers are capable of.  There is nothing
in the nature of a curriculum designed to greatly increase the knowledge and
ability of the student.  The attitude that memorizing is education, and that
there is no structure, has effectively killed the system.  We can look things
up in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and on computers.  The good students
need to be exposed to structure and ideas, and they are capable of at least
five times what the typical teachers can handle.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)