Public Schools: Catching Failures in Time

• Share

(2 of 2)

The school's real test will come when the boys return home. "It is naive to think all will make good," admits McAndrew, "but I'm now convinced some of them will." Not the least of the school's results is that its current supplementary staff of 16 visiting teachers shares McAndrew's enthusiasm, expects to spread new attitudes among other teachers in their home schools.

One such attitude is a new skepticism over any attempts to classify children rigidly by intelligence ratings. This practice, says McAndrew, leads many teachers to "consign kids to an educational trash heap." The North Carolina experiment—now set up on a permanent basis with more applicants, girls as well as boys, than it can handle—has shown that the attitude of both the teacher and the taught is far more meaningful than a student's IQ.