Why high school must go: an interview with Leon Botstein

Phi Delta Kappan, May, 2007 by Robert Epstein

Epstein: Perhaps teens have no point of comparison. They know nothing about adulthood, after all. They've been completely isolated from it, and everything they've learned, they've learned from peers--probably the last people on Earth from whom they should be learning.

Botstein: Exactly right. This is the problem of age segregation. I'm strongly opposed to the institutionalization and segregation of young people, which is much worse now because we don't have extended families living together at home anymore. We don't introduce our children early enough to the real criteria by which life is measured, and we allow them to develop hothouse criteria of their own that turn out to be totally irrelevant in life. We don't teach them that the real rules of life are not the rules of Hollywood, not the rules of pop culture, and not the rules of high school. And we certainly don't teach them to develop their mental faculties.

Epstein: You mentioned the early college program that you've established with the city of New York, and since 1979 Bard has also run Simon's Rock College in Massachusetts, which is a college program for young people. What happens when you provide higher education for young people? Does it work?

Botstein: Yes, quite well. We made our share of mistakes, particularly during the early years of Simon's Rock, but we've learned a great deal. We've learned that young people--ages 14 and 15--are capable of an enormous amount of absorption of and response to serious information. They're ready to be taught serious science, serious mathematics, serious history, serious reading, as well as philosophy, literature, foreign languages, and mathematics.

And it's not only the gifted. It's hypocritical, in my view, to reserve such experiences for the elite. Adulthood has the potential to begin much earlier than we think, and it cuts across everyone, not just those we call gifted. The young people who drop out of the inner-city schools are doing the right thing because there's nothing there for them to learn, and the curriculum that is mandated by the state is ridiculous and trivial in terms of what a young person can do. We've learned that people right in the middle of the proverbial bell-shaped curve respond very well to college material, and their expectations and performance rates change beyond predicted patterns--if they're treated properly. However, we also learned that you need a new kind of teacher, a kind of cross between the college teacher and the high school teacher. The college teacher brings real love of subject and real competence in the subject area and membership in a community that's defined by liking to do certain things.

Epstein: But perhaps not competence in teaching?

Botstein: Yes, teaching is not necessarily where they excel; they may like teaching, but only because they like the subject and they're active in their subject area. High school teachers, on the other hand, tend to enjoy both teaching and teens. Consequently, you can't simply throw young people into what we now know as college. You have to create a different kind of environment in which you combine the best of college, which is intellectual ambition and competence, with a willingness to spend time with young people and deal with the age group with the kind of attention and caring that's sometimes characteristic of high school teachers.