IMPACT OF HIGH SCHOOL PREPARATION
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will be few. Not everyone in this program is fit to be in it and will go
through it. Rita and Chester, do you have some nice words I can bring
home to my wife?
Rita Kram er:
Sandy, why don't you explain what an International
Baccalaureate program is?
Sanford Pinsker:
It's an integrated high school program with standards
higher than the normal Advanced Placement courses. When successfully
completed, you get one year of college credit. My children were in
International Baccalaureate courses when I was a Fulbrighter in Belgium,
and I was impressed with the level of work they did there.
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Rita Kramer:
Well, from my point of view it sounds very much like the
program that Robert Maynard Hutchins instituted at the University of
Chicago when I was young. It had its shortcomings, but the great thing
about it was that it was a progranl intended to accept any student who
could demonstrate certain abilities and would meet certain standards, and
you could enter at any point, some of us after two years in high school, and
after four years you had a baccalaureate degree. The main thing that
Hutchins had to argue against then, given his idea of the university, was
football. When you think of what people interested in the pursuit of what
we used to call a "liberal education" are up against today, that's an envi–
able situation. But that kind of education is sorely needed.
Chester Finn:
Actually I've never heard a European
talk
about International
Baccalaureate programs, so I'd really be interested to hear
if
Kurt has any
comments on how this plays out in Austria. In the U.S. context, I would
term myself a 97-percent fan of them. It's as close as we have to an inter–
national gold standard for curricular attainment. It's got an external
examining system with very high standards and expectations. I think the
IB has an admirable set of academic skills and content for young people to
aspire to, and the schools that do it have a purpose, a mission, and a coher–
ence. My 3-percent reservation comes from having skimmed the
curriculum, and discovering, at least in the social studies, too high a level
of political correctness and one-world soupiness. So I ended up saying that
the math, science, and language expectations are terrific, and that the social
science expectations are not totally to my taste.
Sanford Pinsker:
I'll take 97 percent any day. Could I learn something
from Austria?
