Dawn Papuga
Argument 76-100G
December 8, 1995Outcome Based Education, as the title implies, is a program that has been implemented into certain school districts recently in order to increase the number of successful students that the school graduates into the working world. For the majority of the students, this program could increase their standings in grades, and overall results in school work. The schools' overall results may improve, but the program is not good for all of the students involved. Students who have been labeled "gifted" are the ones who suffer from this implementation. These students have been determined to have an excelled rate of learning, and progress. Placing them into a group learning and group teaching situation will have a negative effect on these particular students. Outcome Based Education and Giftedness: Help or Hindrance?
Outcome Based Education is the opposite of the term tracking. In tracking, the students are separated after a series of tests. These tests, often I.Q. tests, and achievement tests, determine how each of the students learn, and how fast they learn different material. From the results the school districts then determines whether the student would benefit from being placed in a special class, be it the gifted program or a LD (learning disabled) class. Outcome Based Education (OBE), however, places all of the students into a core based class, regardless of ability.
Each specific students' needs are not taken into consideration, but they are grouped and placed into a class at random. Once these students are placed into a certain "group" they remain in that group until the end of the school year. The students learn to rely on one another due to the large amount of group projects that are required. In that sense, the students benefit from learning to be responsible, and learn to rely on a partner or partners. OBE also uses an interdisciplinary curriculum. It brings together all of the things that the students are learning in all of their classes, and somehow relates them using a group project or group paper, and even group tests.
One of the first problems that a gifted child will come across while schooling through the OBE system is the rate in which the class moves. With OBE, the effort to insure success for all students may fail, and actually be ignoring and even boring those students with the potential to be tomorrow's intellectual leaders (Towers 627). These students were originally placed in the gifted program for a number of reasons: The average class work was not challenging enough for them, they began to lose interest in the class due to the slow pace or because they already knew the information due to outside interests, they showed an advanced learning and application rate of the information given to them (Towers 627). The intent of the Gifted program was to aid these gifted students in excelling at their own rate, which is typically faster than the average student. When a child who gifted and placed into this average ability setting of OBE, the student typically tends to become bored and uninterested in the work that is being done. These students tend to then produce average work, and often withdraw and do not attempt to excel as they previously had. According to Cyril Burt, author of The Gifted Child, "Unless adequate provision is made to meet their needs and capabilities, such children are liable to waste half their time, and as a result to feel frustrated and dissatisfied. Unrecognized and consequently held fast in the lock-step of the ordinary class, the potential genius drags and drifts along, gradually acquiring a habit of idleness, daydreaming, or inventing mischief. School for him becomes a place in which day by day he experiences intolerable boredom, and not unnaturally he soon begins to detest" (Burt 195). When a student dislikes school, he soon begins to dislike learning, in turn does poorly. Keep in mind, that this same student was at one time excelling at their own pace, and once they are neglected, revert from excelling in work habits, to not doing the work at all. OBE may be allowing this country's best and brightest future leaders go unchallenged, drifting from one undemanding task to the next.
Another problem that these students face is being forced to work and be graded in groups. Gifted students often excel when exploring interests and assignments on their own, mostly because they don't feel that the other students in their respective groups work hard enough to achieve perfection, where the gifted student strives and insists on perfection. This once again creates frustration for the child and hinders his performance. In a situation of such, the gifted child is used almost as a tool for the aid of the average students. Intended to increase the incentive of the others, the gifted student's tendency is to withdraw his or her information until the disorganization and imperfection is unbearable for him and then he intervenes with a coarse opinion. This causes tension in the group, and even anger.
The difficulty level of the material being taught will change drastically for the gifted child. Schools implementing OBE will have to drop its standards to the "lowest common denominator because not all young people have the same capacity to learn to high standards" (Manno 723) This arrangement means a multitude of problems for the gifted student. The gifted student will either have to wait for the other students to catch up or help the others learn the material(Manno 723).
E.D. Hirsch complained that in recent decades, Americans hesitated to make a decision on what specific knowledge children should learn . He also commented on the unwillingness of the schools to place demands on the students, causing a steady decrease in knowledge commonly shared between generations (Hirsch 19). This, according to Hirsch, is due to the cafeteria-style education system (Hirsch 20-1). Tracking could be placed into this category. Hirsch seems to be an advocate of OBE at first glance, but he contradicts himself by insisting that all children should have the opportunity to learn and excel in academics (Manno 723). By placing gifted students into an OBE system, their opportunity to learn and excel is being stifled. Minimum competency levels are being stressed, when the stress should lie on maximum learning expectations. Hirsch's concern for the well being of the general population of the future leaders of America is shared by the vast majority, but does this mean that they want the country to remain mediocre?
By denying the gifted populations of a school the opportunity to excel academically, the schools are not only holding back the opportunity for future progression, they are abusing the talents of the gifted students for the betterment of the general population. The gifted students should not have to help other students learn, that is not their responsibility, but that of the school. It's not fair to hold back genius in order to increase mediocrity.
Dawn Papuga is a freshman at Carnegie Mellon, in the school of Humanities and Social Sciences. She graduated from her high school the year they began to impliment the Outcome Based Education system in the school district. Her brothers, however, were forced to be a part of this program, and therefore she has seen the negative outcomes rather than any positive. Her e-mail address is < papuga+@andrew.cmu.edu>.