Word: sophs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This is one reason why the much-used phrase "Educational experiment" is mostly intellectual cotton candy. The other reason is the politics of making educational policy. An energetic administrator like McGeorge Bundy can push a remarkably popular program past the CEP and the Faculty; the one-quarter who opposed Soph Standing represented almost unprecedented strength of disagreement; politicking before meetings usually brings near-universal agreement or acquies cence, whatever is on the agenda. A recent questionnaire of Masoers, Senior Tutors, and CEP members indicated that not one quarter but thirteen out of seventeen favored either substantial revision or outright abolition...
...things stand, the fate of a program is likely to depend on how many students take an interest in it. And this can lead to some interesting contradictions. Thus, the seven-year college-law school program died some years ago for lack of student interest. Soph Standing shows every sign of prospering despite its unpopularity in Faculty circles. The ironic contrast of student opinion with Faculty attitudes was revealed in a Questionnaire by the Student Council Committee on Educational Policy which showed eighty per cent of Soph Standing students supporting continuation of the program without substantial change. As the program...
...those who conceive a program, its exemptions and requirements are a way to achieve the goals which produced the administrative devices. The exemptions given Soph Standing students are only granted to permit them to graduate in three years. But to students, the program is just a group of exemptions and requirements, unless one happens to have the same interests as the administrators. Even the minority who want to leave in three years are unlikely to have much concern for secondary education or much explicit interest in making the Freshman year more interesting. It is a less than astonishing result that...
Recent study has also shown that the boredom and apathy to which Soph Standing was partially a response may be a way for well-prepared students to maintain a sense of superiority and avoid problems of competition, rather than a simple reaction to studying material they have already covered. This may explain why the Exeter Syndrome--"dissatisfaction, disillusion, despair, and departure"--seems common even five years after the Soph Standing program got under way. Misconceptions as well as divergent interpretations have been damaging...
Another effect has been creation of an elite whose members not only accept Soph Standing because it is an intellectual merit badge, a series of exemptions, and a way of perpetuating prep school superiority, but also take advantage of the options in the options in order to maintain a sense of belonging to the elite group...