SEPARATING EQUILIBRIUM. Thomas C. Reeves has been thinking about strengthening the high schools.

Those not going on to college see no reason to be forced to read, write, and calculate on an advanced level. Many planning on college know they can be admitted to the great majority of the nation’s institutions of higher education with mediocre credentials. And once there, they can major in Mass Communications, Police Science, Film Studies, Peace Studies, Recreational Management, and the like.

Of course, the picture is not entirely bleak. A great many private high schools advertise their high educational quality, and so do some public schools, especially those competing for voucher students. In Pewaukee, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee, the public school system runs a newspaper ad boasting of its superior academic scores and its “rigorous and challenging curriculum that surpasses state high school graduation requirements.”

In that direction lies the road to prosperity for some, to ruin for others. Many of the majors Professor Reeves mentions are in the Division of Cooling Out The Mark.

And it's time to lay to rest this myth.

If the raising of standards leads to many student drop-outs, so be it. There are many avenues available for such people to learn trades and skills, and their absence may well enhance the learning environment of the schools they have left. People who cannot or will not learn are often disruptive; their frustrations can be, understandably, acute. We should concentrate in high school on those who truly want to learn—or who can be persuaded to learn.

But let us think more carefully about how the schools allocate people to "trades and skills." There are many fine colleagues at Northern Illinois, excellent scholars, great conversation buddies, but they couldn't carry my calipers and I don't want them anywhere near my Unimat, especially when the milling machine is set up. You think somebody who has trouble with "want fries with that?" is going to be able to interpret the calipers or set up the milling machine?

This conclusion, however, is correct.

It may be that, in time, if we can raise the high school standards, we can then turn much-needed attention to the nation’s colleges and universities.

There is, however, another route to the same outcome. But it would require great fortitude on the part of all the colleges and universities. Imagine a national policy of "no remediation." No four years of composition and literature in high school? Fuhgeddaboudit. No mathematics through pre-calculus? Fuhgeddaboudit. No foreign language? No Charlotte Simmons experience for you. No lab science? No way.

Unfortunately, some institutions would see a way to bring in additional student fee money to retire revenue bonds by defecting from the agreement.