One subject that is certain to arouse debate among educators is the extent to which we need to challenge students.  Certainly, no educator will question the notion that it is fitting and proper to encourage students to strive to the limits of their capabilities, but questions relating to how far and in what way students should be challenged meet with divergent answers.

Consider a hypothetical student we’ll call Fred, who is typical in that he is a freshman in college but has not grasped, or has not received enough instruction in, certain basic skills.  In English class, he lacks the basic grammar to construct coherent sentences.  In math class, he lacks some rudimentary knowledge that is necessary to solve equations.  Should Fred’s instructors provide instruction in the fundamentals that he lacks, or should they “challenge” him to meet a higher standard by somehow acquiring on his own the fundamentals that he lacks?

The answer is anything but simple, and it may depend, in part, on where Fred stands in relation to his classmates.  If he is less prepared than most of them, one could declare – not unkindly – that Fred needs to play catch-up, with tutorial help, if necessary.  And, if that fails, one could also suggest that Fred may lack the capability of doing college-level work at all.  Politically incorrect as such an idea may be, not everyone, even with today’s less demanding standards, is capable of completing a college-degree program or of doing the kind of work that requires a college education.  Indeed, there is some question whether such individuals would ever be happy in such work.

But suppose that half or two-thirds of Fred’s classmates are about where he is – still struggling with the fundamentals but expected to do more advanced work.  Does the instructor (and the college through its curriculum) continue to insist that the students (Fred and a majority of his classmates) perform at a level for which they lack basic skills?  If the answer is “no,” it implies that we must lower standards – not to the lowest common denominator, perhaps, but at least to a less “challenging” level.  If the answer is “yes, maintain the standards,” it implies that we are ready and willing to have a majority fail.

The question has other ramifications.  Lowering standards, especially in basic skills courses such as language and math, cheapens the college degree.  We have already seen evidence of that with respect to the high school diploma, and this lowering of standards has filtered into higher education.  Maintaining standards, however, would mean that, even as more people are attending college, more would be flunking out – unless, of course, they somehow rose miraculously to the challenge.

Meanwhile, in the midst of this quandary is another consideration.  Having lower standards, which would enable Fred and those like him to get by, could be detrimental to the better students who already grasp the basics and need to be challenged by more sophisticated material.  The best and brightest might indeed become dropouts because they are bored sitting in classes that cover what they already know.  While we are “challenging” Fred and others like him, we would be turning off students with the greatest potential.

It is a huge dilemma, well illustrated by the debates that go on in nearly every English department in just about every junior college, senior college, and university in the country.  Most of these colleges require that every degree-bound student take and pass two semesters of freshman composition.  Although less well-prepared first-year students are shunted off into remedial composition classes before they can even enroll in the standard composition class (and, in some institutions, students with superior verbal skills are exempted from one or both semesters of freshman comp), the standard  composition classes comprise students whose verbal skills, or lack of them, encompass a vast spectrum.  At one extreme are students who can write competent essays based on sophisticated readings; at the other are students who can scarcely put together a coherent English sentence and who have difficulty reading and understanding a typical article in a newspaper.

One may well question how the latter get high school diplomas, let alone admission to a college, but they do.  And both types of students – and everyone in between – are placed in the same composition classes.  Should the course content and the instructor’s approach be directed toward the bottom of the class, the top of the class, or some imaginary middle ground (always very difficult to determine, by the way)?  In simpler terms, do we meet students where we find them, or do we aim higher, offering a challenge to all, at the risk of overwhelming – and perhaps losing completely – those who are less prepared?

In courses such as English composition, the devil is in the details, and even experienced professors argue about the details.  Many such courses include readings as a basis for writing, but if the readings are sophisticated enough to interest the brighter students, the rest of the students get a double whammy – already lacking writing skills, they are forced to construct essays based on readings that they scarcely comprehend.  And, since classroom discussions may focus on the content of the reading rather than on the composition of essays, the students without writing skills have less opportunity to acquire them.  On the other hand, if the focus is on writing and if students write mostly, say, opinion and personal experience papers based exclusively on their own thoughts, where is the “intellectual challenge” that a college classroom should provide?

One view is that we may “meet students where we find them” and that those who are above the common denominator will challenge themselves.  This view has merit, but it places the burden of challenge upon the student and not upon the instructor, where it rightly belongs.  Another is that we should aim high – both to stimulate the brighter students and to challenge the rest to try harder.  This too has merit, but it may only frustrate the less-prepared students – and perhaps many in the middle as well.  They may very well retire from the field of battle, so to speak, before a shot is fired.

Although no easy answer presents itself, educators in all disciplines at all levels need to weigh the questions carefully.  It won’t do to simply take an almost Darwinian approach that only the brightest and best prepared should survive.  Nor will it do to take a simplistic, politically correct view that even the slowest and worst prepared should be enabled – via entitlements, special considerations, and dumbing down of the curriculum – to coast to a degree, or even, for that matter, to a high school diploma.

(I shall have more to say in a future essay that will suggest another approach – the outrageous idea that we should toss lazy, undisciplined students out on their ears because expulsion would do them no harm and because, without these trouble-makers, real students – including those who are not exceptionally bright but are willing to try – would fare better and would rise to meet challenges.)