I am in Honors Biology, and to say that I like the class is an understatement. It is so ridiculously interesting. It goes at a perfect pace. We learn so much. As such, I was a little confused as to why my mother got an email titled “FYI” from Latin’s administration stating, among other things, that “entering freshmen and rising ninth graders from our middle school (current eighth graders) will be taking Physics next year… [and] we have decided not to offer both regular and honors Physics to freshmen… we feel confident that the Physics curriculum for freshmen, coupled with the new science facilities, will provide ample challenge for a range of students.” I also heard from Mr. Windus, freshman dean, that the new course will be “skill-based.” From what I gleaned, a skill-based course teaches the basic skills of science as well as a specific branch of science. Next year, students will dedicate more classroom time to learning the basics of science, such as writing a lab report, experimental design, and the scientific method. There are some inevitable consequences of this decision. It is unrealistic to claim that students will learn as much Physics in a skill-based course as they would in a Physics course that assumes students have the basics of science down. To claim that students will learn as much Physics in such a course is akin to claiming that students would learn as much History in a class that divides classroom time between English and History as they would in a course with just as much classroom time that focused solely on History.  Furthermore, if there are freshmen who do understand these fundamentals of science, the new Physics course will not necessarily suit their needs as well as a course that simply focused on Physics. The lack of differentiation between a regular course and an advanced level course creates issues as well. Taking a wild guess, I think that it’s probably more difficult to teach a class with highly-varied learners than it is to teach a class with learners whose needs are rather similar. Actually, if it is not the case that varied classes are more difficult to teach, that I have no idea why we would separate the sciences later in Latin education, which is what the school will continue to do. Latin’s policies, then, support my hypothesis. Personally, I like my honors class, and a lot of people in freshman year are very pleased with their placements (but more on that later). On the other hand, there are significant advantages to both of these new policies. Latin takes on a broad range of students from a broad range of schools: conceivably, some of them need to be taught science fundamentals, and the needs of these students are every bit as important as the needs of those who will be bored in a class that teaches fundamentals. Furthermore, by not differentiating between honors and regular science in the freshman year, students who would be in regular science have the opportunity to learn from students who would be in honors science. In addition, it would allow the science department to more accurately place students into honors and regular classes because they would have experience with all of the students in class. In this way, the new system is on its face more fair. In light of these differing perspectives, I decided to conduct a survey of freshmen and a survey of upperclassmen.  I asked 36 freshmen and 36 upperclassmen for their opinions. The sample was taken randomly; I surveyed whomever I encountered who had time. I asked freshmen to rate their satisfaction with their science placement from zero to five, zero being that they were totally inappropriately placed and five being that they were very happy in their class. Responses averaged 4.15. Approximately 31% of them rated their science placement a 5, and approximately 44% of them rated their science placement either a 4 or a 4.5. I asked whether they might benefit from a skill based course, where skill based course was defined as “a course focused on learning the skills of science, such as writing lab reports or conducting experiments, as well as focused on one specific branch of the sciences.” Responses averaged 2.88, where five was that it would help them immensely and zero was that it would be superfluous and not help them at all. Interestingly, they tended to either give zeros and ones or, alternatively, fours and fives, suggesting that there is a large gap between some students and others in terms of science experience. I asked whether they thought that no honors science courses being available to freshmen would help things, with five being “that would help me a ton” and zero being “that would not help at all; that would hurt people.” The average score was exactly 1. In fact, 47% of freshmen surveyed gave the idea a zero. They seemed to agree with one freshman boy. When asked about not distinguishing honors from regular, he replied, “that’s stupid.” And, finally, I asked whether they agreed with the curricular change, with zero being fervently opposed to and five being fervently agreeing with the change. The idea got a 1.65 out of 5 on average. To the seniors and juniors, I posed a far simpler question. I simply asked them whether they agreed or disagreed with the curricular changes, after explaining that there were to be no honors available and the class was to be skill based. 28% of them responded that they didn’t care. Of those who did care, only 23% agreed with the decision. I also asked the eighth graders how they felt. They seemed to want an honors option. Remy Dhingra replied, “I am thrilled to be the first class to have physics in 9th grade, though I wish that Honors Physics would be offered. All other sciences have honors classes and I feel that if some kids are put on a fast track for other subjects; why shouldn’t they be put on a fast track for physics as well?” Bryce Tuttle wrote, “I believe that there should be an Honors Physics class. There are more than enough people who would take it.” However, other students presented another opinion. Mitchell Stone, senior, pointed out that “we don’t have a choice… but they should include a class that is like physics as it is taught now.” Why don’t we “have a choice”? Mitchell may have been referring to the fact that it is difficult for the school to figure out which students should be in honors and which in regular science classes when they are incoming freshman year. What do you think? Comment about whether or not you agree with the school’s choice. Next issue: Why the teachers chose to make the course decisions they did.