Intelligence can be taught." the phrase is posted on bulletin boards throughout Banneker High School, located in a working-class neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C. It is the unofficial motto for a citywide program for public-school students who hope to become National Merit Scholars. It is also a defiant cry of hope, rejecting the notion (resurrected in last year's best-selling "The Bell Curve") that intelligence is largely fixed at birth and virtually immune to human intervention. For Eugene Williams, the project's director, the issue is not merely academic. If a shaky intellectual start portends a lackluster life, many of his students are already doomed—particularly those who come from communities where survival, not scholastic achievement, is the essential priority. Williams, however, insists that intellectual deprivation can be overcome. And his superiors are gambling that he is right. This fall Washington's school administrators plan to expose all entering high-school students to Williams's techniques, which place a premium on analytic and abstract reasoning. The exposure, school officials hope, will trigger an explosion of accomplishment in a school system known mostly for mediocrity.
展开▼
