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THE BATTALION
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 22. 1979
Page 3
Student reasoning ability lower
whose
nd his
ln >pus,
ay, the
atten.
were
a local
_«alfthe nation’s college students
I the intellectual reasoning abil-
omeet course standards the way
[ were taught just a few years
^aTexas A&M University study
i confirmed.
Results of psychological tests
sen 736 Texas A&M student vol-
Lers were consistent with find-
colmany nationwide studies that
cate science students are
on
died a
dd not
arrival
, 66, of
ghway
at 5:30
e train
slightly better prepared mentally
than non-science majors, said physi
cist Dr. Laura Bergmasco Osborne,
who administered the tests.
Fifty-three percent of Texas
A&M’s science students were at a
level required of “conventional”
courses, compared to 38 percent of
the non-science majors, revealed
Osborne, a visiting associate profes
sor.
She described conventional
classes as those which stress the
ability to reason and present an
swers in a coherent way, standard
requirements in most courses until
recently, she said.
The study further disclosed that
going to college longer is no cure,
either. Students over age 22 who
had been attending college more
than four years did not particularly
Lower living
predicted for
standard
1980s
ke
salary
e hike
lenied
tion to
er late
isocia-
;s and
h four
:'ited a
Taphy.
londay
ures of
ranged
cted to
ng the
e pow-
fewer Americans may be able to
ferd sities of life in the
tnt of another major recession,
Texas A&M University
«omists warned Wednesday.
Dr. Gene Uselton and Dr. S.
urles Maurice agreed with a re
nt report of the Joint Economic
immittee of Congress which
led the growth of productivity in
tcountry the, “economic linchpin
the 1980s,” and pointed out this
ajoreconomic indicator is slipping
unatically.
We have had an increase in
, ( nernment-caused uncertainty in
HtClUO'll -® ess , Maurice said, head of the
sraomics department at Texas
iiM, “which has reduced innova-
productivity and capital forma
tion. It has become easier to put a
firm out of business or into the red
because of government regulations
— resulting in increased uncer
tainty and less production.”
Maurice said decreased growth of
productivity is often used as a defi
nition of recession and could mean a
lower standard of living as fewer
goods like homes and automobiles
are produced.
In the first half of 1979 output per
man-hour in the private business
sector decreased by an annual rate
of 3.3 percent and fell at an annual
rate of more than 5 percent in the
second quarter, the largest quar
terly decline ever recored by the
U.S. Labor Department since it
began keeping statistics in 1947.
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standard
Uselton, director of Texas A&M’s
Center for Education and Research
in Free Enterprise, also blamed the
decline on government regulations.
“Some of the regulations are
good,” Uselton said, “but there are
many regulations that are taking
away more than they give back.
More and more people are engaged
in doing things that are nonproduc
tive. For example. General Motors
alone employs 23,000 people just to
fill out government forms, and that
has occurred only in the last 10-15
years.”
The congressional mid-year
analysis of the economy warned that
tax and regulatory barriers to pro
duction must be addressed of the
average American is likely to see his
standard of living decline in the
1980’s.
benefit from the extra time, Os
borne noted.
“The overall results agree with
national averages,” she said of the
Piaget tests that measure a student’s
ability to solve problems by reason
ing.
Even more pessimistic conclu
sions, said Osborne, are drawm in a
new book, “American Higher Edu
cation in Decline, written by
Texas’ Commissioner of Higher
Education Dr. Kenneth Ashworth.
“The fact that science students
scored higher may give us science
teachers momentary pleasure, but
we must not forget that even among
science students, the level was only
50 percent. We live in a society af
fected by the preformce of all its
members,” she remarked.
Osborne suggests the modern de
arth of classical and humanistic
courses such as Latin, Greek and
philosophy may work against mental
development of non-science stu
dents.
Changing the attitudes of
teachers and adults who “waste the
most precious and formative years of
students by dulling their minds in
the search for easy popularity and
less strenuous work, is the only
real answer to the dilemma, she ar-
gured.
"It is unfair to the youngsters to
cheat them out of the kind of early
preparation, starting in grammer
school, that will allow them to cope
successfully with reality, Osborne
said.
She thinks lowering the reasoning
level required by convintional col
lege courses and liberal “curve”
grading are doing more harm than
good.
“Curve grading appears to help
students not yet at that needed
mental level to gain better grades,
possible creating a false sense of se
curity,” said the Texas A&M scien
tist.
“If a course is kept at a very low
level, it will not be unusual to find
several bright, intellecturally de
veloped students making lower
grades because they are bored.
"Grading on a curve often in
creases the grades of poor students
by several points while leaving al
most unaffected the grades of good
students already performing at the
higher levels in their classes,” she
said.
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