English, Math & History

By the standards of advance-guard pedagogy, Denver has a school system that is pretty up-to-date. It teaches everything from sociology to sewing, has "general education" classes that cover such items as driving, family living and health. Nonetheless, some Denver citizens have long been protesting that their well-adjusted children don't read & write well enough.

Denver schoolmen decided to give 4,672 of the city's high-school students a battery of tests to find out whether the protesters knew what they were talking about. Last week the schoolmen admitted that, to a certain extent, the protesters did: in math problems the pupils scored three points below the national average, were little better in spelling; almost all were weak in grammar. Superintendent Kenneth Oberholtzer (TIME, Feb. 20) decided standards needed tightening up.

From now on, said he, Denver high schools will require 20 semester hours of English (double the old number), 10 more hours of math, 10 of U.S. history. As for Denver's required classes in "general education"; hereafter, students can take them or leave them alone.

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