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DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS

.Qctober 7, 1977

James B. Hunt, Jr.

Governor

State of North Carolina
Raleigh, North Carolina 27611

Dear Governor Hunt:

Your letter of September 27th opens up some bold new ideas for science
education. My own background includes a great debt to Stuyvesant High School
in New York City -- perhaps even more from the association with (and competition
(sic) of my peer students) than from the faculty. This statement perhaps
underestimates their role in setting very high standards for our personal
initiatives in self—instruction.

The most problematical point is doubtless the residential aspect of the
proposal. The British public schools have of course managed it; but I would
be reluctant to insist that 9th and 10th graders be removed from their homes
unless this represents a real advantage in enhanced environment and responds
to the family's own aspirations.

May I suggest a gradual approach. Start with an experimental high
school, with say 25-50 students in each grade, attached to one or more
existing university campuses. (There are useful precedents at Columbia
University - Teachers College, the University of Chicago, University of
Wisconsin ~ Madison).

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A small number of these students might be residential, but with careful
attention to a level of supervision appropriate to students likely to be of
uneven maturity of judgment vs. intellect. So I would be cautious about
housing such students in a college dormitory. I do not think it will be
difficult to staff such schools with modest increments to the university
budgets for the purpose. While the schools remain small and experimental,
they should attract a lot of enthusiasm from the regular faculty. Conversely,
the students will have exceptional access to courses in the regular curriculun,
to jobs as research assistants, and so forth. There are many special didactic
needs for these students; but school laboratory work -- in my opinion -— tends
to be a pale shadow of reality outside the university research laboratory,
especially for the needs of gifted students.

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DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 + (415) 497-5052
James B. Hunt, Jr. ~2— October 7, 1977

From these modest experiments, one could get a much better perspective
for the evaluation of your plan. But I am sure such a school should be situated
near established centers -- Research Triangle being the obvious option for your
state.

Having said all this, I have to remind you that I have been a student
in; not a designer of, such programs. Julian C. Stanley is the director,
at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Psychology, of a well-known
Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, and has edited several volumes on
mathematical and intellectual talent.

Finally, I would urge a careful distinction between two problems.
Gifted children need emotional encouragement and support, high expectations,
the competition and competitiveness of comparable fellows and tolerance for
their own devices for self-instruction. By the time they reach high school,
such students will learn most from guided self-study, least from formal in-
struction. A larger group of children will profit from carefully directed
inspiration, and need help to develop a self-confidence in sciences and
mathematics that existing systems tend to quench.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

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