<p>D'yer....you are the man, I barely had time to wolf down a PB&J and you slid in an AP Harkness class like it was nothin .Must be nice to be retired.</p>
<p>bump...to answer the question just posted in another thread</p>
<p>thanks for that D'yer, and I am pretty sure that Edward Harkness donated the money for the tables to be developed</p>
<p>Here is what it says on the Exeter website: "Seventy-five years ago, thanks to the generosity of philanthropist Edward Harkness and the vision of Principal Lewis Perry and a group of senior faculty members, Exeter embarked upon an educational experiment that would transform almost every aspect of school life and influence secondary school education throughout the country."</p>
<p>Yes, but he didn't know what it was that he was going to fund. He asked them to come up with a revolutionary concept; he didn't bring in an armful of drawings and a proposal for a new style of teaching and challenge the school to adopt this method if you want my foundation's money.</p>
<p>It was basically a research & development project that he funded and chose to sustain once the new method was settled upon. In fact, he told the school at least once that they had to go back to the drawing board before he would say "job well done" and fork over the loot. They did. And came back to him with the concept that now bears his name.</p>
<p>That's why I say that he didn't invent it or conceive of it. But it's definitely "his" legacy to tens of thousands of students.</p>
<p>His goal was to transform the classroom so that the average student would not be left behind---- that is what harkness asked to have done</p>
<p>"so that the average student would not be left behind"</p>
<p>the average student would sump in his chair, bewildered by the use of "big words" and lively debate. they would be left in the dust! the harkness method spawns from the montessori method, but is more intellectual and engaging (w/ other students).... it's like the montessori method and the socratic method combined in one, almost. around a pretty wooden table. and the socratic method isn't for dummies, i'd say. students REALLY need to be engaged around a harkness table.</p>
<p>^^
Blair - IMO you sound elitist and snobby with your comment above. An AVERAGE kid is not a dummy. It is amazing what can be gotten from an "average" kid when he/she is given great instructors and more individualized attention. Put 10 kids around a table with an enthusiastic teacher and they will blossom regardless of average or high intelligence. It is the stifling classroom atmosphere of 25-30 kids lined up in rows listening to a lecture from an overworked teacher that will cause most kids to zone out.</p>
<p>harkness is overrated.... its a table for crying out loud</p>
<p>it's sad to note that most kids our age aren't motivated to excel academically, let alone, let very, very alone learn and engage in a lively debate on latin american imperialism or the beauty of multivariable calculus. i would say that most kids at these top schools are more excited to study, and have achieved more academically. therefore, because of their great education, they have more of an aptitude to discuss "intellectual" or "academic" things... and they do, around the harkness table.</p>
<p>ten bucks says every student will be playing table-top hockey within the first few minutes after introducing a harkness table to a public school cassroom.</p>
<p>Not so, blair. My son currently attends public hs and although his honors english class doesn't have a table, the entire class sits in a circle on the floor for discussions...which are in depth and meaningful. We visited during an open house and were impressed with the insights of these kids. They were all engaged and respectful of what others had to say. This is a large class as well; 35 students with two instructors. My daughter tells me her non-honors World Religions class is the same way. This is a much smaller class with about 15 students. The instructor has the desks arranged in a circle and it is an engaged group.</p>
<p>blair - you're much too young to be so cynical. Where is your youthful idealism? :)</p>
<p>mathwiz- it may be known as the "Harkness Table", but it is the Harkness method of teaching that is special, You can be seated in any circular manner and the effect would be the same, just like in keylyme's case</p>
<p>kelyme-you mentioned an "open house".. is this a magnet school? when i say "public", I mean the general public high school. some people on CC don't realize (not you, but this whole warped overachiever culture) that not every high school offers 22 AP courses. or a single honors course. some don't offer precalculus, and some English courses don't cover subject/verb agreement.</p>
<p>today, i experienced the saddest thing. we had standardized tests that you must pass in order to graduate. today was the language arts/writing section. this was one of the questions:</p>
<p>Sally likes to read often. Her favorite place is the library, where she studies after school.</p>
<p>Which of the following best describes Sally?
A - playful
B - obvious
C - studious
D - enraged</p>
<p>Note: "she studies after school"; she is studious.</p>
<p>Answer a few of those correctly and you get a diploma.</p>
<p>That's what you need to know to graduate from every public school in California.</p>
<p>blairt...Yes, but the goal of these tests is to graduate as many as possible. To answer your question, our school is just the local public hs. We don't have magnet schools in our area; I live in an area of small towns. I don't even think any of the cities here (NH) have magnet schools. Our local hs isn't bad, though. It offers 12 AP's, lots of honors classes, and some fabulous instructors. It has plenty of drawbacks as well...</p>
<p>Blair,</p>
<p>I think the answer was obvious, uh, make that easy to see (LOL) for you and me and the rest of us here. There are many children who haven't put 2 and 2 together to realize that having a larger (and therefore more colorful) vocabulary allows you to discuss and enjoy more interesting topics. Of course, many of these kids don't have the exposure to things requiring more than simple adjectives to describe, so they have no particular motivation to develop that vocabulary skill. Money does make a difference.</p>
<p>I went to high school in one of those California public high schools where they didn't teach calculus, they had 3 whole AP courses (of which I passed 2 and took college freshman english instead of taking AP English when I was a senior in HS). These kids lived on the streets without exposure to higher society culture. They had no need to know the definition of studious.</p>
<p>I was fortunate to have parents who were college educated and talked with a high level vocabulary. I wouldn't have half of my current vocabulary without them. One of my greatest frustrations in life is that my children haven't figured out how good of an asset a top level vocabulary is. To them it is just another set of words they'll never use, but have to memorize (for a couple weeks) to pass another test. I guess I'm just not as good as my parents in that regard.</p>
<p>Actually, I am quite impressed with you Blair in that you realize the differences in outcomes from the schools around you. Most kids don't realize how vastly different the schooling is between their local school and other schools (they haven't experienced other places). The important part is to recognize the opportunities that you have available to you (and not to 99.99% of other kids) and make the most of them (instead of feeling sorry for those you are in no position to help at this time). I'm pretty sure that you will though as you've gotten this far.</p>
<p>I have a question RE: Harkness Math at Exeter: How is it used in single-variable calculus? I understand that pre-calculus and trigonometry and such, one is able to assign six ridiculously hard problems for homework and teach a variety of concepts. However, with single-variable calculus this approach only seems applicable to a handful of topcis--optimization, related rates, some integration, etc--and would otherwise be almost counter-productive. I think one just needs to learn: Okay, here are the rules for differentiation. Okay, right-hand approximations over-estimate for increasing functions, and the converse is true for left-hand approximations.</p>
<p>That type of thing. So, how does Exeter use Harkness for it?</p>
<p>For differentiation:
We are asked to derive them by using limits then to notice pattern.
Riemann sums:
I think they just ask us to explain them? and reason out which approx. is better. it's pretty clear though...
antiderivatives:
they just ask us to think backwards
integrals:
first they ask us to think of possible notations for the integrals (pretty hard..) and then they tell us what the notation is and then they ask us to explain why the notation is good (or this might have just been what my teacher asked... my memory of this isnt so good)</p>
<p>I don't know if that helped.... calculus is actually easier than any other math at Exeter (for me at least). the teaching method is the same, though.</p>
<p>Interesting. Thanks, that was very helpful.</p>
<p>I asked out of curiosity because I noticed one of the most common criticisms leveled against math at Exeter was that Harkness doesn't work for calc. Seems to work fine though...</p>