During my first semester of teaching, many years ago, I was surprised to encounter the philosophy that the brightest students did not need much help from the teacher because "they can get it anyway" and that my efforts should be directed toward the slower or low-performing students.

This advice came from my department chairman, who said that if the brighter or more serious students "get restless" while I was directing my efforts toward the slower students, then I should "give them some extra work to do to keep them quiet."

I didn't believe that the real difference between the A students and the C students was in inborn intelligence, but thought it was usually due to differences in attitudes and priorities. In any event, my reply was that what the chairman proposed "would be treating those who came here for an education as a special problem!"

A few days later, I handed in my resignation. It turned out to be only the first in a series of my resignations from academic institutions over the years.

Unfortunately, the idea of treating the brighter or more serious students as a problem to be dealt with by keeping them busy is not uncommon, and is absolutely pervasive in the public schools. One fashionable solution for such "problem" students is to assign them to help the less able or less conscientious students who are having trouble keeping up.

In other words, make them unpaid teachers' aides!

High potential will remain only potential unless it is developed. But the very thought that high potential should be developed more fully never seems to occur to many of our educators — and some are absolutely hostile to the idea.

It violates their notions of equality or "social justice," and it threatens the "self-esteem" of other students. As a result, too often a student with the potential to become a future scientist, inventor or a discoverer of a cure for cancer will instead have his time tied up doing busy work for the teacher.

Even so-called "gifted and talented" programs often turn out to be simply a bigger load of the same level of work that other students are doing — keeping the brighter students busy in a separate room.

My old department chairman's notion that the better students "can pretty much get it without our help" assumes that there is some "it" — some minimum competence — which is all that matters.

People like this would apparently be satisfied if Einstein had remained a competent clerk in the Swiss patent office and if Jonas Salk, instead of discovering a cure for polio, had spent his career puttering around in a laboratory and turning out an occasional research paper of moderate interest to his academic colleagues.