Lively High

Since their fathers work on missiles at Cape Canaveral, many youngsters in Melbourne, Fla. (pop. 11,982) are used to hearing high-decibel gobbledygook. They are also used to an unusual academic pace. Next week they can even begin learning Chinese. Says Principal B. Frank Brown of lively Melbourne High School: "Scientifically, the Chinese are about where the Russians were in 1952. It's about time we tried to understand them. At the end of two years my students should be able to read a Chinese newspaper."

Soon after the missilemen moved in, Principal Brown found himself with the problem of teaching youngsters who were scientifically more hep than the school's science program. In 1957 Brown raided the missile base for electronic equipment, and Biology Teacher Gerald Einem set up a volunteer advanced research class. Given their heads, Melbourne's students brewed up a brain storm. One built an artificial kidney, another a digital computer. They tried everything from inducing cancer in mice to making toads lay eggs out of season. It got so that local repairmen refused to fix anything at the school because the kids could do it better.

Make It Exciting. Principal Brown, 43, went on to revamp everything else at Melbourne. Most notably, he did away with ranking students from freshman to senior. Whatever their ages, youngsters pursue any course they can handle. Scores on aptitude and IQ tests are largely ignored. "Achievement alone is the criterion for placement," says Brown. "A student can conceivably pursue college calculus while taking a remedial English course at the fourth-grade level."

Melbourne's high-octane curriculum includes M.I.T.'s new high school physics course, the new biology program written last summer by the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the new math teaching developed at the University of Illinois (TIME, July 25). The school has seven science labs, a greenhouse, an animal house and a 30-booth language lab. Since Brown believes that the "college-bound student should be able to handle four years each of two languages," the school teaches Latin, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and now Chinese. Says Brown: "The secret is to make the curriculum as exciting as possible, and just as exciting for the slow as for the talented."

On the Level. Melbourne High spurns "life adjustment" courses for its 1,500 students. It has no social studies. "They only weaken history and geography," says Brown. The school assembly is a noncom-pulsory, after-hours activity. Melbourne makes profitable use of team teaching, follows the bold "Trump Plan" schedule of large lecture classes 20% of the time, with the rest divided between seminars and individual research. Students even buy many textbooks because "state-provided textbooks are not adequate."

Maybe the influence of Canaveral's scientists makes for a community interested in schooling, but Brown denies that Melbourne is extra good because its students are extra bright. "Our IQ level is only slightly above average," he says.

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