Stanford University, which admitted nearly all straight-A students, discovered, that even they needed help mastering study skills. The administration was surprised to learn that its freshman classes often scored at the 60-70th percentile range in reading, lacking such skills as searching for bias, skimming; and understanding difficult vocabulary. In 1972 the university established a remedial center, the Learning Activity. Center, for its bright undergraduates. The center, which enrolled over 50 percent of those freshmen, offered both.credit and noncredit courses in reading, writing, and study skills. As Stanford junior Bill Shankle, an graduate of the study-skills course, explained, "One finds that even if he is just innately a genius, he has got [sic] to study."

Source: "Help for the Brightest," Time (2 February 1976): 44.

Meter Readers.

A mathematics trend that lasted the entire decade was the teaching of the metric system. In...