posted
Taken from the "Newsweek 'Top Highschools'" thread;
quote: We live in a culture of mediocrity. The lowest common denominator, which is very low indeed decides everything.
quote: to honor schools that have done the best job in persuading average students to take college-level courses and tests. Heaven forbid that any school have good programs for the gifted. What is important is that the lowest common denominator be raised as high as possible, even if that means neglecting everything above that. AP tests are not for the average student, and were never intended to be. My school, rightly to my mind, discourages students who are unlikely to make a four or a five on an AP test from taking the class. Why? Because it is grossly unfair that, in a gifted class, the teacher should have to spend half an hour explaining the basics Marxism to people who, in the Tenth grade, were totally unfamiliar with the term.
Meritocracy through equality of opportunity is the goal towards which we should strive, not equality of intellect based on a false system.
We have become so anti-élitist that we fear even an élite based on talent, indeed, I would say we fear this more than any other élite. Note that, in the United States today, the word "intellectual" is almost universally used as a sneer, while the "average joe" is raised to the level of demigod, or, at least, President.... Really, what is so wrong with a system that acknowledges that some students are, in fact, more intelligent, or better at school? If we say that this is not so, then we are lying to our students and to ourselves.
A society which considers total equality, rather than meritocracy, to be the goal, even at the expense of real progress, is doomed to fail.
We should, must, allow the talented to rise while providing a safety net for those who lack talent or luck. We should not, cannot, attempt to make them equal, anymore than we can make three equal to nine. There are wrongs which we cannot right, and should not even attempt to do so. Perhaps the day shall come when science can change the intelligence of an individual, but this will not be the course of the near future. Even if this were possible, I am far from sure that it would be desirable: Stephan Hawking, rightly, points out that creating super-smart humans creates a special difference which would ultimately lead to the demise of humanity through its metamorphoses into post-humanity. Do we really want this?
Even if we answer that this course of events is good and right, what system of belief argues for the pretense that something which has not happened has?
In the meantime, we must accept, and teach our children to accept, that humanity, while glorious, is limited, and individual humans, while potentially more glorious, are more limited.
Or education system fails students, for, when they learn that they have been taught lies, will rightly ask what sort of a society teaches lies to the young and this shall lead them to question whether any society based on lies can or should survive. We must change our educational system, and our society without, until truth is the basis. How will our governing élites answer the statement, so often heard from the mouths of the most intelligent youth: Pas de replâtrage, la structure est pourrie? We not replaster, but replant, else our society be uprooted and flung into the abyss. Revolutions do not save societies, but they occur only when a society needs saving.
I fear we underestimate the exent to which a society is formed in its schools. To what degree are world views formed at the university, and, especialy, secondary school levels? The answer is that the world views of individuals within a society, and thus the nature of the society, are almost universaly formed at these levels.
All words are my own, except for the one quote, which is from Newsweek.
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Possibly an outside perspective would be helpful here. Now, I've been known to sneer a bit at American high schools, and truly, they do need to begin teaching real math and physics. But at least there exist programs for the gifted. In Norway the culture of equality is much more ingrained, to the point where people have seriously suggested that we stop giving out grades - that only "creates losers". By our standards, American high schools are hopelessly elitist; not to mention that private schools are under nowhere near the same level of state inspection. (You may rest assured, no Norwegian private school, to the extent that they even exist, would dream of teaching anything remotely approaching creationism. The downside is, there are very few of them and they are mainly religious.)
It seems to me, then, that while you are right to worry about a further slide in this direction, it is not your most pressing problem. Studying for standardised tests, curricula designed for testability, and the lack of real mathematics are much bigger problems.
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It's an interesting point, but a complicated one. As a teacher of advanced classes, it would make my life easier to keep kids with lower standardized test scores or more average class performance out of them. That's been tried, though, and it leads to its own bad results. For instance, some students are diamonds in the rough, but if you never give them a chance to shine, they never will. Also, some students really do underperform because they respond adversely to a lack of challenge. Again, without access to higher level classes, we never find out. Finally, students are notoriously misplaced at the earliest ages, when testing is inexact and IQ is far from steady, and teacher and parent expectations tend to be self-fulfilling.
Does that mean I disagree with you? Not exactly. Just that I think it's more complicated than you portray.
For one thing, you seem to be conflating two completely separate issues. With your talk of lying to our kids, and trying to make all people equal, you seem to be mixing this with the "self-esteem for all, for anything" movement. It's not the same, although it's quite possible at some schools the two end up running concurrently. Allowing all students access to advanced courses isn't intrinsically lying to them or telling them they are superior. In a meritocracy, all should have equal opportunity, no? Well, that's what the move toward opening up higher level classes is about: giving all the opportunity. If all students do not have the chance to challenge themselves and rise above where they have been placed and what is expected of them, you don't have a meritocracy.
Here is a very simple proof (to my mind): students from wealthy suburban schools score higher on standardized tests, have better grades, and have more success in advanced courses than students from extremely rural schools and inner city schools. I think it would be hard to contend that, through some cosmic coincidence, all the students who have high merit are all concentrated in these wealthy neighborhoods. I think it far more likely that they have advantages that other students don't. But it would be very easy to look at some grades and some tests blindly, and conclude that the students were simply rising and sinking to their natural levels.
Now opening AP classes to everybody certainly doesn't solve all those socioeconomic ills, but closing them off can be part of perpetuating a system where the haves will become a permanent upper class, and pat themselves on the back and tell each other that they simply deserve all that they have been given, while the have-nots become a permanent lower class. There are already good options to make sure the wealthiest children get every possible educational advantage, but one purpose of public education is as an investment in society. As an investmemt, public education makes it possible for the poor to cease to be poor. For this to happen, they need to be given opportunities to grow. Not just in kindergarten and first grade, but all the way down the line.
What this does not mean is that we should water down courses to increase their pass rate, or tell students they are doing good work when they are in fact not. I have no doubt that this does occur, but this is not intrinsic to allowing all students who want to challenge themselves the opportunity to do so. I also believe that students who do not want to learn ought to be placed where they will not disrupt those who do. But again, these are different issues, really.
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Except that at least two people were interested enough to create long posts on the subject.
KoM, firstly, math and physics are extremely strong subjects, much more so than history or foreign languages. This is true in the among of funding and the prestige placed on them by schools, although not, perhaps, in the number of students taking highly advanced classes (although there are no highly advanced classes in history of foreign languages like there are in math.)
Secondly, I dislike the Scandinavian educational system when compared to the Gymnasium/Lyceum/Liceo/Grammar School system, which is fading all too fast, but your system appears to yield better results than the U.S. system.
But we risk over-focusing here, the problem is not in the specifics of courses, but in the general atmosphere of schools, which can be dangerously anti-intellectual. Funding for athletics is absurdly high; funding for libraries far lower. However, funding is not the issue, merely a symptomatic of it: the real issues here are twofold, the first is that schools are not focused on producing students ready to compete in the twenty-first century world, the second is that schools are producing students ready too ready to compete in the twenty-first century world. The second, more unusual, complaint is based on the fact that fashionable subjects, like economics and bioscience receive far more funding and prestige than equally important subjects such as history or English. We risk forgeting that, in the future, human languages, not binary will still be spoken, and human history will still matter.
The United States risks creating a society where university and secondary school professors have to be imported. This would actually be very beneficial, if only we were also producing an export crop. How many Americans teach art history at a liceo in Italy? Very few, as few have either the knowledge of art history or Italian needed for the post. On the other hand, my European history teacher was Romanian.
For a final example, the great scholars in my field, ancient history, have almost always been, with the exception of a few Germans, British or British-educated, becouse it is in Britian that the subject is considered worthy.
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I don't see anything wrong with creating a spin-off thread when you want to explore one particular issue that is getting lost in a larger thread. If nobody wants to talk about it, the new thread will simply fall into obscurity. Nobody is forced to read or reply.
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: I dislike the Scandinavian educational system when compared to the Gymnasium/Lyceum/Liceo/Grammar School system, which is fading all too fast, but your system appears to yield better results than the U.S. system.
Depends on what you are measuring. Different systems have different strengths. I would argue that, despite its legitimate weaknesses, no school system does as good a job of educating "the masses," and specifically of giving all students the opportunity to follow an academic track, than the US's.
quote: But we risk over-focusing here, the problem is not in the specifics of courses, but in the general atmosphere of schools, which can be dangerously anti-intellectual. Funding for athletics is absurdly high; funding for libraries far lower.
I agree with all of this. I don't really see this as evidence for your initial point, though. Rather than us overfocusing, I would say you are underfocusing, pulling in all sorts of varied symptoms with varied causes and ascribing it all to one cultural attitude.
quote:However, funding is not the issue, merely a symptomatic of it: the real issues here are twofold, the first is that schools are not focused on producing students ready to compete in the twenty-first century world, the second is that schools are producing students ready too ready to compete in the twenty-first century world.
I don't understand your second point. Can you rephrase it for me?
quote:The second, more unusual, complaint is based on the fact that fashionable subjects, like economics and bioscience receive far more funding and prestige than equally important subjects such as history or English.
In my experience this is simply not true.
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quote:How many Americans teach art history at a liceo in Italy? Very few, as few have either the knowledge of art history or Italian needed for the post. On the other hand, my European history teacher was Romanian.
I don't think this is a valid comparison. It makes sense that someone who grew up in Eurpoe would have an advantage teaching European History. A better question would be how many Americans are teaching American History in Europe? Although I would bet that the most common thing in any country to find someone from a different country teaching would be their native language.
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"pulling in all sorts of varied symptoms with varied causes and ascribing it all to one cultural attitude." I believe they are all part of a general cultural attitude, one based on anti-intellectualism.
My second point is that we spend too much time teaching what we think the twenty-first century will need, forgetting that basic human needs will not change.
EIJay, Art history is a pretty neutral subject in terms of experience, at least from a U.S./European outlook, as most galleries are located in either Europe or the U.S.
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Right, that's what I'm saying. You picked a pretty neutral subject as your example for very few Americans teaching it in Europe, but a not-at-all neutral subject (European History) for your example of a European teaching in America. That's why I don't think it's a good comparison.
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As far as too high a percentage of funds being given to athletics, I'd like to play devil's advocate: Nobody pays to watch students add or write an essay. Sports bring in a lot of money for most school systems, and any program that carries it's own weight deserves to be rewarded. Not to mention the fact that students who aren't planning to go to college often see finishing high school as basically useless. As the subjects taught become more and more abstract, too many stuidents look at what they're learning and think, "When am I going to use this?" But a chance to participate in the athletic programs (and maybe even get a scholarship out of it) keep people in school who would otherwise not be there.
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quote:Originally posted by Leroy: As far as too high a percentage of funds being given to athletics, I'd like to play devil's advocate: Nobody pays to watch students add or write an essay. Sports bring in a lot of money for most school systems, and any program that carries it's own weight deserves to be rewarded.
I believe last time sports funding came up, the idea that high school football turns a profit was debunked. Your point is arguably true at the college level, but not so at the high school level.
quote:But a chance to participate in the athletic programs (and maybe even get a scholarship out of it) keep people in school who would otherwise not be there.
This sounds implausible to me.
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quote: A society which considers total equality, rather than meritocracy, to be the goal, even at the expense of real progress, is doomed to fail.
Fail at what? You are like aka and the Jehovah's Witnesses, mucking up your point by pushing a doomsday scenario.
As to the thread, I'd rather have a thoughtful, diverse mediocrity, than a narrow meritocracy. With the former, you may not always be number 1 in a given field, but with the latter, you create moral blindspots and run the risk of going the way of the Nazies.
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My dad and brother are both high school football coaches at different schools. My dad checks on all of his players grades to make sure they will stay eligible. He has generally speaking almost all of his players make much better grades when they are in season, and when you would think they would have more time to study in the off season they do worse. An argument for funding high school athletics.
. My Dad coaches at a very good public school while my Brother coaches at a elite private school. The difference between the kids it painfully obvious. At the public school the kids do only what they have to and no more, so my Dad has to stay on top of them, not nearly as much as he did when he worked at a poor rural school. On the other hand at my brother's expensive private school he almost never has to say anything to his students, they are going to do all that is expected from them and more. I think it comes down to family expectations. At the private school the student’s families expect more from them. They expect them to get good grades, to behave in class, do their homework, so the students do it. While at the public school many of the students are only there because they have to be. Their families don’t expect much so the kids don’t do much. At the poor rural school half the kids didn’t have anyone in their family who understood the importance of education. In college I had many blue collar summer jobs and I can’t tell you how many times I heard something to the effect of: why do you want to go to college? You know what a degree and $1 will get you. A cup of coffee I
Sorry if I was off topic, but these are my rambling thoughts on the matter.
But I don't think that was the purpose of this thread. My Dad coaches at a very good public school while my Brother coaches at a elite privete school. The difference in kids it painfully obvious. At the public school the kids do only what they have to and no more. So my Dad has to stay on top of them, not nearly as much as he did when he worked at a rural school. On the other hand at my brother's expensive privite school he almost never has to say anything to his students, the are going to do all that is exspected from them and more.
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I wonder what, if any, studies have been done that don't just look at the schools and the level of education two different students are getting, but what roles their families play in their education. The stereotype of the smart Asian kid is rooted in the fact that their parents are fanatical about making sure the kids actually do all their homework and make them succeed in school.
Are we so sure that the majority of the problem with our education lies with the schools and not the parents? I think part of the problem is the fact that if it IS parents, then we really can't do anything about it, but legislators need to be doing something, so they continually attack schools.
Does anyone know of any studies that look at the effect of family, namely the influence and pressure from parents, has on the education of students across all socioeconomic boundaries and school districts, and locations?
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From my experience, the problem is that many parents feel uncomfortable telling and retelling their kids a big lie, that grades are the most important things in the world.
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I will point out, when it comes to kids in public vs. private schools, that elite private schools often do not LET you only do the "bare minimum."
At my high school, you HAD to apply to a four-year college. And you had to have all of your application stuff reviewed by the college counselor. So the whole way along, teachers and administrators were focusing on getting the kids to do extracurriculars, get decent grades, and so forth. I'm sure a large part of this was due to the fact that it was a much smaller school, and it prided itself on having 100% of graduates go immediately to a four-year college.
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I wish that were true at my school, last year, out of a class of aroung sixty, two went to community college and one joined the Air Force. This has not happened in years, and, although no one talked about it, the school was probably very embaressed, espescialy with only one Ivy League acceptance (and he ended up at U.V.A., not Cornell.)
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Your school was embarrassed, you think, because two students went to community college and one joined the airforce instead of going straight to a four-year college?!
If this is true, your school has a sick outlook.
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If you value a meritocracy, why would you disdain someone's choice not to go to a four-year college?
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Icarus, of course. I think that most understood that going to community college for two years and then to a music conservatory was acceptable, and we were very proud of a student who plans to spend a year in the Americorps. However, the school naturaly feels a sense of failure for each student that they do not send on the university.
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That's part of the problem right there. When did we decide everyone needs a college education? How did trades get so devalued?
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I don't think the school ought to. I think if the school does, it is selfishly thinking about its own reputation and not about the needs of the students. If I were in Texas, I would ask the name of your school and warn people away from it.
(And it's not an uncommon attitude among prep schools. They have to sell themselves, and at a point selling themselves can conflict with what's best for the students, and what's best for the students can take second place. I certainly felt that the prep school I attended fell into that trap quite a bit.)
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It's not that I wouldn't have gone to college. I'm sure I would've gone to college right out of high school either way.
But these people repeatedly told me that I would never get into any of the schools to which I applied (despite the fact that I had a very high GPA and was a National Merit Scholar). They made me feel horrible about myself, and in the end, I was accepted to every school AND offered big scholarships. If they think I'm donating any money to their school, they can kiss my ass.
quote:I believe last time sports funding came up, the idea that high school football turns a profit was debunked. Your point is arguably true at the college level, but not so at the high school level.
I don't believe it's even true on a college level, this discussion came up in one of my college classes and one person was asked to provide proof that college football actually makes money for the school, he came back and admitted few teams do actually turn a profit. Most of them are in the SEC and other conferences with huge television revenues.
But, high schools do tend to get a lot of outside booster support for athletics, not all of the cost of maintaining a football team is paid by the school. Our system recently built a new high school and athletic complex - the athletic complex was paid for largely with donated funds from individuals and businesses in the community.
quote:That's part of the problem right there. When did we decide everyone needs a college education? How did trades get so devalued?
What's funny is that people who do learn trades now often make more than those that are college educated, becuase trades are now becoming more valued due to the scarcity of qualified tradespeople. Here I'm speaking about the trades that require licensing and years of apprenticeship like electricians, plumbers, and finish carpenters. Most of the less-skilled trades like frame carpentry, painting, and roofing are still pretty low-paying.
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quote:I certainly felt that the prep school I attended fell into that trap quite a bit.
Of the 96 graduating students in our class, how many of them went to community college? 2/3rds, on or about?
I remember graduation, when they read aloud the school every student was going to, and I can almost feel our Jesuit elders wincing whenever "Miami Dade Community College" was mentioned.
I remember that only because I found it rather amusing. All those years of agressive teaching, six years of going to one of the most academically challenging schools in South Florida, and for what? I couldn't help but think that the teachers felt like they'd failed.
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quote:Originally posted by SC Carver: My Dad coaches at a very good public school while my Brother coaches at a elite private school. The difference between the kids it painfully obvious. At the public school the kids do only what they have to and no more, so my Dad has to stay on top of them, not nearly as much as he did when he worked at a poor rural school. On the other hand at my brother's expensive private school he almost never has to say anything to his students, they are going to do all that is expected from them and more. I think it comes down to family expectations. At the private school the student’s families expect more from them. They expect them to get good grades, to behave in class, do their homework, so the students do it. While at the public school many of the students are only there because they have to be. Their families don’t expect much so the kids don’t do much.
I think you are very wrong. The key is not private v. public; the key word is money. With the exception of religious private schools, the vast majority of students attending private schools come from families with quite a bit of it.
That means a student who isn't doing well can get a tutor -- or several tutors, if necessary; it means they are likely to get adequate nutrition on a consistent basis; it means they are unlikely to get yanked out of school for days or weeks at a time to help with family issues or harvesting crops. Even within the school itself, wealthy private schools are more likely to have full-time college counselors, academic advisers, school psychiatrists, etc.
Family expectations are only one piece of the puzzle.
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quote: At the public school the kids do only what they have to and no more, so my Dad has to stay on top of them, not nearly as much as he did when he worked at a poor rural school.
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Going to the air force is something that is noble and should be encouraged. I am seriously considering pursuing a career in military intelligence.
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rivka, actualy, I am afraid that the students who do worst at private schools, and probably at suburban public schools, are those from very wealthy backgrounds who feel they do not need to work hard. Students on scholarships (and, contrary to popular opinion, these are numerous) generally do better, and students whose parents have to scrape to send them to school often do best of all.
"When did we decide everyone needs a college education? How did trades get so devalued?" The irony is that, by makin unvirsities avaidable to almost anyone, we have both devalued a university education and made it indispensable. Jobs which would elsewhere not require a university education do here. In the U.S., a highschool diploma means nothing without at leas and A.A., in France or Germany, it means a great deal by itself.
We must make secondary school worth something, even if most Americans (gasp) do not go to a university.
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Nighthawk, many of us went to community college, but, as you noted, it was not because the school encouraged it. It was because, in their drive to be übercompetitive, they accepted students who were virtually all destined for stanines eight and nine, and then made C truly the average grade per class in that school. They also didn't offer very many honors classes, feeling that their regular classes were honors classes by anybody else's standards. They also offered very few AP classes, because their scheduling was too rigorous to make room for any but those that happened to be in core content areas. So our valedictorian had a GPA of what . . . 3.9? 4.1? Other valedictorians listed in the newspapers all had shiny GPAs like 5.4 and stuff. So they ended up making most of us unacceptable to the Harvard's and Yale's of the world.
But yeah, I definitely think the school did a lot of self-aggrandizement on the backs of the students, and put their reputation before anything else. Remember when Armando went to Columbus? He was told by a deacon there that they had had to put back together a great many boys who were "broken" by our school.
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I'm sure you're aware there are many studies out there showing corroboration between socioeconomic status and school success at every level. Do you have any showing otherwise for the subset of students attending private schools (prestigious private schools, even)?
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Icarus: that's somewhat odd, all the major universities I'm aware of (granted, just three: Cornell, IU, Washington University in Saint Louis) have regional recruiting officers who keep tabs on schools with peculiar standards, and provide approximate adjustments for admissions officers to make.
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We also had an amazing pair of full-time college counselors, although they left to go into private practice the year before I graduated. The new woman sucked and was evil and bitter.
But we didn't have valedictorians, and we could never put our class rank; no one would tell us. They would give us vague percentiles, but the colleges never objected if that was all they got.
*stabbing laptop touchpad*
We had plenty of honors and AP. In fact, I don't know of one person who hadn't taken a few AP courses before he/she graduated. It wasn't REQUIRED, but they would look down your nose at you and pressure you into doing it.
They were terribly annoyed that I decided to take genetics and organic chemistry senior year instead of AP Bio. Even though I'd already taken an AP science junior year and had two AP maths.
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fugu, I can cite experience only (which is, in this field, considerable) The best students at my school had parents who were teachers, military officers, police officers etc. They did, on average, much better than the children whose parents owned twelve office buildings or were c.e.o.s. The later type seemed to lack drive, perhaps reasoning that they were going to inheret money anyway.
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fugu, I'm not sure what to tell you. The school is internationally renowned, and yet I sat there at graduation as the schools we were attending were anounced, and it seemed as though the majority of us were attending Miami Dade.
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: rivka, actualy, I am afraid that the students who do worst at private schools, and probably at suburban public schools, are those from very wealthy backgrounds who feel they do not need to work hard.
Pel, I've heard the claim you are making before. But always anecdotally, and the studies I have seen (although admittedly, none recently) indicate otherwise -- at least on average. If you can link me to studies supporting your claim, I would love to read them.
(Seriously. This is absolutely the kind of stuff that affects my job, and the more I know the better!)
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How is your experience considerable? Experience with 60 (or even 600) people is not considerable. In fact, at a given school, experience with 6000 wouldn't be terribly meaningful. Only when you have samples across schools does it begin to matter.
Not only that, but I suspect you are demonstrating sample bias. I predict that, even if such a relationship exists at your school, it is minimal. I predict you are noticing when people who do well are of 'average' background but not when people who do well are of a higher socioeconomic background, and noticing when people who do badly are of higher socioeconomic background but not when they are of 'average' background.
Icarus: I suspect the AP tests and such were of bigger impact than the GPA issue.
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Is it possible that some of your classmates overreached? Sometimes the best students only apply to the best schools, but are not admitted.
Sometimes that happens to the top (meaning, most ambitious) students in any given school. Since your school was so prestigious, many more students may have applied and expected admittance to first-tier schools, only to be rejected.
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fugu: If recruiting officers came anywhere near our school, the students were certainly not aware of it. And I don't know of anyone that was accurately guided by our college counselor.
They wanted to see every student go to an Ivy League school, whether he was worthy of it or not. I know of one person that wanted to go to Yale desperately and didn't last more than a year there. He wasn't ready for it, it wasn't the school for him, but the counserlor's eyes lit up every time the word "Yale" was brought up in conversation. You could even hear the "oohs" and "aahs" when it was announced in the graduation. They did nothing to try to convince him to go to a place that would be more appropriate for him. Not to mention that he was attempting to study a field that Yale didn't even have a major for at the time. It was Yale!!!
I was coaxed to some degree to go to University of Miami because it was the University of Miami. It was a mistake on my part, as UM did terribly in the curriculum I was pursuing, but that didn't matter at the time. It was as close to Ivy League as one can get without leaving Miami.
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rivka, I cannot, nor do I deny that your claim is true, on average.
fugu, the valedictorians are, in my memory, respectfully, the son of a college professor (salutatorian son of English teacher), the daughter of an English teacher (salutatorian son of Air Force officer) and the daughter of a police officer (not sure of salutatorian.)
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And it's of note that our school only allowed us to take TWO AP courses, and even then only in our senior year. I know of students in public schools that have not only started to take AP courses in the 10th grade, but have taken upwards of SIX AP courses in their senior year.
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In my case, I scored a 1490 the first time I took the SAT (1600 the second time, but that's actually neither here nor there). I was a National Merit Scholar and a National Hispanic Scholar. And I had a 2.1 GPA. I only took two AP courses: Calculus and English Lit.
I only applied to two universities. Both were local. Both offered me scholarships--one a full ride, one a full ride that was a combination of various funds and, I think, loans. I don't know what would have happened if I had applied to a wider variety of schools, because I didn't. I think it's probably safe to say I would have gotten in to most state schools, but probably not so with the higher powered schools in the country. But it's actually not the point. The point Nighthawk and I are making is a tangential one to the discussion: we were talking about how many college prep schools don't keep the best interests of their students in mind. It's entirely likely that most of those students--most of whom, if you think about it, outranked me--didn't get into four year schools because they simply didn't apply to them at all. We were all burned out, and we were all destroyed. We spent six years being constantly compared, constantly having to measure up, and watching our best friends not make it. Then the school pointed to our SATs and such as evidence of their amazing educational prowess. I contend that they only admitted kids who were going to get those fantastic scores in the first place, and weeded out the weakest of even those. And my point in bringing this up (or rather, Nighthawk's, I think) is not to address what a curriculum ought to be, but to back up my claim that high powered prep schools very often don't have the interests of their students in mind--as I feel is the case of his school, if his school is ashamed of kids who go to community college. Note that the symptoms of our two schools are very different, but the underlying idea that the school's "glory" rests on the achievements of the kids is the same.
P.S. fugu, after 12 years in the educational establishment, I need to tell you that college counseling and advisement has changed drastically since the time Nighthawk and I were in high school. My school has a big time advising center, with college visits, interviews on campus, and all sorts of special visitors who give kids advice. When we were in school, we had a college counselor, but she pretty much worked alone and didn't have anything like the kind of resources or information kids get today. So keep in mind that some of the things you know were likely different back then. (And I don't mean that to sound at all condescending; I'm just pointing out something that you might not have thought of.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Actually, these days it's conceivable to take AP courses in middle school. Not common, but it does occur.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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My school only allows one in tenth grade and three a year from then on. Mind you, I am taking four tests in May, but from two formal courses and two independent study.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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