A friend recently told me that his son is taking four AP classes this year — this teen is a whiz so he’s up to the challenge.
The dad mentioned to me that his son chose not to take AP Lit, opting instead for the “general population” English course. The class, he says, has turned out “to be a joke.”
The material is easy. Most students are indifferent, and the teacher doesn’t ask much of them.
As high school freshmen, my twins are now grappling with the decision over whether to take AP courses in their sophomore year. While AP offerings are limited in 10th grade, I am tempted to tell my kids to take every class offered and for which they can meet the admissions criteria.
My reason: I have been disappointed in the learning challenges posed in the “general population” classes this year at their high school. The classes are crowded, and the range of abilities and attention spans would frustrate even the most experienced teachers, never mind new ones.
Students in the “general population” classes complain to me about classmates who act out to the level that they derail instruction. My son — who walks by a general science class en route to his advanced one — told me recently how wild that class is compared to his and wonders why it’s allowed to be rowdy. (I am not sure if he was speaking out of dismay or envy.)
However, the other side of channeling kids into advanced classes is this note from a Cobb parent:
“My son is a sophomore. He is currently failing honors chemistry and I just want him moved to the on-level or regular chemistry class at the start of the new semester in January. The school administration is telling me ‘absolutely no.’ It is not like I am asking to move him in the middle of the semester or to move him to another class just because we don’t like the teacher. They told me that they are keeping failing students in these courses all year long no matter how poorly they are doing. I am appalled at the situation as my son is not learning, and it is affecting his attitude toward school. Note that he has good grades (A’s and B’s) in all his other courses.”
I listened to a panel last week where foreign teens studying at American high schools shared their impressions of our educational system. All four agreed that much less is expected of them here than in their home countries of Brazil, Germany, Australia and Korea. American teachers spoon feed their students and don’t push them to tackle complexities in the material, the panelists said.
The quartet noted a wide gap in what is asked of American students in advanced high school classes and those in general classes. When Jenny Jung came to the United States after attending middle school in Korea, she was placed in general level math at first.
“What I was learning in algebra, I had learned two years ago in Korea,” she said. Jenny was shocked when a classmate asked for help during a math test and the teacher walked her through the problem. “In Korea, that’s unimaginable,” she said.
Of course, another observation of the foreign teens was how American parents hover over high school students and make educational choices for them.
And I may end up proving their point when I push my kids into AP courses next year.
