This may date me, but when I was in high school we took 5-6 classes at a time. My kids take 7-8 at a time. I don’t think the total amount of work is necessarily different, but I wonder if having more classes to juggle is making high school more stressful than it used to be. S16 doesn’t seem to be effected by it, but I think S18 may be. He may need extra help staying organized in the future. Does anyone else wonder if taking that many classes at once may not be a good idea?
Not only are there more classes, but our state keeps adding new ones that are graduation requirements. That fact, combined with the new methods for assessing teacher performance, mean that what used to be gut classes when we were in school now actually require quite a bit of work and studying. Kids are taken by surprise and are failing classes like health and driver’s ed. Heck, now even band and phys ed have final exams at our high school! I have heard that the “Personal Financial management” course, which is a relatively new state graduation requirement for us, has tripped up some decent students. Hint: it’s more than just learning to balance a checkbook, so you had better take it somewhat seriously. Mature and organized kids are always going to be fine, but some of the more average kids are feeling some pressure, I think.
I’ve had the oppposite experience: I took 7 courses in jr. high & high school (in the 70’s). DD (2011 graduate) could take at most 6 classes and students were expected to take a study period as one of their 6 “classes”.