I don’t understand the whole discussion about taking organic chemistry before AP chemistry. That’s a strange prerequisite. I wonder what is skipped in the regular curriculum and what is taught in place of what is dropped. More importantly, what is accomplished? AP chemistry can be a challenging class but I don’t think it’s ridiculously difficult, especially for a smart kid. Most of those kids who took organic chemistry would probably get an A in the class without spending their summer in school. Is the point to have a college application that shows they took organic chemistry? I find it hard to believe that is the difference between acceptance and rejection to Harvard?
Our AP class did not include any extra organic chemistry modules, but teachers offered an optional module on organic chemistry to interested students. Some of these wanted to learn the material to complete in the chemistry Olympiad, others in order to have a knowledge base for a science project, and still others because they were curious and wanted to learn more for the sake of learning. Some did not find AP chemistry especially challenging and really just wanted to learn more.
A few students from our high school have taken organic chemistry at a local college after completing AP chemistry.
I think the point of all the press about pathologies is to say that even the superstars can’t handle it now. Sure, in the dark ages, there were those kids who tried to burn the candle at both ends. However, that was a choice (perhaps fueled by personal insecurity or unusual ambition), but was not at all a requirement to be an ordinary student in the honors track. These days summer homework alone for honors and AP classes would choke a buffalo, and in fact, that’s the point: to weed out the faint of heart and those who need a normal sleep schedule.
I have said everything I can say about this topic, and more than once. Perhaps those who are having trouble understanding the seriousness of the problem have kids who attend schools where it IS possible for a bright kid to go the max and handle it just fine. There are places where AP’s are a breeze–like the school of the poster a few pages back who only had to write 3 papers all year for AP English. I know that the parochial schools around here seem to do AP’s that way also. In contrast, D has 3 short essays due every single English class (though it was usually only 2 per class the first quarter), and of course the required volumes of reading to write those essays.
Nothing in the school environment has been immune from escalation. Yesterday D got a large research paper and visual assignment for health that’s due next class. You know, that silly course that smart kids used to be able to sleep through and still get 100’s? No more. When D1 had health 4 years ago, the exact same project was THE big project for the whole term. For D2, it’s homework due the next class. Crazy!
Our school district does give quite a bit of summer homework for honors and AP classes, and sometimes as a result, kids do drop the class. No buffaloes getting choked but it is quite a bit of work, including essays and on-line discussion boards for the massive amount of reading, all of which is graded. We often had to make sure we had internet access if we went away during the summer.
My kids never experienced the type of AP class discussed upstream. Each class was a lot of work, and a great deal of independent learning. I am glad my daughter had some stress, otherwise she would have been completely unprepared for the rigors of her college. @TheGFG I do not doubt your story. I just don’t understand specifically the AP Chem situation.
As an aside, I know a student from a small rural school district who only had an opportunity to take a few AP classes. She is really struggling her freshman year of college. I think it’s because she never experienced this type of courseload and maybe doesn’t know how to learn on her own.
“You can find it in the Midwest (even though PizzaGirl routinely tells us folks there don’t give a darn about the Ivies). And I’m sure you can find it in the South, too.”
That’s not what I said. I bet New Trier has a good amount in common with theGFG’s school district.
It was a lot of years ago and I am not a science person, so I am sorry I don’t recall the specifics. However, there was a girl in D’s class whose father is a science professor at Rutgers and whose mom I was friendly with then. I do know that my D was not mistaken that there were large chunks of material that were not being taught in the AP Chem class, yet it was expected that the kids had learned it previously even though the material had not been covered in Chem 1. This gentlemen was very angry about it and complained to the head of the department. He got nowhere, and just found a grad student to regularly tutor his own D. My D tagged along for a few sessions, which was all we could afford.
Edited to add: The summer chem class for last summer was listed in the course brochure under the category of classes “for advancement,” which I think is really odd because all the others are ones just like those offered during the school year, eg. Algebra I, Biology 1. So I don’t know what regular class in the course curriculum organic chem would replace. We just have different levels of Chem I and then AP. The other category of courses were “enrichment” courses.
My apologies PizzaGirl. I missed that.
@TheGFG regarding the chemistry course, then, you have absolutely no evidence that any organic chemistry summer course was the reason your daughter and her friend couldn’t manage the work. It sounds like some independent work was required, and your friend the professor didn’t like that and tried the customer service route and was rebuffed (likely at least partly because the class was doable by most of the recommended kids).
Furthermore, from your other post - not true, by definition, that the “top” kids can’t manage. Your kids couldn’t manage. I’m sorry you couldn’t pull them off that path in that case if they were so unhappy.
@mom2and YES the parents have to step in and act like parents. My kids might say “everyone else is eating the bacon in the cafeteria”. If it’s a family value of ours to keep kosher, then that’s called parenting. Even if it means my kids aren’t totally matched to the “school culture”.
@TheGFG: “that even the superstars can’t handle it now.”
^^The problem is how you define superstar. Is it the kid who scores in the top 1% of the SAT? The kid who is an Olympic-level sportsman? The kid who publishes a novel? The kid who finds a genetic marker for cancer? The kid who supports his single-parent family of six on two minimum wage jobs?
If so, you are describing to the elusive “hook” the elite colleges seek. By definition, there aren’t very many authentic superstars who have a natural hook. Let’s be clear. The authentic superstars are not the problem. They’ve always existed. The current rat race is not the result of superstars suddenly appearing out of nowhere, in large droves, contributing to a suicide cluster heretofore unrivaled.
It’s the 99% we should be worrying about. The majority of kids fall into the not-a-natural-superstar category. That’s includes the kids represented by nearly everyone posting on this thread. As parents, we have to own the problem: We all want our kids to be superstars with extreme sports hooks or extreme academic hooks, whether it comes natural or not. But it isn’t going to happen without a steep price.
Don’t pay the price. Or pay the price. It’s your choice. But don’t blame the system.
New Trier is highly competitive, but I don’t think it is nearly as bad as WWP is described. It does not have the racial divide of WWP, and, unlike Rutgers, UIUC as well as a number of large state schools nearby are considered desireable schools to go to for high achieving students.
It is easy to say fretful, but if the school environment requires so much outside pep or extras it is not easy to say no to a kid Especially if the kid insists and is sure she can handle it. I know parents who have tried to get their super achievers to take it down a notch (drop to college prep in one area, take an easier elective instead of another AP) and the kids felt the parents didn’t believe in them. You can’t know a priori if the kid will succeed and handle it easily, handle it but with stress that disrupts the entire family, or not handle it at all. That is why I object to a school culture that requires outside classes or very high levels of effort for every single honors or AP class.
It is not necessarily the parent that wants their kid to be a superstar, sometimes it is the kid that has decided that the super elites are his or her goal. While there may be some exaggeration in reports of stress or requirements, the reality is that the schools can place reasonable limits without boring those incredibly few kids that need more.
That is INSANE. I was a Literature major in college, and I didn’t have to do that much writing on a monthly basis, much less daily… College level Lit classes will have 1 - or 2 at most - papers for the entire semester. You spend most of the semester reading, taking notes, and developing your paper topic and thesis statement…
(The only class I did copious amounts of daily writing for was creative writing workshops that I took as electives. )
My D is currently enrolled in AP Lit., and they are supposed to keep a “journal” about their readings, basically jotting down their initial impressions, etc. They’re also on block scheduling so it’s not everyday, and D devotes about ten minutes to it, it’s supposed to be “freeform” writing…
I think they have 3 papers for the entire year to do.
They also write some timed essays in class. But not everyday.
You seem very antagonistic toward me, fretfulmother. In quite a few posts you have been accusatory and seem to be implying sour grapes or parental delusion. Go ahead and attribute deficiencies to my Stanford and Dartmouth grads (and D’s chem friend who graduated as top student in her neuroscience dept. at Rutgers and is in med school now) and there still remains plenty of other evidence that something is wrong in the culture of certain communities. Not just in Palo Alto, but in Irvington too. Not just in WWP, but in many surrounding NJ districts like Hopewell, Pennington, and South Brunswick where there have been recent parent protests via presentations at their respective BOE meetings and on social media sites. Did you see the link I posted upthread showing some parents complaining their kids are regularly up until 2 AM? They were being interviewed in front of a middle school in their town, so one can assume their children are not even in high school yet and are already overburdened. Please note they are Indian parents, so not exactly the typical population who would be adverse to hard work or who would tolerate academic deficiency for very long. I may be lying or deluded, but are the doctors lying about the health effect they’re seeing? Do the suicide rates lie?
I agree wholeheartedly @mom2and. The superstar kids are as much at risk as the kids who are over their heads in their accelerated classes and over the top ECs. In fact, they may be even more at risk. Think of the many, many perfectionist, high achieving kids out there who internalize the unreachable standards of their environment. A lone parent urging balance doesn’t have the power of the child’s peers or of the school community. It’s just not so simple to opt out any more than it would be to stop driving because you don’t like the aggressive driving on your local roads and how it affects you. I am in no way suggesting that parents should give up trying to support their children or impart their values. Not at all. I’m only puzzled why there are so many on this thread who can’t accept that there are school environments that foster unreasonable stress. ** Stress that affects everyone in the community. ** To be clear, I don’t blame the schools and I don’t have the answers. But the idea that we can’t even admit that there’s a problem is more than a bit troubling.
@Zinhead, I appreciate your honesty. I don’t agree with you but at least you lay out the issue clearly and with transparency. If every parent feels the way you do, they start guiding their children into the extreme hook activities earlier and earlier. Then they look around and see that the other parents are doing the same. I’ve written before that there are public high schools in my area where there are between 50-60 NMSFs every year (out of classes that are between 450-500) and where the ** mean ** SAT is 2000. So they take it up a notch and secretly ease their child into something even more extraordinary. In my area, that means leaning on connections to develop an Intel project with the child or to establish a foundation and then create research opportunities for the child to further the aims of said foundation or to take the child out of school entirely for some period of time to develop a sport. For those of you who don’t live in districts like this, you’re thinking, oh come on, that’s one or two kids. No. It’s become more typical than not. Parents are desperate to create superstar kids.
And, as I’ve said before, it doesn’t end when these kids leave high school. Google the names Luke Tang and Madison Holleran. This is not about holding bright kids back from learning. It’s about easing the toxic and competitive environment in school districts like WWP and creating a healthier childhood and adolescence for everyone.
@TheGFG - I am sorry for sounding antagonistic.
You are correct that I am upset when it seems that you tell exaggerated versions of what your kids experienced in school (“they had to translate Kafka!” without telling us if it was a small sentence or two to illustrate grammar, which I’ve heard of in APLang; “they all had to take an expensive secret summer class!” when it was not the case at all).
I think it takes advantage of an internet forum where we generally believe stories as stated, if you exaggerate to make your points. And it makes me question the next story - is it really “three essays” daily, or is it three paragraphs in a journal?
And I do not think it is ok to blame the school, the teachers, “Asian” families, and other factors for your own children’s placements and performances. I dislike the racism and stereotyping (“kneeling on rice” Really?). I also am personally offended that you characterize teachers who assign independent work as “not teaching” or “not knowing the material”.
But how do you know I’m lying? You have no proof that what I claim was not the case at all. And they had to translate two of Kafka’s short meditations. Here’s part of her work, which I will leave up for a few minutes and then erase for privacy reasons:
My translation of Kafka’s Prometheus with annotations:
As for the kneeling on rice story, it is also true and I shared it on another thread.
Please let me know some of you have seen it, so I can remove it.
Ok, I erased it. Apology requested.
Yes, I saw it, and found it illustrative, and marked it “helpful”. I think it is a complex assignment, but not out of the bounds of a reasonable AP level English class homework. Thank you for giving me the chance to see it.