Thank you for being the voice of reason in this calamity! I fully agree to this, as it is both valid that unknowing (in the sense of what courses to choose) freshmen take these courses without prior knowledge to what they encompass, and mostly, I repeat, MOSTLY, bring down national averages in AP scores.
APs are influential for a general knowledge of the world, and if never hurts you to know a little more about what it going on, how it is being done, and for what purpose it serves.
So please, skieurope and collegemom3717, please recognize the errors in your arguments and understand that it is quite easy to earn a 5 on most AP tests (exceptions include the arts and language, due to personal bias on quality of art submissions and level of pronunciation in a language) as recognize by this individual, tangentline.