To IB or not to IB ... That is the question

j07
Sat, 23 Sep 2006 20:27:47 +0000

I have been quietly observing on this thread for a while now and I feel that it is OK for me to add my two-cents.

I have been doing IB for 7 years now. How, you may ask? I originally started in the IB Middle Years Program when I was in 6th grade. I was 11 years old. The Middle Years Program doesn’t have tests, but you do have to perform a fair amount of extra work in every single one of your classes. For example, I had to be filmed participating in my sport, in addition to writing deep reflections of my practices, creating imaginary workouts for imaginary people to reflect my understanding of physical education at age 14, and keeping lengthy journals of my sports activities. And that was all for PE!! I only had to do 30 hours a year of community service, however, which seems miniscule compared to the 150 required CAS hours for IB Diploma. I also completed a “Personal Project” which is like the baby brother of an Extended Essay. For mine, I wrote a children’s book.

Now I am a senior in high school and an IB Diploma candidate. Of my graduating class of 468, there are only 24 people completing IB Diploma. At the beginning of junior year, there were 58 people on the list who were anticipated to continue the IB Diploma track.

I believe that I have the right to assert my opinions concerning IB considering that I am fairly entrenched in it.

IT’S NOT THAT BAD.

Yes, I am stressed out occasionally. But I am not stressed out solely because of IB. I am stressed out because I am applying to college, I am in 6 IB courses, I am student-body vice-president, I participate in Debate tournaments nearly every weekend, I am heavily involved in at least 3 other clubs, I am a varsity swimmer, my parents are demanding, and I work 15 hours a week. No exaggeration.

I am one of 3 IB Diploma kids who plays a varsity sport. I am one of 2 who has a huge leadership position (one kid is senior class pres.). I am the only IB Diploma kid who has an after-school job.

And I am not the one who is the most stressed out by far.

IB Diploma in itself, however, is not as bad as it is made out to be. Yes, it’s a lot of work. Yes, a lot of that work is difficult. Yes, the exams are hard to prepare for and no, we don’t get as much college credit as AP kids do. The solution to that? Take both!

Last year I was in IB Psychology. As mentioned earlier in this board, the IB tests are entirely essay-based and have no multiple choice. The AP Test, despite its “essays,” are virtually the opposite. Two weeks before the AP Psych test, my IB teacher gave us some packets to study.

I studied for two hours the night before the AP Psych test and got a 5.

A week or two later, I took the IB Psych test. My first part, which was two hours, produced 18 pages (9 front and back) of essays. My second day of the test produced another 7. With extremely cramped hands, an exhausted mind, and 25 pages worth of great essay, I received a 6 (out of 7) on my IB Psych test.

Someone posted about 70 posts ago about how she had been bored out of her mind in her first 10 years of schooling. I cannot relate more. For the first 11 years of my schooling I constantly found myself looking around my classrooms and wondering why I was being forced to learn things that I already knew how to do. Up until my sophomore or junior year of high school I had never TRULY been challenged by anything. And it wasn’t because “I wasn’t challenging myself.” It was because things came easily, and there was nothing that I could do to change that.

TOK (Theory of Knowledge) is my favorite class this year. For the first time in my entire life in a public school system, I am being required to actually think. I am reading Plato. I am writing essays about the strenghts and weaknesses of belief and knowledge rather than writing essays about my summer vacation. And I am happy because of it.

I don’t love IB. In fact, I don’t even particularly like it. I think that there is a lot of subtle political propogation in IB, and I choose to ignore a lot of it. I sometimes believe that IB values my extensive vocabulary more so than my intelligence (and I apologize for sounding arrogant just then, I know I did), and that is OK. I can write well if that’s what they want.

I am a bad example of an IB student. My EE was assigned last March. I procrastinated. And procrastinated. And procrastinated. In fact, my first rough draft was due last Friday, September 15. I wrote my entire EE (all 3997 words of it) on Friday morning, in about 6 hours.

And I turned it in, and the response from my “mentor” and English teacher? They knew it was a rush job, but they were proud because it was well-written. This is a flippant and arrogant way to look at IB, yes. And yes, I cannot procrastinate like that in college. And yes, this kind of behavior will come back and bite me someday. I am well aware of that. I am also aware of the fact that I spent 6 months NOT stressing about my EE and got the same response as all the kids who did spend 6 months stressing about it.

As for CAS hours? I never think about them.
Instead, I went to Nashville and spent a week working at an innercity Boys & Girls club for 8 hours every day and gave some kids who never get loved some loving. I went to the Texas-Mexico border and helped re-roof the house of a darling little man who spoke no English but was fluent in the language of gratitude. I went to the same trip the next summer, as a junior counselor, and herded little 13-year-olds up a ladder to a roof similar to the one I had re-roofed the year before, and I taught them how to line up shingles and how to hammer. I went to Marble Falls, TX, and designed and constructed a set of stairs for a family who had been leaping 4 feet into mud puddles for the past 16 years to get down from their porch. I went to Honduras, and taught 14-year-old kindergarten teachers how to teach their students, and I rode in the back of a pick-up truck for 7 hours straight to visit remote villages and serve.

And then I wrote up my CAS hours. And none of my CAS hours were futile or done for the purpose of fulfilling CAS.

This post is all over the place. I am currently running a 101 fever, so that may be part of the reason that I am clearly lacking lucidity.

IB is only bad if it governs your life. I have not and will not ever allow IB to be the most important thing in my life, and that’s why it’s not that bad.

So to all the parents who think their children won’t live fun teenage years because of IB, I hate to say that I think you’re mistaken. IB isn’t the best-designed program, and it isn’t probably the best way to spend time, but it additionally is not as bad as it is made out to be.

So from a girl who has done IB for 7 years (and has never contemplated suicide because of it), I am free to any questions from any parents anywhere about anything IB. I consider myself pretty well-informed.