Precisely.

Believe me, when your child is the one that can manage that AP load handily, and still wants to discuss things in more depth/detail, it makes them FEW friends with the hot-house/TigerCubs.

Those kids all know that it's a COMPETITION first, and about learning only second (if at all).

This is a real problem, because it means that it's no longer appropriate to focus on the intellectual aspects of the learning community-- because that might make some of the kids feel bad, or worse, LOOK bad by comparison. We can't have that. TigerCubs know it, too-- and they can be fairly nasty about it themselves if they know that they are signing up to catch it at home for not being #1 anymore.

I have zero problem with kids that aren't PG, EG, or even garden variety GT being in an academic placement with my DD. What I have a problem with is that student raising a hand to complain about the pace, or to elbow my kid to 'hush' about a contradiction in the textbook, or an interesting gap in the historical record... discuss a definition, etc. Look, I know that this is technically out-of-level for the class as it perhaps currently exists. But still-- "Honors/AP" ought to mean something, and I think it not unreasonable that if some students find that pace/level inaccessible, that a different placement might be better for them, rather than telling my DD that she MUST conform, or insisting that the class be "made" to be accessible for those less able students so that the differences between them and the HG+ students in them is somehow less apparent to colleges, universities, and scholarship-awarding organizations.

That's how the game works now, and it's revolting.



Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.