...take unofficial AP courses over the summer, so that a course load of 5-6 AP courses during the school year will be more manageable -- they will have already seen some of the material.
Our children are in Russian School of Math so they can get an "edge" in math. My eldest son, a rising 8th grader, has taken two AOPS courses in Python programming and will take more programming classes before high school. In high school he will have an edge over students for which AP Computer Science is their first programming experience. I don't think we are doing anything wrong.
Five or six AP courses sounds like a recipe for sleep deprivation and non-stop studying. As for the summer courses, the volume of homework in the AP classes is a large part of the sleep deprivation, and a summer course won't make that go away.
But what strikes me even more is the idea that some parents are driving their children so as to give them an "edge."
Don't many parents move to places with the best public schools they can afford or send their children to private school in order to improve the prospects of their children in life? I wonder why after-schooling should be singled out as especially mercenary.
To me, this is a clear statement about the creation of a success machine over the development of a person with a meaningful education and the perspective to use it for the greater good.
I think the greater good is achieved by people pursuing their interests in a market economy just as often as it is by people consciously pursuing the "greater good". Whether one believes this is related to one's political views.
Thus, the summer or enrichment class isn't chosen as a way for to develop the child's mind or his inner self, but to give him an edge in a competition that has a large element of artificiality at its roots, anyway.
It can be chosen for both reasons.
