As the competition to get into the most selective colleges intensifies, high-achieving students are attending academic summer schools to turbocharge grade-point averages or load up on the A.P. courses seen as gateways to top-tier schools.
Ten years ago, the nearby Lawrenceville School did not offer for-credit summer classes. Instead, it hosted mostly sports and recreation-related programs from outside organizations. This year, more than 40 students enrolled in the school’s accelerated math courses, as part of a rigorous, four-hour-a-day program that covers a full year’s curriculum in six weeks. It is one of several academic programs offered at the school during the summer.
This is what I was getting at last year. Of course most or all kids need a push now and then. But the approach above means being shoved from behind and dragged from in front. It doesn't help a child develop into a thoughtful, productive adult with good mental health, but rather seems almost designed to manufacture an unhappy person who's taught to check boxes as a way of getting ahead (which is defined as earning more money and having more status). I know so many people who focus on status (rather than doing well as an outcome doing something they enjoyed and doing it well), and so many make themselves so very unhappy --- mostly because there's always someone whose Ferarri is nicer than yours or whose kid's school successes are greater than your kid's.
This kind of me-first/expediency-based thinking has got this country into a very difficult position. A case in point is that it gives us classroom practices that focus on test scores over meaningful education, and on checking boxes over developing thoughtful adults. Gifted kids are proficient; check the box and give them extra worksheets.
Geometry in six weeks over the summer? Sorry, no. The subject is far too rich and far too deep for that. But the fast food version, where you memorize a bunch of processed, standardized triangle theorems? Absolutely. Check the box and move on to algebra 2 in 9th grade! Get ahead! Just don't be surprised when the student gets college and falls apart because s/he can't solve a problem that's not on the McMath menu.
