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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,245 Likes: 1
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,245 Likes: 1 |
Agreed. So much may depend upon the hypothesis being tested, the questions posed to participants, the duration of the research study, and the number of participants. I believe the two studies linked above had under 200 participants, which is a tiny fraction of facebook users.
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640 |
...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." 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. Though I suppose that the greater good is probably not a factor in the thinking of many of our society's hothousing snowplow parents as they shove their children through the right AP classes, the right major at the colleges, and the right jobs. The goal is not to help a person develop into a thinking adult, but a success machine who, externally anyway, has done everything "right" while he complies so as to get paid. Never mind how many of these people are withering inside. No, just push that unhappy thought away. 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. The NYT catches up to our discussion about a year later  Taking Summer School to Get Ahead, Not Catch Up By KYLE SPENCER New York Times August 16, 2016 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.
The practice even has its own lexicon: Students who are planning to repeat a class at their regular high schools are “previewing”; those who are using summer classes to skip ahead and qualify for higher-level subjects are seeking “forward credit.”
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Many of the classes are offered at private schools, and they report a growing number of attendees. At the Hun School of Princeton, N.J., a 102-year-old boarding school, 187 students enrolled in its five-week summer school, up about 16 percent from 161 in 2014.
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.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,297
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,297 |
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.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,297
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,297 |
The whole point of the article is the stress these kids are under because of all that extra work.
It's nice that in your family, this isn't the case. But that does't mean you can extrapolate from there.
I live in an area that's rife with helicopter/lawnmower/tiger parents. I've met them at school, in the gym, at the ice rink, in the park...everywhere. To these parents, A- grades are Cs and Bs are Fs. The cubs spend the summer in the library doing AP coursework. Unless they're too young, in which case they spend the summer in math camp or multi-subject summer school. They have to be on multiple sports teams (often at the same time) and reach a high level or they have failed. The parents crab at the coaches because the kid's scores aren't high enough. For these parental types, anything less than WINNING and getting into a tier one college means failure and letting the parents down.
And so we have a high teen suicide rate and high levels of mental illness.
It's great that your daughter doesn't suffer from this problem, but that doesn't make it any less real for many kids, so please don't be so dismissive by citing your own experience or your own wishes in the face of the demands of 5 AP classes.
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