<p>Normally I browse CC for the sole purpose of getting a sneak preview of the upcoming class, but while I was home on spring break, I ran across this little bit of news that I thought the CC community would find interesting.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06052/658673.stm%5B/url%5D">http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06052/658673.stm</a></p>
<p>There is a really heated debate going on over the validity of the IB programme at a neighboring district. Apparently the school board cut the program because they were overbudget and said it needlessly duplicated the AP program. One school board member said it went against "Judeo Christian values." Things have been getting ugly too. That article is older, the actual lawsuit has been filed and some of the school board member have been receiving death threats. My school didn't have the IB programme, so I'm just throwing this out there for discussion.</p>
<p>Wow, that's rather...interesting.</p>
<p>IB may murder souls and kill immune systems but I fully support it. There is so much you get out of IB. For example, my silly World Literature III class I took freshmen year gave me the short and sweet "poor Trotsky, bad Stalin, awww Lenin" brain on denial/crack version of the Russian Revolution. The exact same teacher I had freshmen year is teaching us IB 20th Century Topics this year and ummm wow. I just stared at the IB text book in a daze (which, by the way, does an amazing job of actually listening all the different historians opinions on causes and the trends in common historian beliefs on a topic, and giving like every single POV). I am furious to think that the garbage we learned in freshmen year is acceptable for every other student in our school to know before graduating. I mean, we were basically lied to freshmen year. </p>
<p>I'd definitely say IB is liberal. Not left/right wing liberal (though my classes are always left wing liberal cause I live in Cali) but liberal in terms of being a very different method of teaching.</p>
<p>IB can be used in every aspect of schooling. I do OPVL on EVERYTHING now. I was sitting in English and my teacher wrote some sentence on the board and I completely started talking about it's bias and values and the origin. How many high school students are urged to think about the authors of their books? You can't get through IB without saying or writing the phrase "There is a Western bias" somewhere. To have actual American students be able to recognize their own biases is quite an incredible thing actually. </p>
<p>I'd be ****ed if they took my IB away...</p>
<p>What about it duplicating the AP program?</p>
<p>AP isn't at all like IB, personally. I think AP still suffers from it's very American outlook on subjects. That's not really a big deal in things like math or science (my IB math class also acts as an AP Calc class), but in terms of English and History, they are so different.</p>
<p>I think in terms of History, English, some aspects of math and science, the unqiue international perspectives on art/theatre (for Theatre class you are required to do research commissions on topics totally distant from you culturally and in usually in time), plus Theory of Knowledge (which teaches you so much and makes you dizzy), and the skills you get from the extended essay writing...Yeah, it's not at all like AP. It offers a lot more, and I think they should weed out AP instead of IB...</p>
<p>Plus does AP even have oral components like IB does? IB really preps you in almost every single aspect you could ever need prep in.</p>
<p>Just my very biased opinion though.</p>
<p>IB taught me how to B U L L S H I T. This skill is absolutely essential in college (especially humanities classes)</p>
<p>IB therefore I BS!</p>
<p>Yes...BSing is one of the greatest arts IB can teach a person. Didn't I mention that earlier...</p>
<p>"IB really preps you in almost every single aspect you could ever need prep in."</p>
<p>Aspects including oral skills, written skills, BSing, ultimate procrastinating, time management (or better known as the priority method), talking people down from ledges, the ability to make you doubt your very existance and purpose in life on the spot, your ability to find purpose/limitations/value in everything, understanding that even your understanding of the word biased is biased...</p>
<p>I'm sure there are more I will think of later...</p>
<p>So is it better/worse/equivalent/too different than AP?</p>
<p>fiddledd, wait until you get to college. You'll be surprised how much IB pays off, even beyond what you mentioned. </p>
<p>AP prepares you (relatively) well for academics, but it doesn't prepare you well in the sense that AP students generally aren't used to being put to the grindstone like IB students. Last semester we had to write a 10 page min. research paper in each of our three classes due on the same day. The IB kids got them knocked out in two or three days. The AP kids whined about it and had to hustle to get theirs in on time. </p>
<p>Students that take IB HL classes go much more into depth than AP classes. IB Chemistry HL, for example, includes some organic chemistry, environmental chem, fuels & energy, etc...topics that AP Chem can't hope to cover. In my experience, IB'ers tend to come out more prepared.</p>