<p>sjmom,
in my opinion you, as a responsible adult, need to stop it. 3-4 hours a night??? It is crazy, no grades, or university, or whatever is worth it. It is a sure pathway to physical and mental problems. They may not manifest themselves immediately, but they will eventually.
And I thought I had a problem, my son sleeping only 6 hours a night! :)</p>
<p>The GFG: No one is saying your kids are not smart or did not work very hard. I find it hard to believe that there are any public high schools where many hours of work/night is needed just for the average student to get by. Average students do not work many hours/night. I don't know NJ but I don't think there are any areas in NY that match your description. Most HS kids in Long Island or even Westchester are more likely to have a stronger interest in parties, alcohol and drugs.</p>
<p>My son in a decent public school in Georgia will have 11 AP classes at graduation (7 5's so far). The school offers 22 APs, I think, but the school is on crazy block schedule and it is not possible to fit much more than 11, 12 at most. My son did not take anything but AP classes and orchestra in his junior /senior year, but in order to stay in orchestra, however, he has to take 5 extra classes on-line just to satisfy graduation requirements. BTW, he never took/takes these classes because of the college pressure, but because they have better teachers/students/more challenging.
He does not sleep much at nights, but mostly because of very time consuming athletics.
All his friends have similar course load.</p>
<p>
I would not have allowed my d. to apply to Lowell. I think it is far too intense. But I am sure you know that the atmosphere at Lowell is very different from any other SF public high -- it is not at all characteristic of the SFUSD. From the other posts, it appears that that public high schools in affluent California communities (Orinda, Mill Valley) may also be very different than what my kids experienced attending schools in areas serving mostly working-class families. But I think that my experience probably is more reflective of the "typical" California public school experience. Most college bound kids are aiming for UC's and CSU's, and the high schools seemed to be structured around those expectations. It is very important, for example, for the high school curriculum to mirror UC-required entrance requirements -- it is not at all difficult to finish high school with exactly the range of A-G courses that the UC's recommend. But the GC's and the planners aren't thinking about Harvard. Maybe 3-5 kids at most from any single graduating class at my kid's high schools would end up at at an Ivy, near-Ivy or elite LAC - and a smattering go to 2nd & 3rd tier private colleges.</p>
<p>Yes, I know Lowell is in a class by itself, but edad seemed incredulous that such places existed. There are many many such places, although, I agree that these are not the "typical" California public schools. Still, they exist all over...Palos Verdes, San Diego, Sacramento...and they are exceptionally demanding.</p>
<p>..and I thought my California relatives were laid back. Now I find that they are really sleep deprived.</p>
<p>I grew up here..used to be laid back...now it's totally changed...thank you tech bubble.</p>
<p>My relatives have lived in Ca for a long time. I guess they didn't change.</p>
<p>Mill Valley is not in the Silicon Valley...it is a lovely spot that is probably sheltered from the worst of it...as Calmom points out, there are a wide variety of schools in California depending on the exact location. I have not heard specifically about Mt. Tam HS, nor about the schools in that area. If they are like they were in the old days, I need to look into them...living in Mill Valley would be very nice.</p>
<p>
Yes, but somehow my daughter is ALSO prepared for college. She has 15 credits going into Barnard based on 5 AP exams, 2 of which were from courses where she was enrolled in the honors class rather than AP. She scored 4's on most AP courses, 5 in AP Psych -- and has used her Psych AP credit to enroll in an advanced level Pysch course at college which (so far) she really loves. </p>
<p>It is way too soon in the semester for me to tell how well my daughter will do at college, but I have a feeling that as long as neither she nor I have unreasonably high expectations as to college grades, she will do just fine. </p>
<p>Part of this is her inherent intelligence and learning that took place in spite of, not because of, her high school (that was enough for the AP English Language exam!) -- but it is obvious that the content of her courses like Econ or US History was enough give her whatever foundation is needed for the AP exams. </p>
<p>It goes back to the brain development thing. A significant part of the ability to integrate and retain information takes place during sleep -- that is when the brain essentially develops the neural network that supports the ability to consolodate and utilize the knowledge gained from whatever was experienced in waking hours. So it is very possible that my daughter's education-lite leaves her more "prepared" for college than many of her classmates coming from academically intense high schools, in the same way that an athlete who is well-rested and well-nourished may be more "prepared" to run a race than one whose coach has trained her to exhaustion. That is, my daughter isn't that well prepared in the sense of the knowledge base that she enters college with, but she may be better prepared in the sense of her mental readiness to acquire new knowledge. </p>
<p>Again, I think my kid's schooling was not quite up to par, and I'm not advocating that. A healthy medium would be much better.</p>
<p>Here, here....a healthy medium would be great...and your daughter won't be burned out, depressed, stressed and just plain fed up with learning...as so many are who spend their formative years drinking from a fire hydrant.</p>
<p>Both of my kids were in boarding schools with pretty good college placement records (we're not talking Exeter or Andover, but the next tier down). At both, the requirement was lights out at 10:30 and a 2 1/2 hour study hall five nights a week (Sun-Thu). Very few students studied outside those hours. My son's school had 15 APs available and some students took five or six/year. Athletics/ECs were required from 3 to 5 in the afternoon. Some labs were done during study hall time. My D's school had fewer APs. </p>
<p>If students are expected to do five hours of homework a night, combined with a full 6-7 hour school day, something is drastically wrong with the school. Either the teachers have unreasonable expectations, the parents have unreasonable expectations, or no learning at all is getting done during the school day.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Last year he read something like 25 novels for English
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</p>
<p>I remember reading 12 novels a semester for an American Novel course at Rutgers (over 25 years ago) and this was challenging. No high school kid should be expected to read & study 25 novels a year. How much was really accomplished? </p>
<p>
[quote]
My kid is reading the works of Puritan women poets. Every poem they wrote. These are not great poets...
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</p>
<p>LOL! Your kid has my sympathy. In the obsessive push to be "inclusive" and "diverse," lots of real dreck is forced on kids these days. I really wish all lit survey courses started with a disclaimer along these lines: "Most of the authors we cover this semester will be white men. It was tough for women and minorities to create great works of art because many of them were busy being enslaved, persecuted, or kept barefoot and pregnant." Then stick to the really good stuff. But that's going off on a tangent, I know.</p>
<p>Epiphany--that's my point. They're not offered at our school, so there's no " dare not take" them here. We're certainly not getting into any colleges because of being known by any colleges, that's for sure. We're surrounded by the high rent school systems; we're the after-rans.</p>
<p>The GFG:</p>
<p>Was your kid on a block schedule? 13 APs is insane on a year-long schedule. I'm sorry, but you don't have to let others pressure your kid into taking that many APs. No wonder you talk of 5-6 hours of homework daily.</p>
<p>One reason my S graduated early was that he'd run out of APs he wanted to take. He did not see the need to take more APs just because they were available. And the school does not even offer 13 APs. But even factoring in the college classes he took, that would have been the equivalent of 2 APs per year for 2 years and 3 APs in his third year. And he did not try to pursue umpteen ECs on top of that.</p>
<p>Sticker...your post gave me a really good laugh. Thank you and I agree. And one or two Phillis Wheatley poems is fine, but you'd be surprised at how much time women Puritans had to write poetry. It's the "if one poem is good, forty-six must be better" syndrome...and that seems to be the theme at his high school...and that's why he's up late studying. You can't read forty-six Puritan poems quickly...as much as you'd like to. </p>
<p>My S chose his classes without input from me...no, let me correct that, despite input from me. I marvel at the parents who can actually get their kids to listen to them with respect to such things. How do they do it?</p>
<p>As to number of APs -- I think my son had 4 (or 5 semesters of AP total, as his AP Econ covered both macro/micro but was only one semester) -- aside from the econ he had AP English & APUSH. That pretty much was all his school offered; he always took a full academic load in the highest "track" available to him. I believe he could take 6 academic courses a year, but PE was required freshman & sophomore year. </p>
<p>As noted above, my daughter has 5 AP tests -- but I think only 4 semesters overall of enrollment in AP courses, with Honors US History rather than AP (scheduling problem). She took one semester of AP Psych, and a one-semester AP Econ (micro) course, and one year of AP English Lit. which she regrets, as it was simply a year of intensive test prep apparently designed to completely rid its students of whatever joy they might have once felt from reading poetry or lit. She also was in a class that piloted the AP Russian course and exam, but that's didn't make it to official standing. Her high school probably offers around 10 APs, and I think most high-achieving kids would probably take about 5-6 APs.</p>
<p>My overall observation about AP courses is that they generally made it more difficult for kids to actually learn and apply critical reasoning skills than their Honors-counterparts. For example, the 11th grade Honors English syllabus involved reading all those classic works of American lit that you expect high schoolers to have (Faulkner, Hemingway, etc.) The 11th grade AP English was focused on teaching writing mechanics to prep for the AP-English language exam. My d. wisely opted for the Honors course after discussing course content with both teachers. Similarly, at my son's high school, APUSH was an intense, survey-level course, a mile wide and an inch deep; a regular history class would have explored selected topics in depth. </p>
<p>So I don't know: if the high school curriculum doesn't afford the luxury of spending a whole month studying the civil war or three weeks on The Great Gatsby .... where and when do the kids develop those critical reasoning skills needed for college level study? Is that something that bright kids figure out naturally, or is it something to be developed and nurtured during adolescence? With all of those APs, can the kids write a good, in-depth research paper? My son's high school didn't have many AP's, but it did require a year-long senior project, presented to a committee of teachers, and many interim, shorter-term interdisiplinary projects in the previous years to prepare for that point. (FWIW, it was a magnet school with an alternative educational philosophy -- part of the "Coalition of Essential Schools" movement).</p>
<p>Denise Pope Clark wrote a more scholarly version of the Overachievers in 2001 called, * "Doing School" How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students* describing what she observed shadowing five high school students in Silicon Valley. The following is a link to an interview with her in 2005.</p>
<p>"It's the "if one poem is good, forty-six must be better" syndrome"</p>
<p>And that goes against everything we know about teaching children, especially gifted ones. They just don't need a lot of repetition and practice for mastery. I'm not sure any kids do actually, unless they have cognitive disabilities or very concrete learning styles.</p>
<p>Emily Dickinson wasn't a Puritan, but you learn a little about her life, read about 5 of her poems, sing a few to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas", and that's about all you really need to know about her. If there's more you want to know, that's different.</p>
<p>In elementary and middle school, it's pretty easy to intervene, especially if you have an IEP that says your child is supposed to be getting an appropriate education. Come high school, though, I think we all get a little nervous about what those letters might say if we challenge the teacher too much.</p>
<p>Calmom:</p>
<p>AP is really shorthand for intensive, high level course. So if your school did not offer many APs but had classes that were as high level and intensive, then these classes should be counted. Some of the most competitive schools have abolished or never introduced APs but the classes are even more rigorous than APs, and most students do take AP tests.</p>
<p>When I list my kid's AP or AP equivalent classes, I also have in mind that his non-AP classes were not demanding (heterogeneous classes in 9th and 10th grades) with hardly any homework.</p>