My kids took CTD classes (similar to Duke TIP) and they explored areas that they wouldn’t have otherwise learned about in the confines of their school offerings; indeed, for my son, it unleashed an interest that has stuck with him ever since and shaped his ultimate college major and professional choices. It was expansive. The way learning is supposed to be.
I find it an absolutely pathetic set of values when the goal of learning is merely to ensure A’s / perfect scores, as opposed to the intrinsic value of learning and education and discovery. What’s being described here is very mindless robot automaton thinking … the purpose is to dutifully advance, burnish, and turn in one’s academic credentials with the hope that the Ivies et al will bestow the appropriate gratitude. I don’t have objections to summer classes, but for goodness sakes, make them exploratory and different.
@Pizzagirl “What’s so interesting about this?”
The extreme extent of their crazyness on academics was beyond my imagination and was unthinkable when I was in Korean high school a few decades ago. So it was interesting (and shocking) when I found it couple of years ago.
I figured it was relevant to this thread as a bad example of what’s really studying too much during vacations.
Those U.S. kids spending only half of their very long vacation period to take a half day academic course is not pushing too much in my view, and if not recommended, at least should not be blamed or discredited if we are going to have a competitive global workforce in the next generation.
Skimmed the thread so perhaps mentioned already but my son takes various math courses online so that he can perform better in competitions. Our schools do not usually recognize the courses he has taken so he must repeat them.
Generally, if it is not being forcefully pushed on the kids I really do not think it is a bad thing for kids to take classes ahead of time. If these kids are able to preview a course and then get high grades and then get into “better” colleges, then good for them!!
Agree with SculptorDad that it helps us be more competitive.
It does not help us become more competitive. You know what helps us become more competitive? Down time to think, tinker, and ruminate. Discovering things on one’s own. Being an outlier. Being different. Not sitting in a classroom.
@brantly – totally agree. The problem is that kids nowadays are told that it’s the wrong thing to do. When my D16 went into 9th grade we drew up a schedule for her HS years. I told her to try a bunch of different things to see if any one of them grabbed hold of her. She took that schedule to her GC and the GC said, “oh no, you need much more rigor in your schedule in order to get into a good college”. Out went photography, forensics, and other non-hard science classes that she thought were interesting. Ugh. The thing is that we already knew she was smart; the standardized over the years proved that. She doesn’t need to take AP/“college” classes in HS … those are for college! I told my wife the other day, “I halfway wish D16 would go out and get in trouble occasionally because then I’d know she at least living life”. The only problem with that is it looks like we lost the teenage “middle class”, for lack of a better phrase, because they seem to fall into two camps now: the total screw ups that are getting their stomachs pumped after parties and the academic types focused on school.
My daughter did a summer travel club sport and loved it. It wasn’t all the time, I think they did 4 tournaments that required travel in the summer and 1-2 during the fall, but that’s the sport. It’s fun, it’s exercise. We used those trips to look at colleges.
I know families who sent their kids to boarding schools to play hockey. It worked for them
@brantly In our case we are lucky that my son does not waste hours and hours playing video games and watching tv. Not to say he does not do these at all but to a limited extent compared to most. Luckily this leaves plenty of time for him to tinker and think…
I do not think there is one answer for any kid but I realize I am in the minority as many seem to know exactly what does and does not work for every kid.
But will they be able to succeed once they get to college?
The smaller amount of instructional time and larger amount of material to be covered in a college course, as opposed to a high school course (even AP courses, which usually meet five times a week), comes as a shock to many incoming freshmen. Won’t it be even more of a shock to students who are accustomed to a much larger amount of instructional time because of their experience with preview courses?
I would think the answer is that for some kids it will be too much and they may not succeed, but for many of the other top performing kids they will do just fine. I guess everyone knows of horror stories and success stories but it would be interesting if there were studies. As others have mentioned, given grade inflation at many colleges it seems that most kids will do just fine.
We shouldn’t blame parents and kids for what they do, rather we should demand colleges to not rely on grades and test agencies to not recycle test materials.
Test agencies could come up with a completely new format of test each time, using Wikipedia type of public input if necessary. The best prep is to do well in school all along and pay attention to current events which requires critical reading/thinking.
In stead of grades colleges should rely on high school evaluations on academics, e.g., top 10%, 20%… And more holistic.
We will then have more unique individuals not more similar to one another. We will be more American, more creative, and more importantly happier.
@Pizzagirl - You are so right. I find it pathetic also.
When my youngest was in middle school he took a Duke TIP class one year and a Vanderbilt VSA class another year. I encouraged my son to take things he would not be able to take at his school even though they offered classes ordinarily taught in schools (geometry, algebra 2, etc.). He took a class on American foreign policy in the 20th century and a class on the hidden Civil War. He did not take them to get ahead in HS. He did not take them for college. They won’t even go on his college applications.
He has his heart set on one of the very selective LAC. He has high test scores and a high GPA just like everyone else who will be applying. Maybe he’ll get in. Maybe he won’t. However, I would consider myself a failure if he spent his entire time in HS trying to make himself look good for colleges.
I don’t really care about the fairness aspect of it. Life is not fair and this is just another illustration of that. I do think that it is a colossal waste of time to spend summers learning something just to get a good grade on the same material during the school year. My older kids wasted their summers working, playing sports, and going to the beach and still got into the schools they wanted.
The last thing in the world I or my kids would want to do is waste time taking a preview course. I’ve spent way too much effort trying to make sure that they were not bored by the needless repetition within the normal school progression, much less signing them up for more.
If those kids aren’t bright enough to get an A the first time they take the class, they aren’t likely to get into a top school anyhow. This kind of thinking creates a very anti-intellectual environment, because it’s all about the grade and one that I’d be pretty unhappy about if it came to our school.
In my district, 95% of the students who preview courses are immigrants (or children of immigrants) from countries where grades determine the rest of your life. From that perspective, I can understand why they do it. However, now that they are here, it would be helpful for them to know that this practice is entirely unnecessary and even counter-productive.
People literally send their kids here from other countries to live with relatives to get them out of a high stakes testing system, then recreate the pressure here.
It’s the marketing of programs that rubs me the wrong way. It’s easy to drop 5K a year or more on prep classes. Somehow I got on the email list of the big one in our area and this is a typical spring email from them:
“For students in 8th and 9th grade, now is the critical time to plan out your college pathway and for families to establish common goals and strategies to fulfill your college dreams.”
“70% of students who completed at least one year of our high school program received admission from Ivy+3 colleges.”
They use the term Ivy+3 extensively in their literature, which means Ivy, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley. This is the absolute measure of success in the program. For the families they market to in Irvine and the surrounding area, not getting in to one of those schools is failure.
Think about it, does every family in this demographic have all their children naturally born with the ability to do that? Nope. So what do they do? They sign their kid up for these kids of programs that are going to prep the he** out of these kids to get as many STEM 5’s on the AP’s as possible.
