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I'm currently a high school student taking five AP classes, and I can tell you that most of my AP classes just teach what people need to know on the AP test. I'
by rchowe 16y ago
I'm currently a high school student taking five AP classes, and I can tell you that most of my AP classes just teach what people need to know on the AP test. I'd much rather take an Honors class than an AP class, but at my school Honors classes aren't offered when APs are. I learned most of what I know now before I even went to high school - I'm a victim of this educational system stratifying by age, and I can tell you that it didn't work for me.
The other thing that I see is that most of the people in my AP classes are diagnosed with ADHD and are put on Ritalin... to keep them paying attention in some lackluster classes. Ken Robinson's first TED talk says it a lot better than I can, but I do favor vocational tech and stratifying by ability, although I can see that that will open a whole new can of worms, such as parents pushing for their children to be top-tier.
- contravert 16y agoWhy don't you just study for the AP exams yourself? I self-studied for 4 AP exams (along with other course work) in the last year of high school, and I did pretty well. The AP exams are actually a joke due to the number of unqualified students who take them and the bell-curve system.
- rchowe 16y agoI took the AP computer science exam without any prep and got a 5. The issue is that classes aren't offered at the Honors level if there's an AP class that could replace it, and for the classes I'm taking (AP Stats, Psych, Physics, Calc, English, and accelerated Anatomy) it's not worth it to take the accelerated version (Anatomy isn't offered above accelerated, and ironically enough is my favorite class; there's actually more physiology than anatomy, and the memorization isn't that bad).