I think the main objection is that they don’t pay very well. It might be reasonable money when you are 24 and single, but if you ever want to have kids, it’s not enough. If you want to build enough of a nest egg that you are secure, it’s not enough. If you want a retirement where you can travel a bit, it’s not enough. And if you want to save to the point where you can age and die in a comfortable environment, it’s not enough. The engineer, the project manager, the professional all have a great deal more earning potential, and that’s a reasonable thing to be concerned with.
In terms of anecdotes, the only ones I’ve really used are in response to ones from the other point of view. My argument here is more abstract and philosophical (as is appropriate for IMHO) than anecdote based.
Most of her posts seemed to me to be expressing opinions on the value of education. Strong opinions I’m inclined to agree with.
If there’s a specific anecdote or assertion that you saw from her that centered on a question of fact, rather than a more subjective value judgment, then you can ask about it. Just because there’s not a hotlink in her post doesn’t mean there’s no deeper evidence behind any factual assertion. We’ve both been here for a while. She knows her stuffs. I’d actually be shocked if there were something in my post she hadn’t already known. (She’s also complimented my posts in the past, so naturally, I trust her judgment. )
It would not have occurred to me that that post would be considered a lil’ harsh. That post was a fluffy little kitten, didn’t mean to hurt nobody.
Some people are allergic to cats (I’m allergic to cats) but that’s not the kitten’s fault.
I’m not sure how a middle-class income of 40k to 100k is insufficient to do all those things. I’ve watched people do all of that on a middle-class income. HR people around here earn 40k-50k with benefits, for instance.
Nothing wrong with a boring office job with average pay. You are, I am guessing, a work-to-live type who sees their education, and subsequent job, as a means to an end and you find your real joy elsewhere. That can be a satisfying way to live.
But different people are different. Some people prioritize working in a certain field, or working a job with certain attributes, or doing work they find intrinsically meaningful. They aren’t better people, just different. And doing the bare minimum is just not conducive to reaching those goals.
I’m a little lost in the sauce with this? What philosophical argument are you making exactly? If you are talking about financial rewards, job prospects and the importance of living a comfortable life, then those are purely practical matters. It seems as if you are making 2 arguments in regard to the OP. One is that the AP courses are highly valuable in enriching your life as a whole by improving you as a person through a more rigorous academic experience. The other is that the AP courses will lead to greater career and thus financial success.
It is my belief, however, that you are approaching the question of OP through a bias of the importance of placement within a hierarchy. In other words, my sense is that for you the importance of being really good as opposed to pretty good is very high, and that people who are very good academically are better people and should be held in higher regard - and you are making points that assume that being very good has huge advantages.
I am not convinced of that, I have come to believe that being pretty good is good enough in a large number of cases and the returns for the amount of work that is required to be very good makes that endeavor not particularly worthwhile for many people. This is especially true if you are talking about engineers; I have known personally about 15 engineers who went to various schools with various levels of academic success. Once they got in the job market, going to an elite school or a public school had little effect, pretty much no effect after a few years as far as I could tell. And the same holds true for many other professions in which I have known a number of people. However, I could easily be convinced otherwise (given this anecdotal stuff is pretty bad in terms of eradicating ignorance).
It’s the implication that you & Manda JO are making that nobody can have a fulfilling life and/or career unless they take X,Y, & Z AP classes and do X,Y, & Z in high school and/or college that I find so disconcerting and - I mean this with all due respect - superficially elitist. The bottom line, for what it’s worth, is that both of you are fundamentally wrong with those implications because broader anecdotes will always be around to disprove them.
Listen, I agree 150% with everything that Macca26 has been asserting here, and I certainly can attest to many of his experiences with AP & academia.
Ultimately, I view education ENTIRELY as a means to an end; plain and simple, full stop, that is all that school is to me. I derive far more of my enjoyment in life via things that I do outside of a classroom setting, whether that be at work or otherwise. That’s not to disparage anybody who feels differently, but you can’t make philosophical elitist assertions because you just FEEL that way.
Keep in mind that I’m not somebody who does poorly in school. Everything you’ve read from me is coming from a guy who hasn’t gotten anything less than an A in school since the 9th grade, and that includes my time at JC.
I enrolled in these rigorous courses. I aced my AP classes. I passed the tests with flying colors. And you know what? I gained NOTHING from them aside from the passing scores and the free college credit. It’s nice to have, yes, but that’s literally the sole benefit of AP IMO.
What it takes to “get ahead” is going to vary greatly by industry, by location, and by individual. And of course, not everyone has any particular interest in “getting ahead”, and reasonably bright people can usually have a perfectly satisfying career without trying particularly hard to excel academically or apply themselves intellectually to their job.
But if you do happen to want to “get ahead,” and in your milieu getting ahead requires attending a selective university (and they are much more selective than they were even a short time ago) OR getting ahead requires strong skills in research, analysis, and writing (and in most cases, it does) than taking the most rigorous coursework available that you are likely to succeed in, is generally a good idea.
I’m not really advocating for AP in particular: I am advocating for choosing a course of academic rigor–which often means an AP program. But I’ve said repeatedly that a junior college pathway can also offer rigor if it is approached that way. But the person who prefers junior college to AP because it’s “less work” is a person who will look at a junior class as something to be bullshitted through. They won’t come out of it having learned much.
I don’t really see a distinction between “Taking your education seriously will improve you as a person” and “taking your education seriously will lead to more career and financial success”. To me, both personal or professional success are based on competence, on being able to do things and learn things and innovate and problem solve, on being able to adapt and imagine and improve. You get that competence by not coasting, by never turning down the opportunity to learn something, to push yourself. I think that being very good in terms of competence makes all the difference in the world–in your personal life, it means you have flexibility and context and understanding. In your professional life, it means you can take full advantage of any opportunities that come your way. That doesn’t mean you will make bank–I don’t–but it means you can if you want to.
In terms of hierarchy, I don’t think you have to go to a top school to develop this sort of competence, and I think it’s possible to go to a top school and not develop it–again, by coasting, by relying only on talent or charm. But I think it’s inspiring to be surrounded by people who are better than you and stupifying to be surrounded by people that can’t keep up with you.
I think that people who never work harder than they have to on anything, who do the bare minimum to get the immediate incentive eventually are significantly less intelligent than those who systematically strive to learn, to discover, to understand. I think that no culture in the world has been able to afford to let 14-18 year olds consume and not produce: the only excuse is that if we are delaying their productivity in order to educate them and make them more productive later. I think for someone to spend the years between 14-18 avoiding actually struggling with anything mentally challenging is a huge wasted opportunity to get smarter.
This isn’t to say that high school should be unremitting toil. But it should be as challenging as a 45-55/hour a week mentally complicated professional job.
This was my experience and Mrs G’s experience, both of us doing AP credits and community college credits before going to university. I was able to transfer a lump sum of credits that could be applied against generic elective requirements, but specific prerequisite courses couldn’t be opted. It mostly took the overhead burden of heavy credit loads off, allowing a more relaxed class schedule and IMO better grades in the core classes since more study time could be spent.
The high school AP versions of the classes at my school were taught by the same teacher, combined in the very same class as the non-AP. The AP kids split out into in-class “project groups”, and were assigned more homework problems, but otherwise there was no difference in the classes. I’d go so far as to say it was a disadvantage to both groups of students since the teachers were forced to inefficiently split their time to teach to both groups.
Check out post #54, I think that should meet the criteria. Call me plum mold crazy, but when you mention that she complimented your posts and you trust her judgement that could possibly introduce some bias into your analysis of the situation here. Just because there is not a hotlink post to what Macca is saying doesn’t mean there is nothing more substantial to what she is saying either - it would appear that you are applying one level of analysis to one poster and a different level to another.
I only said your post was a little harsh, not a lot harsh maybe 2 on a harsh scale of10.
I was specifically responding to a poster who had said “I never learned anything worth learning in school, nor did my friends, and now we either can’t find jobs or we have crappy jobs”. Responding with “Yeah, well, I know a ton of people exactly your age who would say they learned a bunch in school and now have great jobs” is a fair response. And this is IMHO. We are talking about our experiences. It’s where I come to collect and learn from others’ experiences.
And I think the last time I complimented Hellestal was like five years ago when he taught me why the loanable funds model was bullshit. I respect him a great deal, but we aren’t exactly linked at the hip.
I think it’s better for instilling a work ethic and preventing intellectual boredom than it is for necessarily helping you out scholastically. When you stick with classes that you don’t have to try in, you get intellectually lazy, and when you do have to finally try, you wind up failing.
At least, that’s what happened to me, as I was right on the AP cusp in a lot of places. Plus I needed the GPA boost. But it really hurt me in college.
When stated as such, I have no disagreement with what you are saying; pretty much everything you say in this post (beyond what I have just quoted) I would agree with. Without these clarifications, the points you are making can lead to a little confusion (at least for me anyway).
That’s rather a lot of hyperbole on my posts - none of what you just said was a point I had made. I mean, you could at least remember that I was talking about two distinct groups of friends, and that a majority had good jobs that they liked. That was kind of the key part. I certainly learned a lot in college, too. However, the AP course in English that I took did not help me in any way that I can discern. I was also sad that I had to read boring books like Ethan Frome because I took AP English, as opposed to 1984 and Jurassic Park that the honors class was reading.
Anyway, I’ve always been in the camp of “work smarter, not harder” and it’s worked out pretty well.
The Manda Jo and even sven side is saying that if you want to be competitive in life, well, the race begins in high school. Not only do you learn skills that will make you competitive, but you are making a statement about your competitiveness by undertaking AP coursework. And this is a favorable statement for most academic institutions.
The 2ManyTacos and Macca26 side is saying that the rat race is ultimately an illusion and that it would be wise for a student to consider how much sweat they are willing to expend if their goal in life is happiness and contentment rather than simply being the “top.”
Some thoughts on these positions:
Being competitive isn’t what everyone wants. But we’re talking about high school kids, whose personalities haven’t completely ossified yet. They don’t really know what they want, really. If opportunity does come knocking on the door of the average AP kid before the average non-AP kid, then the latter who could really use those opportunities loses out. The latter would have to be exceptional to get the same attention.
To whit, when I was in AP English my senior year, the teacher announced an essay contest for a city-wide scholarship. I jumped on it because I knew I needed every single penny for college. My teacher not only helped me, but she had her student teacher give me private coaching. I didn’t even have to ask for this. Only one other student dared to enter the contest from my school. He wasn’t an AP kid and his teacher didn’t provide any support. My guess is that the teacher didn’t think he had a chance. Guess whose essay won? Yes, I had really good writing skills, but I think my high school chose to bet on the horse that had the best chance of winning. The other kid didn’t stand a chance, even if we had possessed the same writing abilities.
So if I was a parent, I think I’d be scared to let my kid’s nascent personality dictate what kinds of classes he should take. Could be that AP would kick his ass, to the embarrassment of all. Or it could be that he’d be able to survive it or actually do well. At least with the class on his transcript, he can take advantages of whatever special opportunities come his way. Unless the extra homework keeps him from inventing the next Big Thing in the garage, I can’t see what the trade-off really is.
If kids are having miserable experiences in school, something is wrong. Maybe they are taking way too many AP classes or trying to juggle too many extracurriculars. But I don’t know if that’s the fault of the AP classes, per se. Hyper-competition has always been a problem in schools. I remember girls having nervous breakdowns whenever we had chair auditions in my HS orchestra. I’m talking about collapsing on the floor, sobbing and screaming nervous breakdowns. The majority of us managed to not break under this manufactured pressure. Maybe because we realized early on that it was all bullshit in the grand scheme of things. We didn’t have anyone at home telling us that if we didn’t get to be concert master, we wouldn’t be able to get into Julliard or Oberlin and we’d thus be destined for lives of mediocrity.
No university wants a class comprised of nothing but valedictorians. A class full of kids who have only made straight As is a scary proposition to a school. If students have never experienced not being the “best” at something, they don’t do well emotionally when the inevitable happens. They take nose-dives out of fourth floor dorm windows during finals week. So schools do look for the students who have outstanding selling points (e.g., like successfully running their own business or non-profit) besides curriculum. Awesome can shine through in multiple ways.
I would have loved to have read more science fiction in high school. I remember reading “Cat’s Cradle” for leisure after hearing about the book from someone in a “regular” English class. Something like “The King Must Die” is probably what we were reading in my class at the time. I didn’t enjoy it all.
I had to read a bunch of books I didn’t like. Because they weren’t enjoyable but I still had to write about them, I learned how to read and critique tough text–a skill that served me well in college and graduate school. While I love “Cat’s Cradle”, I don’t know if I would have learned as much if we’d been assigned it in class. It’s a cool story, but there isn’t a whole lot there there.
And I say this as someone who majored in the sciences. I don’t know what they do in engineering, but all scientists should know how to read critically and write persuasively. AP English and history were all about strong essay writing when I took these classes. The material we wrote about was important, but it was almost secondary to the writing itself.
That’s not what I am saying. I don’t push my students to compete with each other, I don’t think it’s important that they be at the top relative to their peers, I absolutely think they need to look critically at the rat race and decide what they really want for themselves.
What I am saying is that they need to be the best version of themselves that they can be. They need to be building towards something, not filling hours each day with passing low-grade pleasures because it’s the easiest route. And I don’t ever advocate that a kid take on a workload that makes them miserable–I’ve said since post #2 that it’s all about moderation, finding the right fit, challenging yourself but not killing yourself, working on those things that matter to you. But something should matter to you, and if nothing really does, that’s a huge problem.
The very brightest person I ever knew or taught opted out of AP Physics and AP Chem because he wanted more time to read philosophy, practice his ukelele, and be the worst player on the baseball team. That was a great choice, and it hurt him not at all. I’ve had great kids drop my classes because the loved AP Physics but it was kicking their ass and they needed more time for it. Totally fine with that. Never twisted a kids arm to do otherwise. I’ve had tons of kids who could have made higher grades if they gave up theater or newspaper or sports or whatever–and I’ve always counseled them to look at the long haul, to weigh the relative lifetime benefits of a slightly higher grade against an enriching experiencing.
In no way am I saying every kid needs to be racing up the academic ladder as quickly as they can. My objection is the idea that anyone who does so is a chump, a sucker, a fool, because it’s all just about credits on a transcript and their are easier ways to get that.
Traditionally Cornell always had the highest suicide rate as far as I know- maybe there’s something to what you’re saying - getting into the discussion of how much having a successful academic career contributes to overall happiness and fulfillment in life is probably getting off topic so I’ll leave it at that.
My IB courses were more rigorous than community college, and as even sven points out, were evaluated more highly by my four year college than a community college course would be.
Don’t underestimate the importance of that gate. The effect on employment is staggering. And college will not be easier when you’re 30 and need to go back for advancement than when you’re 18.
But that’s the thing. I experienced that middle class white collar life and experienced major depression and had to seek treatment. I needed more fulfilling work. Similar to what you felt in high school, right? Everyone’s different.
I took IB classes because they were at my academic and intellectual level at the time.
I was a C student because I never did those piles of homework.
I passed the exams and got a semester’s worth of credit, allowing me to graduate college in three years and concentrate on grad school.
IB’s rigor prepared me for college classes (about the same level) and graduate school (infinitely easier).
Like 2ManyTacos, it was all a means to an end. I guess I wasn’t bitter about it, though? Because I needed to do X,Y, and Z to accomplish my goals, I did those and accomplished my goal. What’s the problem?
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