Big email bag–60-plus–on my AP column. Parents, teachers, and students all have opinions here. Every one was cogent & thoughtful, none abusive–amazing, in an email-bag that size. All emails were read with attention. If I didn’t reply to yours, nothing personal, just normal blogger’s triage. I think I answered most.
A few points at random.
• AP courses are being pushed on more and more students, with the inevitable dumbing-down. This is part of the general, deplorable academicization of schooling. Every kid has to be made into a damn stinking intellectual. Since inellectuals run everything nowadays, I can see that they’d want to remake the world in their own wonderful image, but this brings out the Khmer Rouge in me. Fer crying out loud, NOT EVERYBODY IS BOOKISH.
A knowledgable reader explains:
“Actually, John, the situation with AP is worse than you’ve been led to believe. Check out the AP’s new policy of ‘open access.’ Under the aegis of including ‘traditionally underrepresented’ students in AP, the College Board has been putting significant pressure on school districts to increase their AP enrollment.
“Now, if this was a well thought-out plan with preparation as far back as (at least) middle school for the rigors of AP and resulted in a program in which the rising tide of AP lifted the boats of the underrepresented, this would be (as you said) a Good Thing — indeed, a Very Good Thing.
“It’s not. What this means in practice is that AP courses are increasingly packed with students with little knowledge, background, drive, or ability to succeed … Of course, in every AP class, there have always been one or two, even three or four, students of that description, but the numbers are increasing and tipping points are being reached with the inevitable result: the AP classes, at least some of them, are being dumbed down.”• There’s money in AP. A reader who did a bunch of AP courses in high school reports that he “used all of those AP credits to shave off a semester and change’s worth of [college] schooling. At the time that was a savings of approximately $13,000.”• Among low-ability schoolkids, High school Spanish creates frictions. For Hispanics it’s an easy pass, while their classmates are frustrated. Since knowledge of Spanish is a big plus in many low-qualification jobs, the frustration only increases after graduation.• Lotsa people propagandizing for Latin. Preaching to the converted, guys. Did four years of Latin, bitterly regret not having done better at it (though I passed the final). Useful in all sorts of situations (do a find on “conticuere”) …• One reader notes that letting our elites loose on Western Civ. is asking for trouble. I take the point. I’d forgotten my Dialectic, things generating their opposites etc. Not all the clercs are going to commit trahison, though. SOMEONE has to keep the tradition alive.• AP isn’t the only way to stack up some college credits. There’s also CLEP. This was news to me, and definitely in the category of Well Worth Knowing.• Several readers, including at least one from actually Iddly (as we say here on Lawn Guy Land), have chid me for downplaying Iddly’s contribution to Western Civ. Heaven forfend! As a bel canto obsessive, I yield to no-one in my admiration for Italian culture. However, my main point concerned language learning. Italy’s contributions to Western Civ., though tremendous and magnificent, are not very verbal. They are artistic, architectural, musical, and scientific — fields that can be entered via any language. In my last book I paid proper tribute to the great Italian mathematicians (end of Chapter 13); and my previous book actually closed in Italy, where the hero, Bernhard Riemann, died, having gone there on the generosity of his Italian colleagues in hopes of improving his health. In linguistic attainments — novels, poetry, drama — however, the Italians fall short. For language learning, that’s what matters.• One reader tells me it is not easy for home-schoolers to take AP tests. My information was that this is pretty routine, though you may need to enlist accredited teachers to supervise. Could it be that this — like everything else to do with home schooling — is different from state to state? More information welcome.• A reader in, looks like, the Vatican (?? — the domain is “…@curia.europa.eu”):
“Mr. Derbyshire — If I was in your kids’ place, I would choose Spanish too. They were born on the American continent and no doubt expect to live all their lives there. Spanish is the most widely-spoken language on the American continent. If you’re not already a native speaker of Spanish, it makes sound horse sense to learn it. Your problem is ‘post-immigration syndrome’! You chose to immigrate into a particular USA because you wanted to live in that country as it was then and the idea that ‘your’ USA might evolve into something else undermines your life’s dream. Your kids don’t have that hang up. They are simply moving in the direction in which they instinctively sense that their society is going.”
[Me] You are so right, Sir! I thought I was immigrating to Switzerland. Now it’s turning into Yugoslavia. But hey, Yugoslavia worked out fine, didn’t it?