Part 1--Part II has the good news!

AP Biology
January 2009

PARADE THROUGH THE KINGDOMS¹

(…more like a death march, than a parade, but it’s Biology! Yay! ☺)

The above is taken from an assignment given at a selective private Catholic girls high school. I recognize the gallows humors, even use it, as I drag my lambs through a similar course. I have to. It's audited by the College Board, and students, parents, administrators, board of education members, and Superintendents will walk through fire to get the coveted AP® Course Audit stamp on a transcript.

I am part of this lunacy. First, the bad news....

I teach AP Biology, or at least try to, to seniors, many who are taking far too many AP courses. There are many good reasons to take AP courses, but no good reasons to take too many. Students feel the pressure of the admissions wars. If both Punch and Judy want a shot at Elite U, and Punch takes an AP science because "it looks good on his transcript," well, Judy thinks she needs to do the same. I get two uninterested seniors for the price of one.

Our school administration encourages children to take AP, as many do, in the escalating war of school rankings. If New Jersey Monthly, a regional rag clearly read by folks with a higher opinion of themselves than I have of myself (just ask them) judges schools by the "number of AP tests offered compared to the total number of juniors and seniors (a calculation designed to avoid penalizing smaller schools)," and your local school board worries as much about property values (as it should), then there will be subtle pressure to push kids into the AP classes.

If you are Gaspar Caperton, President and CEO of the College Board, earning making over $800,000 in compensation a year (about $95/hour for every hour he breathes), you are under a bit of pressure to push your product. And he does. The College Board sells test prep materials for its own tests, materials some of my students cannot afford. The College Board lobbies politicians.

If you are the President of Elite U, and want to keep up your US News and World Report rankings, you need to sell your school to children who have no shot at getting in. Part of your rating is based on the rejection rate of first time college applicants. The more you reject, the higher your score. You're kind of stuck with the numerator, the number of slots you have open, so you best boost the denominator, how many applied. You are under pressure to sell dreams to the impressionable.

Result? We have a generation of public school seniors compromising their health in a battle mutually assured destruction as they struggle to get into colleges that pretend they have a shot.

The CEO of the College Board, the President of Elite U, the editors at NJ Monthly and US News and World Report make good coin, high school administrators keep the board and parents at bay, and the students, literally, break down and cry.

I see the tears. The children are in an impossible place. They live at the pinnacle of human civilization, they have food on the table, roofs over their heads, and youth in their veins, and they are crying.

It's easy to say they're just spoiled, or weak, or lazy, and many of those shepherding them say just that. But when I hear that a student toils away in a mall selling shoes so that she can afford to pay for a series of tests to measure how much she "knows" in subjects she only took out of fear, well, I think of the $16,000 compensation Mr. Caperton pulls down each week.

The College Board logo and the US News and World Report photo are from their respective sites.
And now for the good news.....

Montclair High School will be screening Race to Nowhere on November 30th, at 7:30 PM.
You can register here.

READ MORE - Why AP grates...

Because biology is a dynamic field with an ever-expanding knowledge base, focusing students more on how to interpret and understand new data as they become available will be much more important than having students memorize an infinite number of biological factoids.

DRAFT: Revised AP Biology Curriculum

That's what it says. Yes, it's a draft, yes, it's meant to be revised--but that's what it says. If my grasp of English is correct, the "infinite number of biological factoids" refers to the current system.

The College Board is a multimillion dollar operation. It spent over $300,000 last year for lobbyists. The CEO makes well over half a million dollars a year.

So what are my kids supposed to do in the meantime? Pay their $86 to show how well they memorized an infinite number of factoids?

***

I went bat hunting tonight--it sounds a lot more strenuous than it is. Get a lounge chair, wait for dusk, lie down with your eyes looking up, and wait.

I eventually found a bat, and watched it sweep the sky, munching on a variety of other flying critters. There aren't so many bats now as there were a few years ago.

We won't be talking much about that in AP biology class--too little time. Nor will we talk much about the decreasing phytoplankton in our seas. Nor the great mass extinction going on right now as we delude ourselves with these light machines.

***

I participate in the madness.
I am part of the madness.
I am the madness.

***

The AP Biology curriculum will not be revised before the 2012 school year, possibly later. In the meantime, I teach to the curriculum, as I am required to do.

Which is, of course, madness.





I am open to suggestions....

Yes, of course, it's Edvard Munch's painting The Scream

READ MORE - "An infinite number of biological factoids"