Reply to Maret/GDS US - pressure cooker or more laid back but still academically rigorous?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't know any GDS kids who are really suffering under the pressure. The kids who take the rigorous schedule are the ones who love that sort of thing. [/quote]

Every college bound kid at every private school is stressed out junior year. [/quote]

or at any good public...that's what Junior year seems to be about.
[/quote]

As my son's junior year (at a private outside the immediate DC area but not too far away) comes to an end, I find myself so appreciative of how my approach to parenting has been informed by his school experience. He is a very high achiever - 35 ACT, 2320 SAT - and when he moved from public to private school in 9th grade, we were seeking "rigor." He really liked school from the start, but we - his parents - were a little disappointed in the lack of homework, and the non-existence of honors sections for freshmen. Everyone told us it would get harder, especially junior year.

Well, it has gotten a little harder - though not terribly so - through his junior year. But what's also happened in the intervening years is that he's had the room to breathe, to try new things in athletics and extra-curriculars, and to develop a meaningful and deep-seated academic interest in a subject that he's pursued in his own time (online through CTY and then in the summer) because it's not offered at his school. He has become that kind of outstanding student with a demonstrated commitment to a "passion" that highly selective schools seem to find so enticing. As a result, his counselor tells us that he has a realistic shot at HYP (even while making sure we all understand that a "realistic shot" is still probably less than 50-50 but also more than 5 percent). More than that, he is happy and confident. And it strikes me that if he had been weighted down with 4 hours of homework every night, he probably could have handled the workload and still made good grades, but there's no way he would have taken up 2 sports, and no way he would have had the time or mental energy to study an additional subject for at least a couple of hours every week. In short, the academic rigor would have forestalled him from ever doing anything except working rigorously on homework.

What I had initially viewed as a shortcoming of his school now looks like wisdom to me.[/quote]

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