Reply to No good teachers at BASIS High school?

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Reply to "No good teachers at BASIS High school?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I saw the thread on the private schools about homework in elite private schools and magnets, and I guess we will have to agree to disagree.  The pool of students going into American colleges and universities is much larger now than it was whenever the ivy league educated professor went to school.  Simply put, there are more students going to college, and more international students.  Places like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and even places a tier or so down, liberal arts colleges like Amherst, Oberlin, Wesleyan, etc. are at no shortage of students who can hack the pressure of being in a pressure cooker.  In fact, when I went to high school, a little later than most of the folks on this board, basically the people who went to Harvard or Yale either were exceptionally smart, so what took one person 5 hours to do only took them 3, or they worked their ass off much to sacrifice of other areas in their lives or both.  There truly are exceptional people in this world who can handle someplace that expects 16 year olds to spend 5 hours a night on homework on top of extracurriculars, just as there is a small minority of the population that does not need eight hours of sleep to function properly.  Harvard accepts 5% of its applicants these days.

I fail to see how someone could take multiple AP classes and not spend at least 3 hours a night on homework.  How in the world are you going to write papers, read books, do problem sets for math/science, practice grammar and vocabulary, etc. without re-enforcement outside the classroom.  It would be virtually impossible to get a 5 on the AP exam.  BASIS is a school where kids are supposed to take basically all APs.  One of the tracks for their "capstone" science classes senior year is organic chemistry.  I have taught organic chemistry at the college level.  To understand it, it requires practice--more practice than is required in the classroom, probably about an hour a night of review/practice.  Multiply classes of that difficulty by five, and you get five hours of homework.

If your kid can't hack a pressure cooker or it is the wrong environment for them, there are alternatives.  Don't take AP classes, or only take a few AP classes.  Don't choose to go to BASIS, Sidwell, TJ, NCS/STA, etc.  But with that comes the chance that they won't go to as competitive of a college.  Since there are literally thousands of four year institutions in this country, there should be something for everyone.  A lot of second third and fourth tier colleges offer a great education for someone who thrives in a lower stress environment.  And as the population of students attending college has increased, the quality of schools that may have seemed iffy 20 years ago have a much higher caliber of student.[/quote]

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