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Reply to "How's basis going so far?"

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[quote=Anonymous]
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Why the need to speculate, extrapolate, opine and hypothesize like this?  There IS empirical information out there.

Basis has 8 schools in Arizona now, many of them running for several years already, going back to 1998 and 2003.  All Basis schools are following the same model and approach.  Yet for all that, there's no surfacing of "dangerous stress" that might lead to the kinds of breakdowns that the posters above have speculated about.[/quote]

Well it is question of degree, perhaps. I think it is important to note that Olga Block's system in her words is designed for "workaholics" (see http://www.joannejacobs.com/2012/08/is-basis-too-tough-for-d-c-students/). Student workaholics like their adult counterparts are liable to mental health problems, but suicide is of course an extreme. A greater risk for parents to assess is simply the cumulative effect of a workaholic 5-12 experience. Will it "deaden the spark" of the child? At Basis Tucson, for example, senior year is supposed to be a "summa cum laude" capstone experience, but in actual fact many seniors simply deflate and get by after a grueling junior year, or simply do not have the capacity to transition to academic independence after years of test prep (I get this from first hand conversations with students and teachers at that campus). This is my concern, and it is important to raise simply as a factor to consider in the overall decision of which school to attend and why. Of course it is also possible that BASIS DC will moderate its academic pressures and confront this challenge. [/quote]

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