How Much High School is Enough?
Do we really need four years of high school? With the additions of science, math and social studies to elementary and middle school curricula, some think high school has become a place where information is basically recycled from earlier years. For example, how many times do students really need to study the problems of the rainforests?
In the Washington Post article, “How Much High School Is Enough? Some Students Benefit by Leaving After 10th Grade, Some Educators Contend” by Valerie Strauss of Tuesday, May 9, 2000on page A15, we find the following:
“To Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, 16-year-old Jeffrey Cua of Lutherville, Md., is the perfect high school student. It’s not because Cua gets great grades in tough courses, which he does, but because he is leaving high school after 10th grade, so bored that he wants to start college two years early.
“Cua, who attends the private Boys’ Latin School in Baltimore, is heading to Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Massachusetts, a Bard-operated school that is the nation’s only liberal arts and sciences college designed for students of high-school age. Most of the fewer than 350 students at Simon’s Rock enter after completing 10th or 11th grade and attend for four years.
“But Botstein said recruiting for Simon’s Rock is not his key aim; abolishing high school is.
“Conceived 100 years ago for a different population, today’s high schools are obsolete, he said. He proposes shrinking the K-12 curriculum into K-10 and then sending young people off to work, college or a new form of vocational education.
” ‘By the age of 16, school is wildly out of step with the actual realities of America,’ said Botstein, who argues that high school as we know it was created for youths who were far less biologically mature and far more insulated from adult culture.”
“Never before have so many high school students worked so hard to impress elite colleges, loading up on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses and attaining grade-point averages far above 4.0. They are taking a college-level curriculum–but on a frenetic high school schedule that doesn’t permit them to explore their academic interests as deeply as they could on a college campus.
“There are also the college-bound high school students who start to coast once they’re within striking distance of the number of credits needed to graduate.”
“In their 1999 book ‘The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890-1995,’ professors David L. Angus and Jeffrey E. Mirel say that high schools gradually evolved into institutions whose primary mission was the custodial care of teenagers. The earliest high schools provided a challenging liberal arts education, but that focus began changing in the 1930s when a majority of 14- to 17-year-olds in America started attending and educators thought it necessary to water down courses, Angus and Mirel write.”
Botstein adds that “High school, with its cliques and peer pressures, is hardly a place that promotes social and emotional development. He also argues that high school has never adapted to the change in the average age for the onset of puberty: 16 1/2 a century ago and now between 11 and 13.
“‘We create a hothouse environment which infantilizes young people, which does not actually encourage their growing up,’ said Botstein, who is also conductor and music director of the American Symphony Orchestra.
“Sainabou Nyang agrees. The 15-year-old 10th-grader at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring wishes she could cut a year out of high school. Too much time is being wasted, she said, and many seniors feel that they could be doing other things, ‘like getting on with their life.’
“‘High school is just too long,’ she complained. ‘Definitely!’”
Todd Academy was designed to work within the current education system and yet to allow students who are ready and capable to enter college either full or part-time. By allowing them to forge ahead and keep from “wasting time” we encourage the love of learning, the passion for new subjects and the ability to grow academically, emotionally and physically in an environment of encouragement for strength.
It is for them we exist. Todd Academy’s purpose is to encourage, to promote, to strengthen and to challenge them for a brighter tomorrow and a great future ahead.
Until next time,
Sharon
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
