It has always been known that the student who studies harder or earns better grades is placed into a higher than average class. The question that stands is does the higher class really help prepare you for college more than an average class? The true answer has to do with how well the teacher teaches or how well the student takes what they learned from that class and apply it. Each student comes out of the class with a new vision of what they learned. It may be the same as the person next to them or it may be something totally different. Kids who are spontaneous and undecided should not be allowed to take high level courses nor should they be reprimanded for not taking them. Those high level classes were meant for the fittest. I will discuss in this blog how hard students who dream of entering the medical field work to earn what they make. I will also discuss the level of difficulty AP and Honors classes have as well as who should and should not enter them using a few quotations from The Chem 20 Factor.
The “smarter than average” student has always been expected to take a higher class such as an AP or Honors course of the topic that they excel in. I will use the medical field as my example throughout this blog. If a child wants to become a doctor in the future, they must begin at an early age preparing and studying for that field. They must take all very advanced classes. “Chem 20, therefore, became a combat mission. Each grade was a life-or-death matter. It reeked of Olympian anguish and Olympian competitiveness. It taught people whose goal in life was the relief of pain and suffering that only the fittest, most single-minded, would survive,” (The Chem 20 Factor, Ellen Goodman, paragraph 2). This excerpt from The Chem 20 Factor is basically explaining how tough higher classes can be and the level of expectations those teachers require. Students who are the most fit and focused on the topic should be required to enter such a class as Chem 20. The high level classes require a level of commitment and competitiveness that many students do not have.
The next question to academic excellence would be is the student just taking the high level class for the credits or because they love the field of the class? There have been students who push themselves their first two years just to get into the AP or Honors course for simply the credits and the ability to slack off their next year. Those students are the type of students to take up space in the classroom and give those who really desire the course less of a chance to get in. “On the whole. Doctors made a commitment to go into medicine when they were eighteen or nineteen years old, with the full knowledge that they would be “practicing” until they were thirty or older. In a “Now Society,” they would hold the record among their peers for delayed gratification. The sort of laid-back, noncompetitive person who wants to “live in the Moment” would drop out of Chem 20 with an acute case of culture shock in a week” (The Chem 20 Factor, Ellen Goodman, paragraph 5). This quotation is elaborating on the idea that higher classes are meant for students who have immersed their lives into studying medicine and only medicine. Students who have the idea to just gain credits would not last in this class. A “spur of the moment” kind of student should understand that in order to get the best education to help them with college, they should take classes that are at their level of understanding. Goodman uses the “Survival of the Fittest”, theory that Charles Darwin had developed, to explain how difficult the AP classes truly are. If you aren’t tough enough to handle an AP class, it will most likely come as a struggle once you enter into college.
In order to succeed in an AP or Honors course, effort must be priority. Life is to be focused entirely on succeeding. I believe that taking an AP class could either prepare you for college or frighten you more. College professors, just like AP high school professors, push their students very hard; the only difference between the two is that high school professors generally do whatever it takes to prevent the student from failing the course. College professors usually don’t tell you when you are failing and leave the responsibility up to you. Thankfully, in taking an AP class, you are gaining that competitive side to force you to fight for the highest grade but what if you take an AP course that seems easy to you? What if you have been practicing to be a doctor all your life and chemistry comes naturally to you and when you take Chem 20, you are already naturally good at that course? That would mean that the course isn’t actually helping you in the long run. You may learn a thing or two here and there, but when you are not being pushed to the absolute max with your knowledge in an AP class how can it possibly prepare you for college?
In taking all the highest level classes in high school and college, you are only improving your future. The better you are at studying a subject, the higher chance at success you have. In the medical field, people generally continue into becoming that rich and well known doctor. They make ten times the amount an average person would all because they worked hard and took all high classes in high school. “Today, residency is not the financial hardship it was when most practicing doctors in this country were young. The magazine Hospital Physician says that the average doctor in training earns $12,500 to $15,000” (The Chem 20 Factor, Ellen Goodman, paragraph 7). All of their hard work has paid off in the end, leaving them in a high-stress and happy lifestyle. Those “smarter than average” kids should only be required to take a certain high level course if it helps their future career goal in life.
