Failing that–and recognizing that getting to campus would pose a big interruption in the rest of your school day–your school could offer advanced courses for advanced H.S. credit. All of the college professors here are all for students taking more challenging courses–but we’re skeptical of the real value of H.S. classes taken for college credit.

I think that spreads to high schools as well, to some extent. My parents got me out of a bad middle school as quickly as they could, but then made me spend all five years at a good middle school and one of the best high schools in the nation (I wanted to skip a few grades). I ended up taking seven AP courses in high school and a number of non-AP courses that were generally considered to be as rigorous as the AP’s. However, “AP” and “college-level” really meant “not pathetically easy”. I didn’t get college credit for any of them. We always regarded them as not so much a replacement for college courses as an interesting/challenging set of high school courses. Maybe the answer to people trying to push college into high schools is to push for higher high school standards.

I’m afraid I don’t have any terribly original or bright ideas on this. But, it seems to me that we can learn from a very wise bumper sticker I saw once, which said, “Think Globally/Act Locally.”

Faculty need to raise these issues with their Deans and Provosts on a regular basis. As we all know, there’s a lot of turnover in administration, and new administrators have new agendas and introduce new ideas and pressures into the mix of concerns for other administrators. I think being consistent defenders of the work we do and its value to our students is something we can’t just do with one letter or one speech and then forget about it because we’re over it. I think those of us with tenure especially have to be unafraid of claiming the high ground and defending it boldly against these attempts to suck on the teat of public higher education for free, and without having passed the most basic requirements for admission.

There’s no one else who will do it for us, and administrators (even those with the best of intentions) can’t be expected to do this without direction and support from the faculty. Quite frankly, I don’t see what’s in cooperation with concurrent enrollment schemes for my college any more than for my department, but the Dean can’t be expected to do all of this thinking and strategizing without some sense of where the faculty are.

So, go ahead: be a broken record, a bee in someone’s bonnet. Embrace old crankdom. I wish there were more of us, but until there are, we have to stand and fight.

Ahh, but Historiann, at least one of the districts offering concurrent enrollment credit in HS is intent on creating an “AP culture”–meaning ALL students will take AP courses.

It is undemocratic of you to suggest that some students won’t go to college, just as it was undemocratic of me to insist that to teach history at the college level, one ought to have studied history. (Heck, I’d say that to teach history at the HS level, one ought to have studied history–but that ship has sailed.)

With you one hundred eleventy percent on this one, as you know, Historiann. I guess the frustrating thing is knowing that faculty are willing to explain and defend — and, in fact, are doing so, eloquently and passionately, in books, blogs, and columns in the Chronicle and, ahem, IHE, every single day — but the message never seems to get through. Do we need to stop and ask to whom we need to be explaining and defending and how we might go about that more effectively?”

I think the “to whom” question might be the biggest part of Roxie’s post–do all the columns in the Chronicle, IHE, etc. just lead to more preaching to the choir, and if so, how do we (as academics) reach a larger audience to show how big these problems are? Does it mean somehow finding time to talk to high schools, local media, etc.? It sounds like most of us know what the solutions to these problems are, but the academic community as a whole hasn’t figured out a way to publicize them in such a way as to get support for positive changes. Basically, does anyone know how to articulate the problems plaguing higher education to a larger audience in such a way as to incite the support for the changes that are needed?

But the sense that I’ve been getting lately is that teachers and curricula are suffering at the hand of all of this end-of-year testing, which privileges math, science, and reading over history and writing. Should we be surprised that students come to us without a solid command of grammar and basic paragraph structure when the most important method of assessment is multiple-choice tests? I have a friend who’s almost ten years older than me. She remembers grammar being an integral part of her schooling. My high school years were the beginning of the testing craze in my test and I can count on one hand the number of weeks spent on grammar in high school.

I’m sorry if this is a bit off topic but I wonder if we’re not running up against some other noxious trends in this conversation.

(And yes, I’m with Notorious in wondering why finishing quickly is such a virtue.)

Why isn’t that good enough for everyone else?

I think you’re very confused, Historiann. These are the offspring of the Galtian ubermenschen you are talking about. These people rightfully occupy the upper stratum of our social and economic world because of their superior intelligence, drive, and productivity. The kinds of education appropriate for the children of the less productive and vibrant members of society simply would not be suitable for them.