I can’t imagine having my entire childhood scripted and planned like many of the kids today.

Early in K-12, I was in special ed classes as well as gifted classes, and later (starting around middle school) I was not recognized as gifted/advanced at all, really. So I took lots of mainstream, non-honors, non-AP classes in middle school and early high school that weren’t the least bit interesting or challenging. By my senior year, though, I was taking AP calculus, AP history and multiple science classes — I had found the stuff that both challenged and interested me, despite never being on the “achiever” track, really, because of my disability and my schools’ poor understanding of how to handle students with that disability.

So I met some of Cordelia’s criteria but not all — yes to the demanding classes, at least by the latter half of high school, no to the high GPA (we had weighted averages, with AP classes worth 5.0 — so if you’re not on an all-AP track starting freshman year, you’re going to be ranked 50 or below. You just are. And that was OK, because I did not give a crap about my class rank). I only applied to one college, the nonselective state school closest to my parents’ house. (Again, with the disability — we weren’t sure how far away from home I should be, since I can’t drive and we had no idea how much independence I could handle).

My normal brother and sister worked a lot harder than I did in high school — I remember having most of my time after school free. I did one extracurricular activity — something I liked, which had practically zero College Application Utility.

Someone else really hit the nail on the head that one unintended consequence of all these hours of homework is that students are rewarded based on effort. Then when they go to college or certain places in the “real world” they discover that effort is not directly rewarded. That it’s more important you study, learn and understand and that someone who can do that in 20 minutes might get a better grade than someone who spends hours studying. Though, I hear this from GenXers and Baby Booomers as well, the “but I worked so hard on that.” Yes, but if it’s wrong, you can’t get credit/promoted. Maybe our schools only reflect our culture in many ways, maybe there’s much we’d need to change first before we could really effect changes in our public schools

But the move to de-skill teachers isn’t going to help on the meaningful work front. (Starts threadjack and runs.)

My youngest attitude was very clear: if the teacher makes sense and poses challenges, my son collaborated. However, if the teacher was a “moron” my son did nothing in the class. Like his “serious” brothers he also went to top college. His a political director of a major union in a very large city since he was 24. Work on students brains and not their rear end endurance.

I am all for cutting down on homework (in classes I teach assignment are designed to engage the brain not time), lower competition, removing waste of time and not encourage enrollment in top colleges.

I think it’s an arms race dynamic, the same one that’s driving increased tenure standards, upgrades in athletic programs, palatial student unions, etc. Even the trend of the past decade to rename Colleges as Universities (like Massachusetts just did with its six “state universities”). There’s absolute goal, everyone is just trying to get ahead of whoever’s in front of them.