The impacts on learning when the focus of a class is teaching to a test.

What constitutes the best education system, and is it attainable at all? In Ancient Greece, the answer lay in championing the art of rhetoric with Plato’s emphasis on mathematical logic and dialectics and Aristotle’s Lyceum for ethics and metaphysics. During the Renaissance, education revolved around humanism and the pleasure of seeking knowledge for its own sake. During the 17th century, prominent figures such as Sir Francis Bacon promoted the sciences above rhetoric in an age of rationalism. In 18th century Prussia, bleak, stringent, and militaristic instruction engulfed one the world’s first compulsory schools in an attempt to produce the blindly obedient. 

Today, in a world of increasingly difficult college admissions, the debates around education – and which one is the fittest of all – is more relevant than ever before. In an attempt to distinguish themselves among a burgeoning mass of qualified applicants, many students turn towards AP tests. But as with all education systems, the AP curriculum has both benefits and drawbacks. One of the primary criticisms of AP classes is that in an effort to cover so much material in a limited time, they may be rushing through important concepts. This line of criticism is hardly new to the College Board, who has redesigned their curricula several times. Notably, in 2011 College Board significantly reduced the AP Biology curriculum’s content to remove its focus on memorization and instead foster analytic thinking. In 2019, the AP World History exam was redesigned to focus on 1200CE and onward, removing a monumental 9000 years of content from the previous exam that had started all the way from the Paleolithic era. 

Every year, social media users are entranced with college reaction videos of accepted students boasting as many as 15 or more AP tests in their resumes alongside additional extracurricular achievements. Students hoping to tread in the halls of elite colleges constantly feel pressured to take as many APs as possible in an effort to gain broader expertise in many different subjects. However, this often comes at the expense of specializing in a few areas of greater interest. 

South Senior Jet Qiao emphasized that “Under the pressure students take many AP classes they don’t need…For example, my career goal is to be a biomedical engineer, but I ended up studying US politics. This pressure is definitely influencing students’ mental health in a negative way.”

Senior Ashley Nuno echoed the same feelings, saying “I felt a bit pressured to take more AP classes, and I think a lot of other students shared that feeling.”

This aspect of the AP curriculum, and of the American education system, starkly contrasts with many other parts of the world. In the UK, for example, 66% of students take three “Advanced Level” exams and are encouraged to only take these tests in subjects related to their future major in order to truly “specialize” in them over the two final years of high school. 

This duality of the AP curriculum, however, preserves a holistic approach by recognizing students’ extracurriculars and achievements outside the classroom. 

Nuno recognized, “I think taking at least one AP course is beneficial not only because it can save you money, but also because it exposes students to new teaching styles. Maybe one should be required, but…it should remain optional because everyone has different responsibilities and might be unable to do all of the additional studying and work outside of class.”

Qiao agreed, saying, “I think the fact that AP is optional in the U.S. is better than [if] it is required. However, it does add many uncertainties to the admissions process. In the end, the most important aspect of high school life is the mental health of oneself. So, I think at least the optional AP structure takes a lot of pressure off from students.”

With the semester schedule this year, the pacing of the AP curriculum felt much more stringent than usual. 

“This year felt much more rushed than last year,” Nuno noted. “It’s also a given that you’ll need to study outside of class because there just isn’t enough time. The new schedule also didn’t help because we don’t have class every day, and we were assigned more work and required to complete assignments outside of class, which amounted to extra homework.”

For many students, the magnitude of the AP curriculum embodies efficient learning – but sometimes at the expense of enjoyability. 

Qiao mentioned that the AP curriculum “does result in a broad understanding but in a useless way.” 

South Senior Iris Lin pointed out that “sometimes it does feel like you are only working towards the AP test and that does make the course content learning feel less enjoyable.” 

Towering figures in education, such as British author Sir Ken Robinson, have criticised this phenomenon. 

“Public schools were not only created in the interests of industrialism—they were created in the image of industrialism. In many ways, they reflect the factory culture they were designed to support,” Robinson said in his bestselling book, The Element. 

Despite these downsides, there are certainly also many advantages to the AP curriculum. 

“I feel that AP courses are a great way to introduce college level difficulty with specific content, and it allows students to sort of ‘get a taste’ for different subjects and figure out what they like or may want to pursue in the future,” Lin stated.

“I think it’s helpful for time management,” Nuno elaborated. “It’s fast-paced, which allows me to get comfortable with new teaching and learning methods. I don’t think [the rushed curriculum is] generally a bad thing but it definitely causes more stress.”

In the end, the AP conundrum boils down to whether a high school education should focus on introducing students to new subjects or if it should be an opportunity for students to decide which subjects they want to pursue in the future. Either way, being consciously aware of the benefits and downfalls of our evolving education systems is essential for students so that progress can be made in our continual search for knowledge and so that future generations can inherit better education systems. 

By Sophie Anjum