Musings about the future and the WTM approach for high school

[Hoggirl]

We are a few years away (not as many as I would like! :eek:) from high school. But I am curious as to how many of you decided to abandon the WTM-approach for literature and history/government in order to pursue AP history and English classes. There is so much I like about the whole integrated literature/history/government approach, but this doesn't really seem to "fit" into the whole AP scene, does it? At least not for history? We have some friends whose children are in a Classical Christian school, and while they love the school, they are already "concerned" about their oldest and his ability to get into the college of his choice b/c the school doesn't "do" AP courses. Supposedly, it is an extremely rigorous college-prep school, and they very much follow the Trivium approach. He will be doing Great Books/Rhetoric through his 4 years of history/gov't/lit in high school. So, do you feel the "need" to pursue AP? My ds seems to have more of a math/science bent anyway. Maybe those are the areas where AP courses should be pursued while sticking with the WTM-approach for high school. I would absolutely love to do TOG or Omnibus, or some other sort of Great books program with another 4-year history cycle during the high school years, but I really don't know if this is "practical." Thank goodness I have a few more years to think about it. I worry that I am going to abandon the "greater good" to pursue something less. Thoughts?

[JennW in SoCal]

There are many families here who do make sure their kids do AP courses and exams while in high school, so I'll let them talk about the AP experience. But I just wanted to jump start the discussion by saying that you do not have to abandon a WTM approach in order to have some AP credits on a transcript. Nor is it essential to do anything AP.

 

If you re-read the WTM high school section you'll see a section on testing where it is recommended to take either AP or SAT II tests as a way for homeschool students to demonstrate they are capable of college level work. They can also demonstrate this through having your child take community college classes.

 

I personally don't buy into the whole AP hype -- I don't think they are worthless, but I don't see them as being essential. I know several homeschoolers who got into excellent private 4 year colleges who never took a single AP course. My high school senior is planning to start at a community college then transfer to a 4 year college, thus avoiding all kinds of standardized tests, but who knows what my 8th grader is going to want. I may yet be eating my words and be stressing out over AP exams for him!!

 

An excellent education is your goal -- I don't think AP scores are the best measurement of that. But, I do look forward to seeing other replies from those who have gone the AP route!

[Cedarmom]

My son is a math and science guy, so he will take a science AP, and maybe a math. We are doing Omnibus, I think having a great books education will more than prepare him for college. Since he will probably be a math major, high school is his one chance to read the great books. Does your child know what college he wants to attend? What are their requirements, do they want AP's? It would be interesting to hear from other posters, but I think having books such as Beuwolf and Herodotus on your transcript should sound at least as impressive as AP.

[Brenda in MA]

I have one son who will be a senior this coming fall. With him, we continued the integrated history & literature into high school. He and I both really enjoyed learning that way, and I think he really retained a lot and was able to explore his areas of interest within the history subjects more.

 

He has taken no AP courses, but has taken a couple of SAT2 tests. He will take a few cc courses this fall, and hopefully attend a 4-yr school after that. He's done some interviewing at a few schools, and he has been well received. I didn't really consider the AP option for him because I really didn't know it was a possibility for homeschoolers several years ago.

 

My mulling comes in with my to be 7th grader. I'm realizing that I'm going to have to decide before 8th grade whether he will abandon the history/lit combo and go the AP route so I can line his subjects up to fit in AP courses. I can see some advantages to having AP credits, but I know there is a real cost in time spent on the courses, and a risk with having to study for an entire school year and hope to have a good sitting on the single test day. I am also (selfishly, maybe) thinking that I'll really miss the time studying history & lit together, because if he goes the AP route, he will have to take most of them on-line with another teacher.

 

I think that a really important thing that distinguishes homeschoolers from other high school students in the college admissions process is that hsers are free to study topics of interest and to really do so in depth rather than taking the prescribed AP syllabi like so many other ps & privsch students.

 

I suppose I'll have more thoughts on this topic as my older ds contines with the college admission process. So those are my musings for today....

 

Brenda

[Laura K (NC)]

My sons will do AP (or more likely, community college classes) for sciences, languages, maybe economics, and math.

 

I feel like I'm holding on to the important stuff (including religion) and outsourcing the less important. The other classes will merely get my kids a job. What I intend to do is educate. :)

[forty-two]

Ok, this might be really naive of me, as I've neither actually *taught* high school material, either AP or classical, and I took the standard AP courses in public school, so no personal experience with rhetoric-level studies for me.

 

Still, I have never understood *why* it has to be an either/or choice b/w rhetoric-level studies of lit/history/great books/etc and AP tests. I've always thought that the point of rhetoric level studies was to teach students to be able to analyze high-level material - primary history sources and the Great Books, for goodness sake - and be able to write intelligently about them. If they can do that, then they should be completely ready for both English AP tests, no extra prep required.

 

And if they can intelligently write persuasive world history essays, using outside sources to back up their claims, then they are 75% of the way there for any history exam. Learning the necessary facts to intelligently write about US history, or European history - assuming you can think and have a lot of general history knowledge, like a classically educated kid - isn't that hard. As for US govt, it isn't like WTM completely ignores the subject; add in a little focused study along with the ability to *think* - which, as I understand it, is the *whole point* of classical ed in the first place - and you are set for the govt exam. Ditto for the econ exams.

 

Seriously, I've taken the exams and I've taken the courses. Most of the time is spent trying to teach the kids how to think and analyze lit/history/etc and then to write about it. They happen to use the particular AP subjects as the vehicle with which they do that. Rhetoric students are simply using a different vehicle; once learned, the whole idea is that these skills are transferable to other fields. And remember, they are starting with kids who have had a wretched K-8 education - little to no grammar, horrid writing skills, and they were never taught to logically reason and argue about anything. So the AP teachers are pretty much starting from scratch. Whereas kids who have had a K-8 WTM education have spent those years laying the foundation, and are *ready* to do work at this level.

 

So, from my experience with AP exams (seriously, if you can write and think, they aren't that hard), I always figured that a few months subject-specific studying on top of a good rhetoric-level education would be more than sufficient to do well on most of the English/history exams. But I seem to be the only one - what am I missing?

[Gwen in VA]

Technically I suppose we "abandoned" the classical approach starting about tenth grade. At that point my kids started taking lit classes that were done by genre rather than time period (English lit, American lit) and doing history classes done by continent rather than time period (European and American history). At the same time, however, they were doing classes in writing, Latin and Greek, and logic, which are distinctly classical subjects.

 

Starting about junior year, my kids then went on to take AP classes -- science, history, economics, government.....the whole nine yards.

 

I always say that my kids are basically classically educated but with a practical spin -- they learned how to read, write, and analyze and that has helped them enormously in all their classes, BUT we totally abandoned the cyclical approach to history and literature because the curriculum and classes we wanted to use/do were not based on that model.

 

Is classical education necessarily based on the cyclical approach to history and literature? If so, we are only giving our kids a marginally classical education, but if the cyclical approach is merely the WTM approach and other approaches can also be considered classical, then maybe we still are somewhat classical in high school........:confused:

 

My dh and I are both engineers, so we are NOT sweating whether or not we are providing our kids with a "classical" education -- we tried to give them an EXCELLENT education, which definitely involed LOTS of classical elements! But we are not trying to fit our kids' education into someone else's classical box -- we are doing what seems best for our kids...... :001_smile:

[danielle]

I have only one experience with my dd, but after looking at several review books, I just don't think AP lit/humanities courses are all that hard--I took one of the sample tests myself without looking at any books and got a perfect score on the multiple choice! (didn't bother with the FRQs).

 

Dd strongly believes that she can take history/lit APs after going through the 4 year WTM history/lit rotation and review books. She's going to take a crack at US gov and Comp gov this year--I bought a text and a review book for each, and she's going to have a go--we talk politics ALL THE TIME around here, and these ought to build nicely on the AP Human Geo she did this past year.

 

I really think a good education, lots of reading, good writing skills will take the student 75-80% of the way, and a review book (and maybe a stack of flashcards for vocab) the other 20%. Not true of technical APs (math, science and languages) which require technical expertise, but in some ways these are even less subjective and require memorization and specific skills acquisition. But practice tests can tell you even more specifically what your chances are and what you're missing in the science/math/language ones.

 

One other caveat--if you join the College Board lists, you may be very intimidated by all the cool sounding projects the teachers talk about, and all the hand wringing about how poorly their students do. Don't believe it all! My dd blew off her Human Geo until I discovered she wasn't doing anything about March. She spent about 6-8 weeks cramming the test every afternoon (after dropping 2 of the "essential" books as too much work!), practiced FRQs once a week and did great. I didn't do anything but yell at her a couple of times, buy the books, and have coffee with her once a week during the "cram" to discuss some of the ideas. No projects with GPS, no simulations, no magazine readings, etc. Not that these would have been bad, just no time for so much work.

 

I just don't think APs are that hard, nor do they require all the busywork usually associated with them at high schools. JMHO.

Danielle

[Hoggirl]

I am thankful that I have a few more years to mull this over. It seems like it would be extremely difficult to me to try to combine AP with the four-year cycle, but what do I know. I realize the problem of trying to cram ALL of World History, European History, or even US History into one year. My ds has horrible retention with history anyway. He really is NOT into history at all, so this would probably not be the avenue to pursue as far as AP goes. We certainly could go the CC route for that. I think part of my issue is, honestly, pride.

 

I appreciate all these insights.

[debbiec]

Kathleen would be the one to address this, with two boys having been through this. You might need to IM her. It's just "Kathleen" ~

[Guest kiwi]

I think it really depends on if your children are going to go to a community college first, or straight to the four year school. While in high school (11th grade,), my ds started to go to our local CC full time. At that time, he was very well qualified to take AP history tests, but we opted not to. At the CC, he currently has a 3.65 average which includes 19 Honors credits. I think this will speak just as well of him academically as if he had taken the AP's. It's just an alternative to show what you know, so to speak. Hope this helps! :)