Excellence and quality of experience go hand in hand at Rivers

There are a lot of issues I have with Mark Edmundson’s article “Where Should I Go to College?” – the cynical tone, the thinly disguised objectivity, the simplistic stereotypes, the predisposition to create good guys and bad guys, purity v. impurity – the list goes on.  For Edmundson students are just abstractions to be categorized.  Whatever truth I might think his argument contains, as an educator I refuse to put my students in a box, conveniently label them, and then climb on my high horse of educational purity in the midst of “corporate” slime.”

But as is the case with most arguments that touch a nerve, there is an element of truth in Edmundson’s thesis, and to deny it is equivalent to putting my head in the sand. Education and learning have for many become simply a means to the “good” life, a way to stem the tide of inter-generational downward mobility. Resume-building trumps intellectual curiosity as students feel the pressure to attend the college that will most help them advance their careers.

But the two values – learning for learning’s sake and learning as a means – can be reconciled.  The “good” high school as Edmundson sarcastically refers to it can serve excellence and true learning.  The key component is the value the school places on student quality of experience, students using educational experiences to discover what they love, what they don’t love, what they’re good at, and who they are.  The experience becomes a mechanism for gaining self-knowledge.  I see this happen all the time at Rivers because quality of experience is one of the critical values that defines “Excellence with Humanity.” 

I am the first to agree with Edmundson that too many schools produce “achievement machines.”  But I refuse to dismiss those students who, through experience, have come to realize that they are practical learners, that they want to see how the ideas in the classroom become relevant in the real world. Again, the critical factor is schools focusing on quality of experience as well as excellence, the journey as well as the result.  Please don’t tell me that the two are irreconcilable; they are both on full display at Rivers every day – the really smart kid who loves to bake and is encouraged to start a bakery stand at the local farmer’s market, the kid whose imagination is sparked by an assembly on robots and within a year the school has a robotics club and a computer science program, the kid who finds a talent for acting and is encouraged by her drama teacher to “go for it” and apply to acting schools. Yes, “excellence” can be perverted without the emphasis on quality of experience, but excellence plays a critical role in helping young people discover who they are and what they are good at – a sometimes painful but often ultimately rewarding journey. The key is that the school has to value quality of experience and its necessary sidekick, relationships, so that students know that they are valued beyond what they achieve.

Rivers' Approach to the Advanced Placement Program

There's a lot of controversy surrounding the College Board's Advanced Placement program. Teachers are frustrated by the constraints of the curriculum. Educators are concerned about teaching to the test and the resulting loss of intellectual curiosity. Students are overwhelmed by the rigor and content of the courses. And most notably, there is consternation that taking AP courses is a way to "game" the college admissions process – more AP courses on the transcript mean a more attractive application for the colleges. Combine this "gaming" with grade inflation in these and other classes, and a candidate can appear attractive to selective colleges even if his or her courses lack the appropriate rigor.

Like almost any human system, the Advanced Placement program can be abused. But this fact should not blind us to the merits of the program. At Rivers some of our most intellectually stimulating classes are AP courses. We tell the AP teachers to cover the curriculum but not "teach to the test." I can walk into an AP American History class and see students performing simulations or engaging in a debate. Calculus students work in pods and debate the process for solving a problem. When AP teachers are told to offer a rigorous, engaging course that covers the AP curriculum, the message is loud and clear – make students think, allow them to question, and above all, make sure the experience is of the highest intellectual quality. 

Finally, there is something to be said for seniors, especially, focusing on a culminating exam as a way to measure their performance for the year. I suspect our seniors spend little time preparing for these exams. They don't have to; they have been taught well throughout the year. The AP Exam is just the gravy. The fact that these students do so well on these exams without a lot of stress is a testament to their hard work throughout the year. Is it a little contrived – an exam after the students have been accepted to college? Of course. But contrived or not, the exams still have meaning to the students primarily because they have worked so hard together and with the teacher for the entire year to prepare for this moment. That Rivers students do so well on these exams is not reflective of our students mindlessly prepping for a test; it is, rather, a testament to the bonds within the classroom community that have developed during the year and the intellectual journey students and teacher have travelled together.