Baby We Was Makin' Straight A's

This blog post, I'm sure, will anger a lot of people.  But isn't that what the internet is all about?  Let's get right to it then -- shall we?

If someone were to ask me if I wanted to go back to high school, I would say, "Absolutely not."  But if someone asked me if there was anything about high school I wish also existed in college, I would nod enthusiastically and launch into this --

I desperately miss leveled classes.

The best thing about high school was that (at least in my school), you got grouped up with the kids who you were most like intellectually and in terms of how much you enjoyed school.  People who enjoyed school and wanted to be there and didn't sit in class making paper air planes all the time were in A level classes.  People who could not care less and would rather do anything but go to school were in C level classes.  Everyone else was in the middle.  (Except, of course, for kids in AP and Honors classes, which was another benefit to the leveled system.)

I was mostly in A level classes.  Yeah, I'm an elitist.  What else is new?  But I've come to appreciate the concept of leveled classes more and more throughout my college career.  While we have numbered levels of classes (100s, 200s, and 300s), everyone "has access" to all of the levels, assuming they complete the prerequisites.  And sometimes there is no prerequisite at all.  This can be incredibly frustrating when you end up in a class you're really interested in and looking forward to and your classmates are the people who don't really want to be there and, in all honesty, sometimes hold the class back.

Before you start yelling at me and lobbying for equal opportunities for all, let me finish.  I believe in educating everyone.  I really do.  But the thing is, what if some people are not reaching their potential because they are in classes with people who distract from class or make comments or statements that are clearly below the intellectual level of the course?  (I'm not saying these are "stupid" statements, for the record, just that they're not always appropriate.)  And what if the people who are in these classes but don't necessarily want to be there or aren't up to the task are missing out on the education they deserve because the class is moving too quickly for them?  Everyone loses.

At a university as small as mine, it would be distressingly difficult to attempt such a switch.  Maybe this is a fault in the admissions process or in the registering for classes process.  All I know is that I remember after leaving middle school where we were all mixed together, I got a lot more out of my A level classes.

And it's okay to move around.  I started in an A level Algebra class my freshman year of high school.  This was the hardest year for me in terms of math.  I struggled all year long.  Eventually, I determined it was just that I thought differently than (apparently) everyone else in the class and I needed things explained differently.  In any case, the following year I was placed in B level math.  I was in B level again for my final year of math when I was a junior.  Once I was placed in B level math, I understood the concepts very well, was often top of the individual class, and even mildly enjoyed the content, whereas in the A level class, I despised and feared math.

To implement levels as we do in high school would so contribute to the education of so many people.  Some might argue that the colleges themselves are the levels, with Ivy League schools being the AP/Honors crowd, but I'm not sure I agree.  Schools are not just about academic difficulty.  Indeed, academics is definitely not the only reason I chose the school I did.  A lot of my decision had to do with the school's atmosphere, the location, and the people.  In addition to this, as schools and higher education become more expensive, it's entirely possible to get "C level kids" in "AP schools" just because they have money.  And A level kids may end up in C level schools simply because that's what they can afford.

I recognize that this argument is not very well formed, but it is something I feel higher education should reevaluate in the near future.  In the meantime, the only solution is for kids to study more on their own -- A level kids so they can intellectually stimulate themselves and C level kids so they can keep up.