Race to Nowhere

A movement is afoot in the United States questioning America’s achievement culture in education.

Today the Denver Post did a special article on AP exams.  The author did several interviews with students at Boulder’s Peak to Peak Charter School, Colorado’s “most saturated public Advanced Placement environment.” Apparently 96% of its students take AP courses, which has made Peak to Peak #37 on the list of top high schools in America.  They even do pre-AP courses for students too young to take regular AP courses.  The author cites another case of a principal in Pueblo who instituted a host of reforms based almost entirely on increasing the number of AP courses offered at his school.

But significant push back against an “AP is everything” culture is growing.  Several college officials have seen high school students with an impressive portfolio of AP courses enter college, as one enrollment official at Colorado College has put it, “devoid of the more elusive qualities of passion for learning, freshness of mind, curiosity.” 

Many high school students try to smash as many AP courses into their schedule their junior year in order to secure the college selection of their choice, and then “coast” through their senior year.   Regarding this attitude, the director of admissions at UC Boulder commented, "I completely disagree with that philosophy," he says. "The best students are good students and good citizens across multiple areas. I worry when there's so much pressure on students to take more AP that they start to cut some meaningful activity from a balanced life."

Thoughtful people across the country have been questioning the sanity of the AP system.  A new educational documentary entitled Race to Nowhere (of which my school is hosting a screening next week), questions many facets of “America’s achievement culture.”  After a young girl in her community committed suicide after performing poorly on a math test, director Vicki Abeles went on a crusade to uncover the distortions of the American educational system.  Unveiling student testimonies about stress, burn-out, cheating and pressured performance, Abeles has taken issue with a culture that sees success as 7 hours of school, 4 hours of extra-curricular activities, and 3 hours of homework per night. 

The film doesn’t make the case that AP exams are inherently bad or pressure-filled, but it certainly does make us all ask the really fundamental question, “To what end do we educate?”

And this culture introduces other problems. Many high achieving students graduate with a sense of entitlement, and an expectation that they’ll succeed anywhere they go.  But, as the film points out, when many young graduates are given a situation in which there is no clear problem and no clear solution (ie, no syllabus), they are paralyzed with confusion.  Skills like abstract thinking, creativity, and problem solving (the types of activities done by people who lay on the grass and stare into the clouds) are few and far between.

Christians also must critically evaluate their own academic pursuits as well.  Do we want to achieve (and have our children achieve) so that we can get into the best school, to get the best job, to get the best house, and to be “happy.”  Is happiness, by any measure of the term, really determined by your GPA or your college degree?

Are we educating young people to be whole individuals, to succeed in family life and civic life as well as their careers? Or are we producing top notch achievers who are used to pushing ahead of the pack, but very seldom think about going to the back of the pack to lift others up?

Race to Nowhere is a film that ought to be seen by anybody interested in education. And the long-term validity of AP exams should be questioned by every student and administrator who believe they are the silver bullet to educational success.  The people of God must really ask themselves, once again, “Why?”  We need a redefinition of success in education based not on the throne of achievement, but on the cross of service.