Claiming my Education from a Company
Last semester I took five classes which totaled to 16 units. Starting college remotely in a pandemic introduced an entirely new challenge to school, and my mental health took a huge hit as my ADHD struggled to adapt. Even after working with my doctor, my professors, and Disability Services, managing an active college student schedule was tough.
So of course I signed up for six classes (18 units) this semester :^)
Immediately after the first class of one of my extra electives, I hopped into Web Registration and dropped the course. It was a boring two hour lecture, tacked onto a day which starts at 9:30am and already consists of three classes and a weekly project meeting. Crying and exhausted, that night I began to wonder why I felt so terrible dropping the class. Anyone could look at my current schedule and conclude I’m a proactive first year student making the most of her time academically and professionally. And yet in that moment of surrender, I felt as though 16 units just wasn’t enough.
My biggest mistake was underestimating how much time and energy goes into non-class related activities. Despite how substantial my other responsibilities are, only academic things were considered real work and should be accounted for in a weekly schedule. It’s a mindset that I adopted from high school, fueled by a competitive honors student culture and driven by the presence of AP classes.
Those of us who aspired to attend prestigious universities knew we had to take as many of the hardest classes as possible, so the bulk of our education was spent fawning up to College Board standards.
College Board has convinced many students that the optimal high school approach is to take a bunch of their classes and a bunch of their tests. As a result, high achieving students are forced to learn College Board curriculum while conditioned to equate rigorous academic success with self validation. With a near monopoly on college admission tests, College Board can pretty much do whatever they want and still expect schools, teachers, and students to buy into it. As a company incentivized by money, they care more about selling their product instead of developing quality college-level courses and tests that can properly gauge students’ aptitude. They’re technically a non-profit organization, but over the last 20 years a change in College Board management has transformed the group into a revenue generating powerhouse.
It doesn’t matter what their courses actually teach or what standards their tests really measure, as long as institutions keep buying into them.
This isn’t the only historically problematic aspect of College Board either. The SAT was created by a eugenicist in his efforts to prove white Americans are inherently more intelligent than black people. Even as it’s been “reformed” over time, College Board tests often rely on oppressive metrics like the application of standard English, and the sheer amount that school funding and college admissions consider standardized test scores puts primarily Black, Latino, and Native students at lifelong disadvantages. The system is biased towards rich white students because they’re the ones putting money in College Board’s pocket.
In the current state of College Board, this mainly a side effect of embodying a capitalist work culture. Considering how many colleges are becoming test optional as a result of the pandemic, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for College Board and the diversity of college admits.
When a private company is put in charge of education, it promotes quantity over quality. AP classes are marketed as this crucial element in desirable college applications. The more advanced classes you have and the more tests you take, the better student you are. That is, having an excessive level of difficult work is a sign of achievement. There’s an underlying guilt that develops in many students when more can be done academically, even if it’s unnecessary or detrimental to mental health. That’s where I found myself earlier this semester, feeling guilty over dropping a time consuming, superfluous elective.
There is no longer a subtly racist, profit hungry organization telling me to optimize my academic schedule (okay well at least not the same kind of subtly racist, profit hungry organization). I have significantly more control over what I get to learn and how much energy I devote towards academics. Adrienne Rich argued that part of one’s responsibility in claiming their education is “refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you” (7). There is great power in academic agency. Letting a company with capitalist priorities do the thinking, talking, and naming for teenagers creates unrealistic standards for work and self fulfillment.
With all that being said, there are still plenty of people who can handle extra classes and who genuinely want to learn more. And that’s fantastic! Those students are claiming their education in their own way. At the same time, I know many of my peers are still motivated by external forces to take on more work. Creative burnout is real, and I try my best to assure them that a work/life balance is necessary, but regardless…
