Supply and demand

Choosing next year’s classes can be a puzzle for High School students.

Our tutor’s High School students are now in the process of picking which classes to take next year, and several have asked him for advice.  He generally resists making any comments on the subject.  He does not have a good feel for what a particular college and a particular major will look for in an applicant’s transcript, and getting into college is the focus of much of what his employer does.  Neither is he familiar with the whole High School context: much has changed since his day.  And how much a particular student can handle is a conundrum that can only be guessed at.

That said, much of the schedule can be filled in without difficulty.  There is the sequence of required courses, in math and English and sciences, where it’s mostly a matter of what level to choose.  And the 10th-grader who barely scraped by in Geometry is not going to go directly to Calculus.  At the high end, the choice is often whether to take an Advanced Placement course (with the possibility of college credit) or something less ambitious (and with less possible damage to the grade-point average).  The student intending to major in Psychology should seriously consider AP Psych; similarly with budding Chemists and Physicists.  Pressed for some comment, our tutor noted that a Clinical Psychologist would probably have use for Statistics.  And that one student who definitely does not like to read should probably not take Honors English.

In the process, our tutor got hold of the list of courses on offer.  He was already familiar with the math and science sequences he teaches.  Much of the rest held no surprises, which was in itself surprising: it’s been a long time since he was a High School student, and a great deal has changed in the world and society.  Yet, for instance, there were still the same four foreign languages: French, Spanish, German and Latin.  It looked like a relic from the Eurocentric mid-20th century.

Our navigator, in fact, had these four choices but also another: Russian.  There happened to be a Russian emigre community in his area, and they could supply native speakers to teach the course.  Not all schools had that advantage.  And our tutor remembers that some of his students have had to leave off learning Latin because the schools could not find a teacher.  In addition, other students are certainly studying Mandarin, Korean and Japanese, which did not appear on the list.  The actual classes on offer differ from school to school, based on what they can handle.

And if we want to add one to the for-everyone list, which would we add?  We’ve mentioned four already; which to choose?  Or maybe another?  In today’s multipolar world it would be difficult to settle on one, much less ensure that there were enough teachers to go around.

The student can only take the classes on offer.  At least, until he or she discovers how to learn on his or her own.