[SoftwareMaven]

Seventh grade was an awakening for me, too. I had sailed through elementary school with no effort, then hit seventh grade an nearly failed multiple classes my first quarter. That changed things significantly.

Unfortunately, it didn't change things enough. My senior year of high school, I was taking three AP classes and still only doing maybe an hour or so of homework a day and still getting good grades.

Then I hit college. And that hour a day completely didn't cut it (and getting hooked on MUDs didn't help :). I didn't get the grades I wanted, but I got the grades I deserved (maybe even better), graduated, and never cared about them again.

Far more important than the ability to get perfect grades is the ability to learn on one's own. And I don't think the two are perfectly correlated in any way.

[ruswick]

I agree entirely. In fact, I've always been of the opinion that the institutionalization of learning works to the detriment of education and discourages most students from learning on their own, while doing an incompetent job of equipping them with knowledge of value. Schools ought to place greater emphasis on technical skills, applied math, nonfiction writing and modern government/geopolitics; and less on lab science, academic math, literature and classical history. It's not that the classical academic subjects lack intelectual value, but that public schools ought to serve a purely pragmatic purpose. The current system is, in my opinion, exceedingly ineffective and even detrimental to students who are deterred by what they perceive as pedantic material. They determine that they don't like school (particularly math), adopt defeatist attitudes and, by the end of high school, are entirely unequipped to enter the workforce or to matriculate into post-secondary programs.

Also, I'm curious as to when you attended school and which APs you took. I'm currently taking four, and I consider myself fortunate on nights when I have less than four hours of work.

[ZenoArrow]

"Far more important than the ability to get perfect grades is the ability to learn on one's own. And I don't think the two are perfectly correlated in any way."

Bingo!