International Baccalaureate Student Compares IB to Fascism

The New Hampshire Tea Party has published this article about an IB student's impression of the International Baccalaureate.

THE DOWNFALL OF SENECA VALLEY
H/T to www.truthaboutib.com

Seneca Valley has decided to cut all of the AP sciences and AP Calculus, effective next year, in order to promote the IB program. They are afraid that their delicate baby will perish because students find AP classes more valuable than the IB courses, and have decided to take the choice entirely out of our hands. The administration has taken away the power to decide from the students, and quite literally forced us to take classes we don’t want to take. The ruthless murder of AP and the subsequent engineered rise of IB at Seneca Valley are reminiscent of the rise of fascism. This will ultimately cause the downfall of Seneca Valley.

When I first heard that Seneca was cutting these classes, I recoiled in horror. Seneca Valley, a school obsessed with pulling its name up from the gutter of MCPS, is going to eliminate its most prestigious and challenging courses? Surely, thought I, teachers will respond to this and it will be changed. I was right on one count, at least - the teachers were in an uproar, but the administration turned blindly away and stubbornly stuck to its folly.

AP Calculus and the AP sciences are widely accepted in our school as the most difficult classes offered. They’re the only classes that students are afraid to take - aka, the only classes that aren’t easy As. This certainly says something about the rigor of the other APs at Seneca; but at the same time, it testifies to the great presence of these classes within our school. Administration, do you really want to make our school more respected among all the “W schools” and magnet schools? Try keeping these classes around, because at this point the high pass rates and percentages of 4s and 5s from these classes are the only thing keeping you even remotely respectable. By cutting them, you’ll be making yourself the laughingstock of Montgomery County. We’ll become lower than Wheaton, lower than Kennedy - and that should bother you. Sadly, AP classes aren’t the only classes that have been cut at Seneca Valley. A piano class, which had upwards of 25 students signed up for it, has been cut to make room for an IB music class with 7 students. The “normal,” non-IB students want and deserve music in their lives, yet it has been ripped from them to make room for a small group of elites. Just because a student is in the IB program does not make them any more deserving of special privileges. When the people in power start to cater to a small group of elites instead of the common good of the greater population, that administration begins to fail. Hopefully, I do not need to define discrimination for you.

I have tempered my tongue, but I am indeed angry. The only classes I ever liked at this school were AP Calculus and the AP sciences; these are the only AP classes that students in our school actually manage to pass in large numbers, and the only classes that ever pushed me to my limits and made me discover the joys of learning. Yet, these are the same classes that you’ve decided to cut. There are still students who want to take these classes, and you have decided to rob them of their chance to do so. No one in the school wants this but you, the administration. Believe it or not, nobody else shares your selfish reasoning, if it can be called that.

To me, it seems like the only reason all of this is happening is to make room for the IB program. Let me tell you a little about the IB program here at the one and only Seneca Valley. To apply for the IBO, Seneca, like all other schools seeking authorization, had to pay $43,000 in fees merely for the privilege of doing so. This is the same Seneca that constantly complains about not having enough money. Do you really think we can afford this wanton waste? There’s still the costs of teacher training ($20k-$60k), authorization fees ($10k annually), and seminars ($1.5k per teacher, per level, of which there are three).

Students also do not receive nearly as many credits as is appropriate for the time they have to put in for the IB. To receive the diploma, eight core areas must be fulfilled over two years (two years for each course in most cases, as opposed to just one with the AP), leaving no room for electives, and then several final projects and an extended essay must be completed in addition to the actual IB tests. Your entire life is consumed, as testified by a friend of mine (an MIT admit and student at Richard Montgomery, the premiere IB school of the county). But, what is all that even worth? At the University of Maryland, for example, the only IB credits that cannot be obtained through the AP are Italian, Swahili, and Theatre, while AP credits accepted there include Art, Art History, Computer Science, Government, and Statistics. I doubt that Swahili is more useful to our students than Government or Statistics. There’s another thing: the IB exams all cost more than AP exams, even before counting the additional prices of mailing them overseas. The AP is also more recognized overall in the US, and comes from the same College Board that administers the omnipresent SAT. To top it all off, the AP allows you to take courses at your leisure, while an IB Diploma demands a set curriculum.

Attitudes expressed by the IB Organization can be readily described as imperialistic and dogmatic. Teachers and students alike have expressed their disdain; a few who have participated in the “seminars” have described disturbing practices that only just fall short of brainwashing. At an IB conference, it was dictated that “Helping young people to ‘become fully human’ is something that the IBO can foster. This will mean helping them to make a distinction between what is right and wrong, just and unjust, true and false, and good and evil.” That sounds like a sales pitch for the Hitler Youth. That aside, diploma program students have shared the opinion that the IB is decent but largely a waste of time. However, I don’t think “decent” warrants the heavy costs and additional baggage associated with the IB, not to mention the risk of it possibly failing - especially when we already have a healthy AP program that has been in place for decades.

Of course, there’s a reason that Seneca, like so many other schools, seeks the IB, but it is hardly a good one. The IB, to its credit, is a very powerful brand, a powerful label. International Baccalaureate – what a pretentious noise they can utter. This label happens to also bump Seneca up a few places in the high school rankings, which count participation in AP/IB tests. Having the IB also is an attempt to draw funding to the school. Perhaps these are not the worst of intentions, but they seem to be far outweighed by the consequences.

Things are changing at Seneca, and not for the better. I hope you, having read these few small truths I have hoped to get across, will join me in a stand to take charge of our futures. If you have a voice, let it be heard. Write an email, send a letter, or discuss it with your peers. Even those of you that are graduating should think about your younger counterparts that will never have the same opportunities you did. Trust me: this affects everyone. A final note to our esteemed administration:

I am the people’s voice, and I have spoken. You are now failing as an administration precisely because you've forgotten that you were chosen to serve those that you administer, in the same way that a the government must uphold the wellbeing of its citizens. Thankfully, that failure is not written in stone, not yet. There is still a chance for redemption: listen to your students, your parents, your teachers, and even your fellow administrators. Reinstate these classes you have so ruthlessly cut. In the past you have demonstrated an inability to tolerate opinions other than your own. I do hope that for once you will not just find some arbitrary policy to make a scapegoat out of me, but perhaps that is too much to expect. Unfortunately for you, there is such a thing as freedom; it is an ideal that will not die no matter how much you try to crush it. You have tried, and probably will continue to try, to censor these kinds of things, but I warn you that to do so is in vain.

You can try to mold us, but you cannot break us. It is a fact that students cannot be programmed, that our identities cannot be erased and that our independent thoughts cannot be subdued. It is too late to change the past, but these words pray that you have not yet managed to blind yourself to the future.