The culminating courses of Haldane’s advanced English curriculum are the junior and senior year Advanced Placement English classes: AP English Language and Composition, off ered for juniors, and AP English Literature and Composition, off ered for seniors. Th ese two courses, like all APs, follow standardized, national curricula designed by the College Board and culminate in AP exams. My criticism is directed toward these standardized curricula, not toward the Haldane English Department or its teachers who teach AP English courses.
Like many other students, I was motivated to take the most rigorous course load possible in high school and opted into both AP Lang and AP Lit, assuming they would allow me to develop my writing skills and help prepare me for college. After all, the College Board markets APs as college preparatory courses.
When I compare the quality of my writing in my sophomore year, before taking these classes, to now, I am unconvinced that AP Lang and AP Lit contributed much, if at all, to improving my writing. These courses do not foster creative growth. Rather, their sole purpose is to teach students the formulaic essay structure that allows them to score well on the AP exam. I am confident the overly rubricated AP English courses have made my writing more stale, formulaic, and unimaginative.
AP Lang is a course centered around the analysis of rhetorical devices and teaches students how to identify and analyze the use of ethos, pathos, and logos within short texts. AP Lit exposes students to a variety of classic American and British novels and poems, with some modern works woven into the curriculum as well. Like AP Lang, students in AP Lit are asked to write essays citing these texts, using literary devices to show complex understanding. The assignments and exams in both classes focus almost exclusively on literary analysis as the primary form of writing.
Despite being an important skill for students to leave high school with, literary analysis represents an insignificant portion of all forms of writing, and nowhere in the curriculum is journalistic, creative, or research writing addressed. The idea of writing a tenplus page research paper in college is daunting, simply because I have never been required to write more than a five-paragraph essay. Similarly, if I were asked to write a poem or short story, I would not know where to begin, and it’s safe to say that what I would come up with would hardly be moving.
This is because in high school, particularly in AP classes, the goal of most of my writing has been to respond to a prompt with a defensible thesis, using evidence from a text to support my answer. After years of answering identical prompts, I mindlessly write almost the same essay each time, knowing it will most likely both score well on the grading rubric and leave me fundamentally underwhelmed by my work. Senior Louisa Schimming, who has taken both AP Lang and Lit, is of a similar mind. She noted, “[literary analysis] is obviously important, but at this point, I could write any essay like that in my sleep. I would rather write something creative, like poetry, in English class.” To the College Board, the idea of writing as artistic expression, or as an exploration of self, seems at most a distant consideration. In my view, there is little correlation between an essay that does well on the AP scoring sheet and one that is actually good.
Additionally, AP English tests do not provide enough time for students to produce quality work. The exam provides approximately 40 minutes per essay, encouraging students to write as best they can in a short window. Th ere is no time for revision incorporated into the exam, and course assignments do not emphasize revising work either. As any writer knows, revision is absolutely necessary for producing work of any substance or value. No one writes a great first draft; it is in the process of revision that true quality arises. When I get my essays back, I look at my teacher’s comments and usually think about how they could be improved upon. Never in an AP English class have I been asked to rewrite a piece, using the teacher’s feedback to strengthen my work.
This is not to say that I do not see the value of a standardized English curriculum. I do believe there should be exams in which students showcase their reading and writing skills. However, I am strongly opposed to the rigidity of these AP courses and exams. Junior Dessa Bellamy-Tarantino, who is currently taking AP Lang, agrees. She remarked: “When any class is constructed around a standardized test, it is perilously easy to lose sight of learning and obliterate the passions of an individual.” In order to fuel this passion instead of eradicating it, the curriculum should provide more exposure to creative, journalistic, and longer-form writing. Revision of writing should be non-negotiable, and students should have more flexibility to write about their interests, rather than consistently writing the same 5-paragraph literary analysis essay.
As a copy editor of The Haldane Outlook, I read and edit dozens of articles each issue, written by some of Haldane’s best writers. I am largely impressed by the quality of writing produced, but see in my classmates’ writing, as well as in my own, the infl uence of the College Board on student voices. The drab, formulaic, five paragraph structure characteristic of AP essays hinders our ability to write freely and creatively. Getting engaged in writing opportunities outside of the classroom has proved crucial for my writing development and has helped me counteract the effects of the rigid AP structure. The Outlook, Literary Magazine, and the Creative Writing and Journalism electives are all great resources for Haldane students looking to break free of the constraints of AP rubrics and stimulate creative thought.
Ultimately, writing is a form of expressing critical thought and individuality, from which great joy can and should be derived. Writing this article, I am excited by the idea of sharing my views, and thus a piece of myself, with the community. I am enjoying the process of gluing myself to my Chromebook and putting my thoughts into words. This joy is what is missing from the College Board’s AP English curriculum.
The classroom should be a setting in which creativity and critical thinking are encouraged and nourished, one in which students learn to love writing. Instead, in AP classes, creativity and individuality are being suffocated by a rubric and a forty-minute timer. As Bellamy-Tarantino bluntly put it, “The fact that College Board is so deeply embedded within English curricula nationwide is an insult to the subject.”
