The two Advanced Placement (AP) Exam weeks are finally over. For many juniors, seniors, and an increasing number of underclassmen, this means that classes are primarily done for the year, even though school doesn’t end until June.
Like many others, I am relieved that the tests have concluded. I will be okay, no longer having to recall as much information as humanly possible from all the way back to what I learned in August. However, despite this regained freedom, I feel somewhat unsatisfied.
What am I supposed to do with all of this knowledge that I learned now that exams are over?
I feel as if I am overflowing with miscellaneous facts from AP World History, AP US Government, and the other AP classes I have taken this year, in addition to information that has stuck with me from last year’s courses. What am I supposed to do with all of this now that exams are done?
Throughout the AP World History exam, I used as many facts as I possibly could in my Free Response Questions (FRQs). Still, my writing included a nominal percentage of everything that I actually learned in the class this year. While its three-hour duration is undoubtedly long, the test wasn’t nearly as far-reaching as one would imagine, especially considering how much material was learned in the actual course.
During the school year, we essentially read an entire textbook, yet we only ended up using a fraction of that information on the actual exam. In a “normal” class, I don’t feel that this would be too sizable of an issue. In a non-AP class, there would likely be more emphasis on learning just for the sake of learning. This would make it so that covering a wide range of topics would be logical, as more emphasis would be placed on learning to understand rather than learning to memorize.
However, for an AP class, covering so much content to ultimately use so little of it feels somewhat wrong. Virtually everything done in an AP class is to prepare for the single test in May, the one that determines whether we will receive college credit or not based on our score. Obviously, the concept of receiving college credit in high school makes perfect sense. However, the single test in each respective course has become the overarching point of each AP class as a whole. This makes it so we cram a whole curriculum into our brains to maybe use once for a single test—and then we forget about it, right? Aside from the exam, what else is each AP class for?
I’d like to use the Middle Eastern and Asian regions covered in AP World History as an example of the memorization of content and a lack of a place to apply it. Right now, I could recite brief histories of the Abbasid Empire, Mughal Empire, Delhi Sultanate, Safavid Empire, and Khmer Empire, among others. However, I believe that I mentioned only one of these empires—in a single sentence—across the entire AP World History exam this May.
All of this information is now sitting lazily in my mind, collecting metaphorical dust, because all of the aforementioned subjects have yet to come up in any real-life endeavor, either.
The same goes for the history of all of the other world regions and all the main concepts from every other AP class as well. I learned the content to be tested on, only to find that most of it didn’t show up on the actual exam.
In addition to the content, an issue with AP classes arises from the skills on which a focus is placed: specifically, the focus on how to answer the question rather than what content to include.
I have learned how to write essays in accordance with what College Board, the organization behind all AP classes, wants. I know the formula for answering a Document-Based Question, which is essentially an argumentative essay based on seven documents that are loosely tied to some historical period/concept (e.g., the Red Scare in the 20th-century United States). For AP Literature and Composition, I learned the tricks to finding the correct multiple-choice answers, understanding that they’re rarely the most literal options that use words straight from the passage. I know the tricks to tackle College Board’s intentionally convoluted questions that are designed to confuse students.
While everything listed above is not purposeless, there are doubtlessly more productive and relevant skills we could have been taught instead. For example, to bring up a common parent grievance about education these days, we’ve never learned how to write a check in school.
I understand that what I have learned in AP classes this year is not pointless—far from it. I sincerely believe that AP World History gave me essential knowledge of global dynamics, and I recognize how today’s largest conflicts arose from events decades or centuries prior. In AP US Government, the Electoral College clicked in my brain in a way it had never before. AP Literature and Composition fundamentally altered how I consume any book or movie. My AP Research project gave me a certain degree of expertise on the perceived quality of clothing and showed me that conducting independent research in college will not be a top priority of mine. Even AP Precalculus, a topic that I have no intention of using past high school, allowed for a greater understanding and appreciation of how radians work.
This lifestyle isn’t me saying that I am against AP classes: I’m really not. I am just calling for a slight change in how they work. I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure if it would be possible, but I am sure that there could be benefits from less focus on a single exam to more of a focus on learning. If there were less focus on memorizing just to keep the content in our heads until we forget it and move on, that could be advantageous for more than just a single test.
