Education began as a solid meal, transformed into paste, melted into a think chowder and now it will end as a soup; thin and watered down.

 Summer reading has been abolished for 9^th and 10^th grade honors English courses by VUSD District officials and now 11^th and 12^th grade AP English Teachers are being asked to stop the practice of mandatory summer reading in an effort to make AP courses more accessible to all students. However, without the protection of summer reading to assure only the most motivated of students enter, these courses will eventually crack, crumble and fall into the abyss that public education is becoming.

 According to the National Summer Learning Association, over those languorous, warm days of summer, students lose on average two months of math learned in the previous year and over two months of reading achievement. Summer reading is proven to keep the cogs in student’s mind turning over the long break and prevent teachers from have to spend the average five weeks re-teaching the lost information.

The books assigned during the summer are not given to stress or bother. They’re given so that teachers have the opportunity to hit the ground running rather than review basic information for over a month and properly utilize the entire year in order to cover all of the necessary novels.

 However, many individuals see the task of summer reading as burdensome and unfair towards honors and AP students, who are already quivering under the pressure of their multiple high level classes. Don’t they need a break after an entire school year of hard work?

 Absolutely, but two books assigned over the summer, should not be seen as disruptive forces infringing upon one’s break, especially if someone has just signed up for AP English.

 The entire point of summer reading is to teach students the joys of reading and learning; to instill in them a passion for the art of words; to introduce them to the likes of Orwell and Beecher. Quite frankly, if one does not enjoy reading and sees it as a chore or burden, then perhaps they should not be in AP English. Perhaps the problem isn’t with the system assigning reading, but with the kids signing up to take classes heavily based on reading.

 

Feel differently? Check out Riley Knouse’s Anti Summer Reading article. 

What about colleges? Without these AP classes, students won’t get into the colleges of their choice. Students have no option but to take strenuous classes in subjects they loathe. So the school officials do what they can to make it simpler for these students, so that they can have a better shot at getting into their dream school; which brings us to the problem at hand.

 The caliber of education presented in these AP classes is deteriorating do to the equalization of AP and college prep classes.

 Equality is the rhetoric repeated over and over by the district in an effort to quell the concerns of students and teachers.  They aren’t trying to “ban” summer reading. They’re trying to make AP more “accessible”

 This educational communism will ultimately fail because no matter what Marxist policy is implemented in regards to AP courses the variable they are trying to change will remain the same; all students are not equal. They are not equal in their motivation, they are not equal in their drive to achieve and they are not equal in their love for learning.

 What they might have a semblance of equality in, is their yearning to enter the college of their desires and to do that, they must suffer through an AP class or two, and for these students summer reading is “unfair.” But the problem isn’t summer reading, and it isn’t the exclusivity of AP classes. The problem lies buried deep within the system. The problem is the system itself.

 If a college preparatory English class doesn’t teach students the skills they will need in college, and the only way they can aquire these skills is to enter an unwanted AP class, then the wound is not summer reading. If college preparatory courses do not prepare teenagers for college, then these courses are not doing their job, therefore the system which implements these standards is not doing its job. In a study conducted by The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, U.S. students from elementary to high school rank 19^th in reading, 22^nd in science, and 23^rd in mathematics out of 65 countries. Mediocre will no longer suffice in college prep classes if the U.S. wants to succeed in education, and eliminating summer reading won’t help that ranking.

 AP classes for all are AP classes for no one. By eliminating summer reading and slowing down the curriculum the district is not bettering education for the students who could not take AP classes before; it is tying weights to the students with a drive to learn and forcing them to endure a year of having to put up with peers who don’t want to be there and a watered down shell of an AP education.

 Teachers are already sounding the horns of protest against the stripping down of AP, but there is only so much that they can do. Students have to fight for their right to an undiluted education.

 First they came for shop classes and nothing was said. Then they came for intermediate courses and nothing was said. Then they came for college prep and nothing was said. Now they’re here for AP. Will anything be said?