Many high-school students are at a delicate point of uncertainty and determination: some may still struggle to find a clear direction in life, while others commit to the paths that they have set before them. For both these groups, allowing individuals to focus on their developing interests and passions is essential as they prepare for college or the workforce. Especially in humanities subjects, mandatory courses can often seem overly broad, with little opportunity to focus on a particular topic of interest. For students who want to specialize in particular subjects, electives are available but often limited. This combined with the fact that a typical student is able to only take one or two electives a year makes it difficult to decide which ones to take. IHS should focus on allowing students to participate in specialized electives throughout their entire high-school career rather than just limit it to their junior or senior years.
Humanities students in particular face inherent disadvantages in course options due to many reasons, one being the imposed statewide regulations. High-school students are required by law to take four credits each of English and Social Studies, and several specific courses must be taken by everyone (for instance, Global 1 and 2, Economics, and Participation in Government). These mandatory courses introduce a few drawbacks, though, especially with how hard it becomes to offer electives. This can especially be seen in the first two years of high school: all underclassmen must take, among others, a language course, the aforementioned global history classes, and a regents-based English class, leaving them with little if any opportunity to pursue courses of specific interest to them. With STEM courses (those concerning science, technology, engineering, or mathematics), this issue is circumvented through a large variety of science courses that can be followed exactly as a student wishes. Humanities courses have a more rigid curriculum path, as all courses are mainly presented in a way to prepare for the regents exams.
The extra electives already offered to students only create more problems. Ludi Augustine, a Social Studies teacher at IHS, commented on the limitations that arise from these requirements: “If we didn’t have those statutes in place, the school could afford to add in other courses such as anthropology, philosophy… Yes, we do have courses in psychology and human geography, but only at an AP level. People without experience or those that don’t want to take the test would have a hard time fitting into those classes.” This leads to yet another problem: the extra electives already offered don’t allow all students to easily take part in them. With IHS’s policy requiring any students taking an AP course to take the corresponding test, these electives fail to attract anyone who is interested in a particular subject or simply wants to learn something new without having to suffer through additional standardized testing. The threat of having to take a test at the end of a course often makes people reluctant to take different courses regardless of interest. Again, STEM classes solve this problem by dividing courses into different skill levels. A student interested in computer science, for example, can easily take Programming 1 and 2 if they don’t feel ready to jump into the AP class. Implementing a similar plan for all subjects would be a simple way to engage more students and increase the diversity of courses.
One method to enhance course diversity and maintain student interest early on in their high school career could be borrowed from a program already implemented with great success at IHS. Project Lead the Way, or PLTW, is a popular program among STEM-oriented students that teaches a variety of topics, starting from basic engineering techniques and design in freshman year and gradually moving up to increasingly complex subjects such as circuit design and programming. In their senior year, students form groups and work on funded projects that focus on technical problems and address real life problems. Humanities courses could also be implemented in a similar manner but allow students to focus on new subjects every year. For instance, all students involved in this program would take a basic writing course their freshman year, but then be allowed to choose more focused paths. Eventually these classes would culminate in a final senior project, such as allowing students to write their own novel for creative writing. As long as students show that they are clearly qualified to apply to courses outside of what is required, they should not be limited by a lack of electives. The best way for students to develop their interests in an effective manner is to let them take part in specialized courses rather than overly broad curricula that teach how to write a regents-style essay and nothing else.