By Mauranda Men ’16, Feature Editor

In recent years, it would seem with just a glance at their schedules that students in the younger grades are, on average, more advanced than any who have come before in the language, math, and science classes. According to Dr. Hobson, this year’s initial 50-student enrollment in Chemistry Honors (as opposed to Chem Regular or a science elective) is the highest it’s ever been, following a growing trend. The Advanced Physics with Calculus class has a large enrollment for a science elective, bolstered by a demographic ranging from sophomores to seniors. Mrs. Pursell notes that there are more slots of Honors Geometry this year than Geometry Regular for the first time, and only about half of the freshman class is taking Geometry of some kind because most of the others are in more advanced math courses. IB Spanish 3, in the past an independent study, is set to have an all-time high enrollment of 5 next year and the number is increasing in the lower grades, but the increase in accelerated students in the languages is far smaller than that in the STEM classes. Although this increased grade mixing may be occurring because the accelerated students have earned their way into harder classes, proving that nominal intellectual walls between grade levels are breaking down, does the phenomenon cause just as many divisions as it eliminates?

Several students who wish to remain anonymous confided that they occasionally feel intimidated by the fact that several members in their already very advanced math and science classes are a few years younger than they are. Others have even told me that they feel it’s unfair that the eligibility requirements have suddenly become more seemingly accessible to the younger grades. At the risk of advancing the social distinction he describes, Dean Tan ’18 has found that to many of his older classmates he has become “notorious for taking summer classes and skipping ahead.” To clarify, Dean is a sophomore who’s currently already taking Advanced Physics with Calculus and Differential Equations. He believes that the social effect is barely noticed inside the classroom, citing the fact that math and science classes are generally less discussion-based so the age difference doesn’t stand out. He enjoys that harder classes have made him “more comfortable interacting with upperclassmen and enabled him “to pursue opportunities not necessarily restricted by grade level.” Despite having more intellectual freedom, it would seem that these advanced underclassmen are evolving into part of a new stereotype that can be restricting in interpersonal ways.

Contradicting Dean’s theory about the lack of discussion in math class helping him to fit in more, in the very discussion-based language classes, older students have been seemingly less perturbed by the presence of younger classmates than they have been as older math and science students. While Marley Carroll, one of two juniors in an IB Spanish 2 class otherwise filled with seniors, admits that she can often be singled out by her classmates (to answer questions, for example), she feels that the cause is not based on her age but instead based on her track record in class discussions, something that could easily happen in a class full of seniors. Alessandra Quigley, a freshman in Spanish 3 Honors, a class that usually comprises mostly sophomores and juniors, agrees, saying that the class feels like “any other class” and that the age difference is barely mentioned. She believes that “being ahead has only helped my social life, because I have a bunch of friends among the upperclassmen that I might not otherwise have met.” Among the older classmates, there seemed to be no animosity towards the younger kids, since they too report that the age difference isn’t really noticeable in their language classes at all. Part of the source of the different student perspectives on the trend in the languages as opposed to the math and science classes could be that oftentimes younger students in STEM classes take accelerated courses over the summer to skip into high classes, while language placement is and has always been based on the placement tests taken when a student first enters the school. Both routes legitimately qualify a student to enter a higher class.

The social effects have not gone unnoticed by the faculty, of course. As the teacher of Geometry Honors, which was the highest-level freshman math class at one point, Mrs. Pursell has experienced drastic changes in her class dynamic. She remembers when “geometry was an integral part of the freshman experience” and she got to meet more of the freshmen because it was the class before they were scattered into the various levels of higher math classes. She now teaches a class with more seventh graders in it than freshmen, and another of her classes has both a sixth grader and a tenth grader in it. She has described how many freshmen will come to her for extra help and ask her questions then that they were hesitant to ask in class simply because “they don’t want to look dumb in front of seventh graders.” This kind of sentiment in Geometry Honors, a class that was once considered the high honors math class for freshmen, has become a source of concern for many teachers in other math and science classes as well. In response, the Curriculum Committee is currently considering a new section of Geometry Honors exclusive to middle school students.

In the languages, though, teachers view the trend as far more benign and even possibly beneficial. Sr. Romay, who only teaches classes from IB Spanish and onwards but nevertheless has students as young as sophomores, is actually quite excited by the grade mixing. He feels that it contributes only positively to the level of discourse in the class. While he does agree that there are maturity barriers that younger students may need to navigate, he has not experienced any major issues in that area. As long as the age gap remains at most two years, it would seem that having a healthy mix of ages in language classes can be beneficial.

Still, the departmentally-confined aspect of the trend could create social disparity because it seems to reward only those students more gifted in areas of STEM and the languages, while the English and Humanities departments have been left out. The only class in those departments that actively draws students from different grade levels is Creative Writing, which has far less of a fixed syllabus, while the only other instances of grade mixing occur because of very rare case-by-case exceptions or to fulfill IB diploma requirements. Many Humanities and English teachers agree, though, that the trend towards acceleration just isn’t something that could happen in their departments. Mr. Hawk cites “the protean nature of the course material” in his history classes which makes complete mastery of the class (which a student would presumably need in order to skip it) impossible. He mentions that “math and science classes have universally accepted concepts that can be mastered completely, but no matter how skilled a student may be, in [he says] ‘America,’ there are infinite directions to go.” Ms. Fischer agrees, saying that unlike the Humanities, “math is split into separate classes of information that are discretely defined,” but that history classes, regardless of the grade level of the student, “can’t ever be completely boring just because a student already knows everything.” Mrs. Acquadro believes that the difference “might also be organizational because there are certain books that [the administration wants] everyone to read” and because it would be far harder to determine placement objectively in an English class just from a test. In addition, unlike in math, maturity and sophistication that come from age play large roles in a student’s writing.

Getting back to the social impact, though, Mrs. Acquadro notes that “kids tend to be more accepting of someone scoring highly because ‘he’s a math genius,’ but the same thing doesn’t happen in English class.” Wouldn’t accelerating students in certain fields and not others simply further encourage an intellectual divide based on natural inclination (alienating the arts, I might add)? While social tensions don’t seem high in the world language classes currently, it does appear that the increasing eligibility of younger students for harder math and science classes has led to a problematic spike in “schedule elitism” among NA students.