If you attempt to blend oil and water on the same canvas, your painting will have fundamental flaws: lacking harmony, cohesion, and vibrancy. Education is a palette of different colors. If you disregard the intentional strokes and kinds of paint each student chooses, the artwork will become nothing more than an incoherent mess, preventing it from reaching its true intent. In the past few years, LM started mixing College Prep (CP) and Honors students in order to ease difficulties with course scheduling. When LM mixes Honors and CP students within the same classes, the district affirms the notion that humanities courses deserve less care, while also improperly addressing the racial disparities seen across differing levels of academic rigor.
LM adopted their system of integrating Honors and CP for core classes just under a decade ago. In doing this, they expanded the scope of classes that can be mixed from electives to core classes such as Film and Literature, Sports and Literature, Global Studies, US Government, and US History. The trend here is clear; only humanities classes are mixed. In the grand scheme of education, this act places humanities courses at a much lower level of distinction than STEM courses, while tasking humanities educators with accommodating two different pools of students. As of 2020, degrees in humanities comprised less than 10 percent of all bachelor degrees. The world has undoubtedly shifted towards STEM, and in mixing CP and Honors the humanities courses, we as a district are making the conscious decision to affirm that humanities are less valuable and deserve less care.
With a lack of exact guidelines, humanities teachers are tasked with a nearly impossible job in having to accommodate both levels of students. The only guidance that teachers get takes place during their weekly professional learning community (PLC) meetings where they are able to collaborate to determine what can be differentiated between Honors and CP students. There are no specific guidelines on how to vary instruction, and the effects can be seen on both students and teachers alike. The classes morph into a hybrid level that falls just above a CP level class and just below an Honors level class. When talking about her mixed Honors and CP Film and Literature class, Laila Jackson ’24 explains, “Honors students just move quicker, regardless of whether you are in a mixed class or not. When you are in that mixed class as a CP student, that adds a level of pressure you didn’t sign up for.” This unanticipated pressure is unfair to students seeking a more comfortable learning environment suited to their needs.
When discussing the ramifications of combined classes, we must also acknowledge a systemic racial issue that continues to prevail throughout LM. It would be ignorant to disregard the fact that, at LM, Honors and AP classes are predominantly made up of white and Asian American students. In the same vein, CP classes are mainly composed of the vast majority of Black and Latino students. However, despite the status quo allowing for interaction between students of different races, combined classes are not the solution to creating racial unification. It is worthwhile to note that the administrative reasoning for combining classes was not expressed as a DEI initiative. Classes were combined for logistical reasons. Therefore, the failures of this initiative to properly provide racial integration are rather the failures of the initiative to even consider race as a factor in the first place. If we were to attempt to rectify the systemic racial differences within our courses, it would require work in areas far beyond the classroom. The combination of Honors and CP courses should not be defended for the reason that it poorly addresses a problem it was never built to fix.
It comes down to intentions. If the best interest of students were in mind and we wanted all students, including those hoping to pursue careers in humanities, to succeed, we would heavily rectify the way we go about mixing courses. If we prefer to instead continue mixing oil with water, we will have to sit back and risk losing the essence of intentional strokes each student makes on their educational journey.
Unsigned editorials reflect the general opinion of the opinion staff and not the opinion of any single editor.