The funny thing is that it was especially true for the AP classes, which are designed to end in a test!

My AP US history teacher was great. She did a whole week on the Civil War that started off with her telling us there would likely be not a single question on the test on it, but that no one should think they've taken a class in US history if they didn't know at least the basics of the Civil War.

The things one learns about in the LoC catalog. There's a bee pest (ie, thing inimical to bees) called the American Foul Brood. As opposed to the European Foul Brood.

I think I have the monster for my next fic.

This is why our state tests (in English) are geared toward skills instead of content

Our curricula was pretty strictly defined -- the school picked an overseeing organisation, taught to their curriculum for two years, and then we got to take tests. At least two per subject.

I liked it. Worked for me.

On 11th grade, IIRC, a teacher yelled at a friend of mine because she dared offering an interpretation to a poem that she had come up with herself and wasn't what the teacher had taught the minute before. In most lessons, this was the norm.

Oh, I had one of those (for two years of english, uhg.) But we all knew she was crazy and way too suceptible to brown-nosers, so she really didn't have much power to stunt us.

If anyone makes a movie version of Will Eisner's latest (posthumously published) book and doesn't cast Nicholas Brendon, they got some 'splainin' to do.

The shining moment of my highschool education was being 1/2 way through the American History AP exam, running across an Emerson quote, and noticing it had been misquoted. Our teacher had bashed that particular quote into our heads (the metaphor about the transparent eyeball), and at the break, we all assembled and were like, "We are so smart!! Did you correct the exam question? I did!"

(N.b. there was no way of expecting that specific quote to be on the American History exam, and I think my teacher just liked eyeballs. But we were so pleased and felt so very superior.)

I still can't get over how it makes me hope for a different ending every time, even as much as I've seen it.

There was a point through it, when the Araber (sp? again) kept denying and denying, and wouldn't tell anything to Pembelton, even when he was right next to him, talking to him in a soft nearly-hypnotic voice, concentrating all he has on trying to make the man speak. He nearly started telling something, and then he didn't. That was when I first thought "no, you couldn't possibly let him get away with it! That means you're going to let him get away with it, right?" And I just kept thinking it until the rest of the episode. Poor Bayliss.

I think AP classes don't quite teach to the test in a bad way, since the subjects that could appear on any one AP exam are so vast. Plus with so many essays, it does supposedly test your critical thinking skills.

t /took seven AP exams

I wrote a whole essay in English Lit about Nicholas Nickleby, despite having forgotten the name of an important character (Wackford Squeers). I just called him the schoolmaster, and wrote the essay anyway. I like to think that, because I did actually know what I was talking about, I did not benefit from that "oh the facts don't matter, as long as it is a long enough essay" kind of grading.

Araber

I saw some Arabers this weekend! They're still hanging on. Kinda cool. Of course, I then couldn't remember what they were called and played 2 million questions with everyone else on the bus until someone finally remembered.