Small bone to pick w/ AP here: it is ENTIRELY focused on the memorization of facts. True? If you don't believe me, look at the thousands of students desperately cramming for exams, trying to memorize dates, presidents, the names of certain events, etc.. IB focuses on UNDERSTANDING all of this. If you don't know WHY something was important, why even know it? IB is the way to go, people. Less info to learn- but that less info leads to a greater understanding of why things work and why they happened that way. Just look at the IB and AP tests. They'll show you what I mean.

Moved to Miscellaneous.

Well, my only beef with IB is that it is extremely expensive and time-consuming to actually go through with the whole program, and it requires a lot of customization and special care for students who want to do it, which causes problems with whatever the local district's curriculum demands. Also, having gone through the college admission process just a few years ago, I know that MANY colleges either didn't accept IB or had a complicated and incomplete process for accepting it. While AP is also expensive, at least it is widely accepted and extremely useful - I got almost an entire semester's worth of work taken care of just through AP test scores, which has been really nice in scheduling classes because it means that I've already breezed through a lot of low-level prerequisite classes.

And to be honest, even though AP classes involve a lot of rote memorization of names, dates, facts, etc., the low-level classes they take care of in college tend to be pretty much along those lines. Since my high school did not offer the AP European history class, I had to take that one in college, and I was struck by how similar it was to a high school class (silly textbook, reading quizzes, dumb jocks and all - history GenEd classes in college aren't much fun).

I'm not talking about the pros or cons of the actual program. My point is that the principles behind IB promote understanding. I am aware of the fact that it is relatively inconvenient, expensive, etc.. In terms of value in learning, IB is superior. Is AP more useful in terms of college? Yes. Is it more convenient? Yes. But it is reflective of the "quantity not quality" school of thought, the increasing American focus on trying to prove to the rest of the world that we aren't a bunch of misguided, disillusioned elitists. IB has its drawbacks, to be sure- but it exemplifies what learning should be more than AP does.

“When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”

Well, that's wonderfully idealistic of you, but unfortunately I subscribe to a more pragmatic school of thought. In high school, I weighed the benefits and drawbacks to taking IB versus AP, and I figure that the benefits IB offers simply don't measure up to the various costs.

Also, that little quote is a cute touch (even if it only makes sense to an extreme relativist), but if you read what I actually said, you'll note that I'm not bashing anything or anyone besides the IB program itself - no need to take it personally.

I guess that you could say that I'm a post-modernist, although that quote was mostly in reply to your signature than anything else.

Also, do you prefer pragmatism to idealism? Pragmatism is more widely applicable, to be sure, but idealism provides the principles that allow you to see the relative 'truth.' Rote memorization of facts doesn't allow you to do anything more than review them over and over. Understanding allows you to interpret those facts. I know that I am reiterating what I said in my last post, but I cannot emphasize that enough. In terms of pragmatism, however, I will have to agree with you. But that does not mean that one should limit oneself to only one program (if financially and otherwise possible) . I am planning on taking both AP and IB exams at the end of this year.