You clicked. And now you're obliged to read.
To potential APBootCampers and proactive sons-and-daughters-of-wonderfully-loving-mothers,
So your potential attention span, dear web browser, is less than one minute, according to Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia is a wonderfully reliable source of information. And because their source of information, at least in this case, is cited as BBC. And of course all major news media outlets always broadcast the truth. Let's just assume they have.
That leaves us with not a lot of time to tell you all about this APBootCamp. At the very least, our goal is for you to be able to keep your focus until the end of this letter. Alternatively, you could be an amazingly fast reader. We typically find that keeping your focus is the easier goal to achieve. So moving on to our motive for the APBootCamp, then. We are devious, scheming, and cunning. We've come up with a master plan to brainwash all APBootCampers into mindless drones, capable only of studying and achieving good grades. It's up to you to decide whether or not that was any sort of reverse psychology. Behind our master plan, we have a humbler, more reserved ideal. We want you to have fun. Of course, we want you to learn too. But that's trivial. Insignificant in the face of fun. If you're having fun, you shouldn't even be thinking about learning. Grades? Whoever heard of something like that? Isn't that the way education should be?
Unfortunately, public education has generally landed itself in a very discouraging spot lately. Our current model of education is over a century old. We use little, if anything else, from the 19th century. The problem is, in a world where the amount of material to be learnt in assembly-line fashion is ever-increasing, more of such material has to be crammed into the same time frame. Both teachers and students find it difficult to rise up to those standards. As a result, interest drops and grades, being normalized against the average level of knowledge, remain the same, or even increase. Going to school no longer necessitates receiving an education, especially when the barest minimum is done to receive an "A". Fortunately, as the older decision-makers retire and leave the workforce, they will eventually be replaced by newer decision-makers with fresh ideas and a brighter outlook on the state of education. These newer decision-makers are you, the APBootCampers, and all other youths of society. You are our hope, destined for greater things in life. Of course, you'll just have a slight advantage over your non-APBootCamp friends. What advantage? Well, we guess you'll have to attend to find out.
In our boundless endeavor to pass out free knowledge, which is actually amazingly hard to come by outside of the K-12 system, we would like you to know that we've been through the same system. A few visionaries decided that the system could use some help and voila, the APBootCamp was born. That was three weeks ago. The APBootCamp is a grand ideal. We do what little we can. With the APBootCamp, we aim for a policy of full transparency to allow you to make the most informed decisions possible. If you have reached this point in the letter, you have already made a decision - to help us help you. Congratulations. Your attention span is longer than one minute. Or you're a speed reader. Perhaps that is something new that you've learnt today. Of course, you probably didn't have very much fun learning it. We try, and sometimes we fail. Or maybe you did have fun reading this. Whatever the case, the APBootCamp will most certainly be better.
We await.
Until then,
Your APBootCamp Fellows
Learning to love, and loving to learn.
P.S. For now, the APBootCamp is offered only to Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors taking AP classes at James Logan High School in the 2013-2014 academic year. Are we sad that it isn't offered outside the school? Yes, we are. Eventually, maybe.
So your potential attention span, dear web browser, is less than one minute, according to Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia is a wonderfully reliable source of information. And because their source of information, at least in this case, is cited as BBC. And of course all major news media outlets always broadcast the truth. Let's just assume they have.
That leaves us with not a lot of time to tell you all about this APBootCamp. At the very least, our goal is for you to be able to keep your focus until the end of this letter. Alternatively, you could be an amazingly fast reader. We typically find that keeping your focus is the easier goal to achieve. So moving on to our motive for the APBootCamp, then. We are devious, scheming, and cunning. We've come up with a master plan to brainwash all APBootCampers into mindless drones, capable only of studying and achieving good grades. It's up to you to decide whether or not that was any sort of reverse psychology. Behind our master plan, we have a humbler, more reserved ideal. We want you to have fun. Of course, we want you to learn too. But that's trivial. Insignificant in the face of fun. If you're having fun, you shouldn't even be thinking about learning. Grades? Whoever heard of something like that? Isn't that the way education should be?
Unfortunately, public education has generally landed itself in a very discouraging spot lately. Our current model of education is over a century old. We use little, if anything else, from the 19th century. The problem is, in a world where the amount of material to be learnt in assembly-line fashion is ever-increasing, more of such material has to be crammed into the same time frame. Both teachers and students find it difficult to rise up to those standards. As a result, interest drops and grades, being normalized against the average level of knowledge, remain the same, or even increase. Going to school no longer necessitates receiving an education, especially when the barest minimum is done to receive an "A". Fortunately, as the older decision-makers retire and leave the workforce, they will eventually be replaced by newer decision-makers with fresh ideas and a brighter outlook on the state of education. These newer decision-makers are you, the APBootCampers, and all other youths of society. You are our hope, destined for greater things in life. Of course, you'll just have a slight advantage over your non-APBootCamp friends. What advantage? Well, we guess you'll have to attend to find out.
In our boundless endeavor to pass out free knowledge, which is actually amazingly hard to come by outside of the K-12 system, we would like you to know that we've been through the same system. A few visionaries decided that the system could use some help and voila, the APBootCamp was born. That was three weeks ago. The APBootCamp is a grand ideal. We do what little we can. With the APBootCamp, we aim for a policy of full transparency to allow you to make the most informed decisions possible. If you have reached this point in the letter, you have already made a decision - to help us help you. Congratulations. Your attention span is longer than one minute. Or you're a speed reader. Perhaps that is something new that you've learnt today. Of course, you probably didn't have very much fun learning it. We try, and sometimes we fail. Or maybe you did have fun reading this. Whatever the case, the APBootCamp will most certainly be better.
We await.
Until then,
Your APBootCamp Fellows
Learning to love, and loving to learn.
P.S. For now, the APBootCamp is offered only to Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors taking AP classes at James Logan High School in the 2013-2014 academic year. Are we sad that it isn't offered outside the school? Yes, we are. Eventually, maybe.