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IB elitism is bothering me.


dubyawhy

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Okay so I'm an "IB Kid" and my best friend is an "AP Kid". I'm not really around to notice it a lot(due to different schedules), but he says that he often gets into arguments and debates with those taking IB. According to him, this usually starts with nothing serious like "Isn't your bother going to be a Junior next year? If he's math savvy he should have a shot at Calculus BC, it's pretty challenging". Then it escalates and he always claims that the IB kid gets sort of fake-disbelief/condescending/pretentious and would, after minutes of debating, resort to rolling eyes, forcibly chuckling and other stupid things kids do to make their peers feel stupid. Once he got into an argument about math and the IB kid would incessantly claim Math HL covered Calculus BC material in 2 months(idk if there's any truth to that claim, but it seems pretty dumb)

Once I was walking with a few of my IB friends past an AP Calculus class and they would sort of s******(on purpose) in front of the kids coming out and blurt out "retards" (they probably weren't serious in trying to insult, but just trolling, but the fact that this perception even exists is pretty stupid). What bothers me even more is that when someone in town encounters a kid who claims to be in the IB program, 90% of the time they will make a reference to how smart they must be, or the 5 hours of sleep they get every night. The perception has gone so far that even people not in school have this second hand "idea" that IB is some strange elite program for geniuses.

I'm proud to be part of such a system that is SUPPOSEDLY wonderful, but when non-IB kids sort of feel alienated around us (because they think we're geniuses), it really bothers me. They will constantly ask me for help with my homework, and when I fail to answer(because I don't know), they will claim that I really do know, but just don't want to help them out of contempt. Parents of kids entering high school will sometimes ask me whether or not entering their child in IB will affect their health too much or cause too much stress. When I'm out with the so-called "normal" people they will always refer to me as "the smart guy" or "nerd" (in a joking way, but it still disturbs me). The whole situation seems a little divorced from reality.

I've probably made the situation seem a lot more dire than it actually is, but you get the idea. There is so much hype going around, and I dont ACTUALLY believe IB is that much more difficult than AP(or if it even is more difficult at all).

Do you know of any "IB superiority" sentiment around your school?

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Guest Achmed-The Dead Terrorist

Look, I'm going to make it brief: Due to all that an IB student goes through in 2 years (literally everything!!), an IB student feels indeed superior to other students because of what he went through and what he learnt from that school (the IB) which I guarantee you, no where else you will get (including CAS, TOK and EE).

That's basically it. And yes, we know that sentiment and we actually have the right to have it in Portugal due to the crap national educational system we have in Portugal

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It's the other way around here in Indonesia, I think ... students from national schools think that students from international schools (with a curriculum like IB or Cambridge) are "not very smart". That's probably because the education in national schools here in Indonesia is very focused around memorization, giving the impression that national students are "smarter".

So basically, no "IB superiority" where I live. At least, not that I've heard of. :no:

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It's the other way around here in Indonesia, I think ... students from national schools think that students from international schools (with a curriculum like IB or Cambridge) are "not very smart". That's probably because the education in national schools here in Indonesia is very focused around memorization, giving the impression that national students are "smarter".

So basically, no "IB superiority" where I live. At least, not that I've heard of. :no:

I really hate that.

and the RSBI students are so conceited! they think they're as good as us but they never know how tough the IB is!!! D:

but about the intelligence, it's somewhat true in some cases. I went to national schools for 9 years and the competition was quite tough. I've only been 2++ years in an international school and I see that there is a lot less competition. I don't know why, but maybe the international students are less hardworking? not sure.

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I had a similar attitude in my first few years of IB - not quite as extreme, but there was a sense of IB superiority among me and my graduating class. Never so much with the AP kids (we had a playful rivalry, knowing that in many instances our course work was very similar. Of course this didn't stop us from trying to make it sound like we had it harder - and with TOK and CAS and EE I think we sometimes do), but with the "normal" classes in our school.

And in the past few months I've felt badly about my snobbishness... that is, until my IB friend told me about her "normal" US History class (required for us if you choose not to take HOTA) and how NO ONE in the class knew where Canada is when they took a geography quiz... after a full day of review. I thought maybe she was exaggerating, but after asking around in other non-IB classes, it seems likely. So, I guess in some circumstances we're justified to think we have an edge over them, but I do think it's wrong to be snobbish about it. I'm sure there are things that I don't know that they do.

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For us, IB people are considered dumb and i think it's because most national schools teach more upgraded stuff then IB, because over here the national students can do our exams and pass them with flying colours. And it's true, they don't know how much hard work IB is and whenever i tell them it's not fun and games, they say that they can do it better then us :angry: it really bugs me

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I think IB students like to exaggerate how hard it is because it's so easy when only a tiny amount of people take it compared to how many study according to the national curriculum. It's the same with other "special" degrees that upper-secondary students can get here in Finland (e.g. double- and triple degrees where you do the national diploma as well as one or two vocational degrees). Not saying that any of these are very easy, or that they couldn't be more challenging than doing the national curriculum, just that the horror stories told often seem to me a bit too over-the-top just for the sake of intimidating others.

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In Australia their is a huge stigma to IB, the people who have heard of it think it is elitist like yours. and their is very much a divide in our year group bettwen IB and HSC,

However strangely even with this stigma in my area at least, universities do not recognise the difficulty of the IB and the effort we go to and for some reason think that we should have a harder time to get into uni. for example i noticed in a university in England to do law was 37-38.

In sydney to get into law- 44....very unjust....

they just dont get it....

sigh...

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I think IB students like to exaggerate how hard it is because it's so easy when only a tiny amount of people take it compared to how many study according to the national curriculum. It's the same with other "special" degrees that upper-secondary students can get here in Finland (e.g. double- and triple degrees where you do the national diploma as well as one or two vocational degrees). Not saying that any of these are very easy, or that they couldn't be more challenging than doing the national curriculum, just that the horror stories told often seem to me a bit too over-the-top just for the sake of intimidating others.

This is so annoying and I think we should stop.

If anything, to establish a good attitude towards IB, we should have everybody be super-modest and encourage people to take IB if we are to expand it. Elitism only divides people.

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Guest Achmed-The Dead Terrorist

In Australia their is a huge stigma to IB, the people who have heard of it think it is elitist like yours. and their is very much a divide in our year group bettwen IB and HSC,

However strangely even with this stigma in my area at least, universities do not recognise the difficulty of the IB and the effort we go to and for some reason think that we should have a harder time to get into uni. for example i noticed in a university in England to do law was 37-38.

In sydney to get into law- 44....very unjust....

they just dont get it....

sigh...

Same in Portugal. In Portugal, they don't even recognise IB :| we have to convert our scores into national scale and it's very unfair the conversion! s:

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at my school..everybody is pretty chilled about it..we all help each other out. A level students will help some IB people and vice versa, but, some of the A Level people say that A levels are harder than IB and we argue saying that it definately is NOT a joke. But that only happens once in a moon.

However, thay also agree that it is a tough program because TOK, CAS and EE. They also see that IB people are much better and have a much more holistic view on the world, which i like to think we do (which we learn from CAS) :)

My school is shutting the IB down but before they made this decision, all the A Level people decided to have a protest and they even had a petition signed. They ended up getting about 3000 signatures to KEEP ib at the school. The protest was a silent protest. I'll attatch some pictures of the protest :) It was amazing how the whole school supported us :)

The last picture says Without it "saints" will be better...thats our rival school btw :)

post-43396-0-56008700-1315656063_thumb.jpost-43396-0-53384000-1315656043_thumb.jpost-43396-0-06436800-1315656080_thumb.jpost-43396-0-87518400-1315656144_thumb.jpost-43396-0-35221300-1315656161_thumb.jpost-43396-0-44758200-1315656178_thumb.j

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I have to agree, I really dislike this attitude that some IB students have. Thankfully where I live it isn't as bad as what OP describes, and we don't have any large advanced programs (AP, A levels, etc.) other than IB at my school. At least in my group of friends, many of whom are also taking IB, probably the majority of my friends at school are not. Yet there are a few people who always feel the need to point out how they're "in IB" and everyone else is "regular". Like there's something wrong with, or you must be stupid if you're taking the school's regular program (which still provides a decent high school education).

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Well, I've had the benefit of moving around a lot and being in several international environments and I do echo the sentiments commonly express don this thread in that the attitude towards the IB as a 'superior' programme varies from country to country.

In India, I found that when I told people I was doing the IB they would give me a small, understanding look and one friend's mother went so far as to say, "But you did so well in school, what happened?" The IB is considered the 'safer' option for rich kids whose parents don't want them loitering around in Junior College by keeping them in school for two additional years. Furthermore, it is considered more than inferior to the local and national 12th grade board systems. When you do the IB in India, it's generally because you want to go abroad for University education and the IB makes that transition for application purposes easier, or because you're lazy and want an 'easier' option. In fact, things are worse when they find out you've done IGCSEs and then moved onto the IB, you are considered 'not very bright' and you 'couldn't keep up with the normal system.'

When I went to Switzerland for the IB, hardly a handful of us from the Senior class were doing the full diploma programme (it was an American High School-based boarding school), so we were treated as the 'smart ones,' which was a novel kind of experience.

A few friends of mine from the UK found that the IB students were considered stupid, not in an intellectual sense (definitely not!), but stupid for taking the IB to begin with.

And in Russia where I attended school, some of my friends who I kept in touch with, they found the IB programme to be a one-way-ticket to being screwed because the programme in their school was very shoddily taught and they didn't have a very high opinion of the Diploma anyway.

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  • 2 weeks later...

At our school, students either do the IB diploma or the UK A Levels. Here, the IB path is generally considered to be for the smarter kids, but I think IB elitism is stupid. It's true that IB kids have a lot of work to do, but so do the A Level kids (incidentally a few of my close friends at school do the A Levels and not the IB).

Sure we seem to have a more intense workload and a million things going on at once. But at the end of the day, universities don't even care whether you've done the IB diploma or some other qualification. You enter the same university course as other kids and mix and mingle with them. So I think It's stupid to feel proud of the fact that you chose to be a masochistic jerk by doing the IB. My cousin who just finished university said that he felt so masochistic for doing IB before going into university, and I've heard similar things from others.

Well, okay. It's true that from what I've seen, IB kids typically do work harder than other kids. But doing the IB diploma doesn't automatically make someone better than others.

I'm not trying to say that I hate the IB. I'm halfway through my IB diploma and I have to say I've quite enjoyed it so far. I'm happy that I'm studying 6 subjects plus TOK, and do CAS (or more precisely I've finished CAS :P ), since it's given me a much wider view of the world

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I didn't notice something like this... My best friend isn't in IB. Also my boyfriend, my sister and many of my mates. Although these are my friends from outside the school, from the town I live in. In the city where I live during the school week and go to school I don't know anyone who's not in IB. Maybe cause it's a big school and I don't like being among many people...

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At my school the only advanced program is IB. Used to have AP, but replaced it with IB. Basically the only people I hang out with are in IB, and thus there isn't anything like the OP describes from my perspective. There is some distinction between the people going for an IB diploma and those just taking some classes, but that's more around the level of the non full diploma kids pitying full IBers for the hell they have to put up with. :P

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