More Students Signing Up for Harder Classes

More California high school students are signing up for harder courses, including those required for college admission and advanced placement, state schools Supt. Bill Honig said in his recent annual “report card” for high schools.

“We’re seeing these increases all over the state--in urban districts, in rural districts and in suburban districts,” Honig said.

Statewide, the report cards show that about 37%--or 59,000--more students are taking advanced mathematics than in 1983-84; 53%--or 34,000--more are taking chemistry, and 63%--or 16,000--more are taking physics, Honig said.

Honig did not give the reason for the increases, but they might be attributed in part to tougher entrance requirements by UC and Cal State campuses.

The number of students taking and passing advanced placement courses has more than doubled in the last five years to 52,000 out of a 1989 class of 250,000 seniors, Honig said.

The Los Angeles Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is offering a 1990 Teen Star Calendar, featuring photographs of 21 teen-age stars and quotes from them encouraging safe driving. Proceeds will go to MADD’s youth education programs. The calendar is available for $8.95 from MADD Calendar, P.O. Box 875, Reseda, Calif. 91335.

Teen-agers spent $55 billion in 1988, and some of them have a lot to show for it, according to information reported in the December issue of NEA Today, the magazine of the National Education Assn. The number of teen-agers who own cars increased fivefold between 1968 and 1988. Here are the percentages of 13- to 19-year-old girls who own:

* Cameras 85%

* Stereos 70%

* Tape recorders 45%

* Tennis rackets 26%

* VCRs 16%

* Motor scooters 12%

* Stocks/bonds 12%

* Golf clubs 5%

Walt Disney Pictures is the winner of the 1989 Dunce Cap Award by SPELL, the Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature, for the popular film, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”

It should have been “Honey, I Shrank the Kids.”

SPELL, a 2,000-member, nonprofit organization based in Mountain View, Calif., confers the annual awards on “perpetrators of especially egregious errors in usage, spelling and punctuation inflicted on the public’s sensibilities.”

A Disney official defended the use of “shrunk.”

“It was done deliberately. It was not an error,” said the official who would not give his name. “That’s what Rick Moranis, the father in the movie, says: ‘Honey, I shrunk the kids.’ The title was taken from that.”

And it worked, the official said: The film grossed more than $129 million.

From Times Wire Services

“Originality is the art of concealing your sources.”

--Unknown