THEN

My sister did an enrichment program back when she was in junior high. The following is what she told me about her experience.
Back in the early 90’s, my sister was a pretty average 7th grader. She was a bright, hard working student who enjoyed school. She was chosen early in the year to go to the enrichment program. This took place once a week for the entire year, she actually continued the program through the following two grades as well. When I asked her to recall anything she could this is the information she provided me with:
“ Once a week, I would go a building downtown on Patrick Street with about 5 other students from my school. There we had to choose a project of interest and work on that. The projects were not subject based and were really random and fun. There were about 35-40 students in the enrichment program with about 5 teachers supervising. Once we chose a topic- I chose puppetry- we had a lot of space to work at our own pace and do things ourselves. It was really independent, and there were certain times of the day that we could do whatever we wanted for an hour, read, draw, just talk to others, I would obviously usually be reading. Or sometimes there was group work. I remember an activity were we had to get in a small group, be asked a question and come up with a justified response and present our case to the other groups. There were never right or wrong answers they just wanted to hear us present a case. The work was so interesting and open ended it really gave us an opportunity to escape the confinement of school. I met a lot of people and loved it!”
Why were you chosen? “Teachers submitted a list of recommended students. We had to be doing well academically because whatever work we missed that day we were responsible ourselves for catching up for homework. So it was pretty much based on marks.”
My sister obviously really enjoyed her experience at this particular enrichment program years ago. She continued to go on with great success in her academic career. Graduating with honors even through university.

QUESTIONS:
Can any credit be awarded to this enrichment program she attended for her academic success?
Does this program seem beneficial?
Why or why not would programs like this be offered in today’s society?
Do we place too much importance on academics and is this creating a stunt in creative achievement?