For parents of teens taking college level courses.

[Lacedonia4]

Can my account be removed?

Thanks

[MNomadic]

With my kid enrollment on sophia, was wondering how do you guys handle adult issues/content in some of the courses.

A couple of courses on sophia, specifically Art History II and Psychology contain some parts that are not really suited for a 13 year old.

In art I am not talking about paintings of naked people, I am talking about some things in modern art that could have been omitted for the purpose of a course, they went too much into specifics of a certain art exhibit and really, even as an adult, I thought it wasn't quite necessary to describe.

Psychology was a little less but it touched on some abnormal psychology aspects that may come across a little disturbing.

I understand this is higher education but websites like sophia allow enrollment at a certain age so they are aware of their audience so to speak.

How other parents in this forum deal with these few instances?

It's going to be a little subjective, but I think the only thing you can do as a parent would be to audit the course ahead of time and decide if you feel it is appropriate for your child or not. Obviously you can't just make them skip those parts without hurting their grade and you can't do those sections for them without violating their academic integrity. I haven't taken Sophia's Psyche course but psychology in general is a little disturbing so maybe they shouldn't be studying that subject until they're older(unless you can find a child appropriate/censored version through another course provider like SDC, but you'd still probably have to audit the topics of concern yourself to decide if you want your child to learn from that material.)

[Lacedonia4]

Thanks, I have taken almost all sophia courses so far and looks like it is just psychology and art history II that have some unsuitable paragraphs.

[Clepking100]

With my kid enrollment on sophia, was wondering how do you guys handle adult issues/content in some of the courses.

A couple of courses on sophia, specifically Art History II and Psychology contain some parts that are not really suited for a 13 year old.

In art I am not talking about paintings of naked people, I am talking about some things in modern art that could have been omitted for the purpose of a course, they went too much into specifics of a certain art exhibit and really, even as an adult, I thought it wasn't quite necessary to describe.

Psychology was a little less but it touched on some abnormal psychology aspects that may come across a little disturbing.

I understand this is higher education but websites like sophia allow enrollment at a certain age so they are aware of their audience so to speak.

How other parents in this forum deal with these few instances?

If you dont like what they see there, you REALLY wont like what they see in a dormroom ar actual college

[Lacedonia4]

That is beside the point of my question and students at colleges are not obligated to live in dorms nor socialize with irresponsible groups.

For online courses COPPA protection ends at 13 but websites like Sophia who are aware their audience consists of minors, should have better care with their choice of content.

[Carnation]

There are definitely classes for which younger teens just don't have experience or a point of reference to understand concepts in psychology and such.
As a parent I have avoided these classes or used a Homeschool Psychology book then took the CLEP exam.
There are other options to Psychology and Art History to fulfill requirements.
Just because classes are available to a younger student, doesn't mean that every student will be prepared for the content.
Our local community college has 5 pages worth of warnings to parents of what their dual enrolled student may be exposed to.

Best wishes.
Marie

[rachel83az]

If you dont like what they see there, you REALLY wont like what they see in a dormroom ar actual college

Something tells me that Lacedonia isn't about to send their THIRTEEN YEAR OLD CHILD to go live in a college dorm any time in the next year or two.

I agree with her(?) that some of the Art History II content was a bit explicit for someone of that age. Psychology wasn't too bad but there were some bits that a kid might not be able to deal with until at least 15-16.

Personally, I would have the kid skip those classes entirely. IIRC, if the kid got in the high 90s in the rest of the class, they could probably skip the explicit parts and still be able to pass with at least 70%. But that would be difficult and frustrating for you to manage, IMO.

[SteveFoerster]

Not only am I not worried about this at all, I think it's a good thing. The purpose of art isn't to match your sofa, it's to challenge us, to be bold, to take chances, to cause discomfort with the status quo. Real life has sex in it, so because art reflects the world around it, it's always had risqué elements. To sanitize that would make the course less accurate and thus worse rather than better.

If you don't think your teenagers are ready for that, then so be it, but that doesn't justify watering down the course for everyone else.

[TwinMom]

My boys were 13 yo when they took both Psychology and Art History 1 through Sophia. I can see/hear what they are learning as they are doing school (we homeschool) so when a more adult topic came up we just discussed it together.

[ss20ts]

Art is very subjective. What you consider inappropriate isn't true for everyone else. I would expect nudity and detail in Art History. You think Sophia's course include too much detail? Don't ever take an Art History course on a college campus! We went into GREAT detail for DAYS about many pieces of art. We also have Figure Drawing which is a class where we spent 5 hours a day drawing nude models. Often times it was very specific body parts and we discussed these body parts and how best to capture what we saw. Yes the discussions were graphic for some. For others they didn't care.

Psychology courses contain a lot of detail - much is quite graphic. Why? Because this is the real world. Psychology covers all kinds of mental health issues caused by various traumas. Trauma quite often is graphic and hard to witness. That doesn't mean we shouldn't learn from it. How else can people be helped if others don't or can't learn about the various traumas?