Chicago is a big city which you would expect to have big high schools offering all the AP courses. My school does have AP Italian, but it’s a small class, so I began asking my friends at other schools likely to have larger AP courses. In my big city, I only know of two (2) high schools with an AP Italian program other than Fenwick. I knew some kids in middle school who went to this school and expressed interest in Italian, but I haven’t heard from them since. This may not seam important now, but it will later.
Doing the math, Chicago has 2.705 million people and three (3) high schools to service all AP Italian needs. Of course not all 2.705 million people are high school students taking AP classes, but for simplicity’s sake let’s assume they are. The population of the US is 325.7 million, or roughly 120 times the population of Chicago. Assuming that the students in AP Italian are evenly distributed across the country, the number of schools teaching AP Italian across the nation should be around 120. This is nearly 4 times less than the number reported by the College Board: 460 schools.
But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt - maybe Chicago is not a representative sample of the nation’s Italy enthusiasts. I needed more data. I collected this data, googling lists of courses for each major high school I could think of and checking if they offered AP Italian. Strangely, none of them did. Suspicious.
My next step was to research schools in historically Italian areas of the country - according to a map on Wikipedia, this is the New Jersey/NYC/Connecticut area. I figured high schools in the area around a big city like NYC would be pretty likely to offer many AP courses, and many of them did. Some schools even offered Italian classes, but they all stopped short of the elusive AP Italian. I began tearing my hair out, unable to understand why I couldn’t answer the extremely simple question of what these 457 schools are.
I found myself slowly turning into a madman, reduced to furiously googling internet lists about high schools that might for some reason be connected to AP Italian. Largest enrollment high schools in the US. 2018 best public high schools in America. Top 25 most expensive US private schools. American high schools with best pasta. Nothing.
The only possible conclusion, of course, is that AP Italian is a front for the Mafia. Do you know anyone in AP Italian? Exactly. Something is clearly going on here. And who would be a better candidate than the Mafia itself?
Connecting the dots, here is my theory: When a student reaches the level of Italian proficiency required to take AP Italian, they are forcefully recruited by the Mafia to do its bidding. To the general population, the student simply disappears without a trace; this explains me never hearing from those students at the school offering AP Italian. Under the control of the Mafia, these students are brainwashed into having homicidal urges towards anyone not wearing a freshly tailored Italian suit, which allows them to have no remorse when killing the targets provided by their superiors, yet protects the Mafia from friendly fire. The students do take the AP Italian exam as a part of their training, contributing to the numbers reported by the College Board, but this is irrelevant. If, for some reason, these students have to re-enter into our society and assume their old roles as high school students (they would likely be on some sort of mission), they can and will use “studying for AP Italian” as the reason for their absence. The bitter Mafia is slowly but surely raising an army to avenge the tyrannical reign of fast food. When they are ready, they will attack and make us all into spaghetti.
The Mafia, who very much values the AP Italian exam as a way to assess its spellbound students’ language abilities, must have been worried that the College Board would get suspicious. They want the number of students taking the exam to seem as natural as possible, so they strictly cap their number of “new members” (all of which will take the exam) such that it is similar to the total number of students who took the AP Japanese exam the previous year (which I can attest is a real course taught in schools that has no apparent connection to the Mafia, Yakuza, or any other similar organization). At the same time, the Mafia does not want the AP Italian exam to be discontinued due to lack of enrollment, so they try their best to ensure that each year there will be slightly more Mafia-controlled students taking AP Italian exams than harmless weeaboos taking AP Japanese tests.
Unfortunately for the Mafia, the AP Italian exam was discontinued due to lack of enrollment after the 2009 administration. Miraculously, unlike the other 3 AP exams discontinued in 2009, the AP Italian course was reinstated in 2012. This article even states that after the Italian government didn’t renew its financial support, an undisclosed amount of money came from “Italian-American groups” (this could be anyone) and the Italian Language Foundation (the jury is out as to if this organization has any Mafia connections). Clearly, the Mafia made an offer that the College Board could not refuse.
If, by chance, you do meet anyone claiming to be taking or have taken AP Italian, you are talking to one of them. They are extremely dangerous and should never be trusted, especially if they smell like pizza. Do not try to enroll them in a different AP language course. They are beyond redemption.