Looking at something like that it's pretty easy to believe the premise of the documentary.
I have no experience with the US HS education system (or any part of the US education system for that matter) but two things strike me as odd:
1. How high school is portrayed in the media (film, TV, etc). It is portrayed as difficult but how does the syllabus compare to other countries? I've seen anecdotal evidence that maths, physics and chemistry that I learnt in HS (in Australia) aren't taught until college but this proves nothing; and
2. The GPA system. So many students seem to get GPAs of 3.8+ and an A is what? 90+? My experience with education was that marks that high were highly unusual (eg in a group of 80 you might get 2-5) and if you got 75 you were doing pretty well. My understanding is that the US education system relies heavily on scaling (bell curve) of marks. The UK does this too, leading to grade inflation (eg in the UK GCSE they now have an A* grade above an A because everyone was getting As). How does grade inflation compare between the US and elsewhere?
When I was living in the UK I saw a reality show where they subjected 16 year olds to the education system of the 50s including exams from that periods. Students that were getting 11 GCSEs As struggled to pass 4 of the old O-levels.
What particularly shocked me was students who had gotten an A in GCSE French couldn't conjugate the verb "avoir" ("to have" in English). Oh and since grammar isn't really taught in English speaking countries is almost anachronistic, that means:
- I have: j'ai
- We have: nous avons
- Thou hast (deprecated): tu as
- You have: vous avez
- He/She/It has: il/elle a, c'est
- They have: ils/elles ont
(if memory serves)
It's times like this where the old Republican (conservative) philosophy makes sense: that education is a state not Federal issue (as it isn't specifically enumerated in the Constitution). The Federal Department of Education is just a much bigger bureaucracy. Sadly, that philosophy is now dead in the Bush ("No child gets ahead")/neocon era.
Looking at something like that it's pretty easy to believe the premise of the documentary.
I have no experience with the US HS education system (or any part of the US education system for that matter) but two things strike me as odd:
1. How high school is portrayed in the media (film, TV, etc). It is portrayed as difficult but how does the syllabus compare to other countries? I've seen anecdotal evidence that maths, physics and chemistry that I learnt in HS (in Australia) aren't taught until college but this proves nothing; and
2. The GPA system. So many students seem to get GPAs of 3.8+ and an A is what? 90+? My experience with education was that marks that high were highly unusual (eg in a group of 80 you might get 2-5) and if you got 75 you were doing pretty well. My understanding is that the US education system relies heavily on scaling (bell curve) of marks. The UK does this too, leading to grade inflation (eg in the UK GCSE they now have an A* grade above an A because everyone was getting As). How does grade inflation compare between the US and elsewhere?
When I was living in the UK I saw a reality show where they subjected 16 year olds to the education system of the 50s including exams from that periods. Students that were getting 11 GCSEs As struggled to pass 4 of the old O-levels.
What particularly shocked me was students who had gotten an A in GCSE French couldn't conjugate the verb "avoir" ("to have" in English). Oh and since grammar isn't really taught in English speaking countries is almost anachronistic, that means:
- I have: j'ai
- We have: nous avons
- Thou hast (deprecated): tu as
- You have: vous avez
- He/She/It has: il/elle a, c'est
- They have: ils/elles ont
(if memory serves)
It's times like this where the old Republican (conservative) philosophy makes sense: that education is a state not Federal issue (as it isn't specifically enumerated in the Constitution). The Federal Department of Education is just a much bigger bureaucracy. Sadly, that philosophy is now dead in the Bush ("No child gets ahead")/neocon era.