I'm really torn on this one, and I think those who say "it varies too much across the nation to make a sweeping judgement about the whole country" are right.
I think I got an adequate education at a public US high school. I could have gotten a lot more out of it than I did, in terms of AP classes etc., but I really wasn't interested. Heck, I wasn't even planning on going to college until partway through my senior year! I did go to college, though, got solid As and Bs, and graduated in four years. Went back some years later, got straight As, and graduated in two years. Never felt like I was "unprepared", never had to take remedial classes, etc.
My brother went through the same school system two years ahead of me and took advanced math & science classes, because that's what he was interested in. He did have to take the initiative a bit, but it wasn't a big deal, for example he had to get special permission to take Algebra II and Geometry at the same time, but all he had to do was talk to a school counselor about it. He now has a PhD in organic chem.
My step-sister went through the same school system three years after me, graduated a year early as Valedictorian, and is currently getting her MDPhD at Harvard, fully funded. She did some AP classes, some correspondence, etc. to meet all the graduation requirements a year early, but again it wasn't a huge deal, just something that once she asked, it happened.
Now I have kids in public elementary school, and you know what?? Those teachers deserve a medal. They've got a room full of kids who may have totally different rules at home, different understandings of how to handle conflict & what's ok and not ok to say/do, and of course different levels of intellectual and emotional maturity, intelligence, etc. And they're supposed to get them ALL to meet a certain benchmark of learning, on a regular basis, and if they don't then they (the teachers) look bad and the school loses money. And how do they test this stuff?? With the ever-popular one-size-fits-all standardized testing, of course - the tests that REALLY measure more of a person's test-taking ability than their knowledge or intelligence.
It's easy to say "teachers should motivate kids to learn", but that's not an easy thing to do, especially when they've got 20-30 distinctly different individuals in one classroom, who may need totally different things to inspire them.
It's also easy to say "parents need to motivate kids to learn", but again, easier said than done. While I *can* be sure my boys do their homework (as long as they don't hide from me that they HAVE homework), I can't force them to like it or want to learn more. Certain things are just built into personality, or have become embedded in personality by a certain age, and there's only so much you can do about it. (A person wanting to change themselves is a different matter, I'm speaking here about a parent trying to make a child change.)
As far as level of learning, my boys are now learning math stuff in 5th grade that my mom didn't learn until high school (in the 1950s). They're also learning all kinds of computer skills that I didn't have to learn at that age (of course, there weren't many computers around when I was their age
).
It's also fine to say "languages, music, etc. are learned more easily before age (3? 5? 11? I forget...)" but a lot of places in the US simply don't have the resources to offer that kind of thing for children that age.
Then again, how about just giving kids some time to be kids?? Life isn't, and shouldn't be, necessarily all about cramming as much knowledge into your head as quickly as possible. (^_~)
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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992
hahaha
