Is it true that the school in the USA is that bad? Like what I see in American movies, stuff you do in 11th or 12th grade we used to do in 7th grade or so, lol.
ya I was taking trigonometry and algebra 2 my senior year in h.s.. those are pre-h.s. classes in Europe from what i've heard. If you don't push yourself in K-12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) in public schools in USA, no one will push you (for the most part). So for example, no one really got through to me as to why I should take school seriously at all. It was easy for me. I just took the prescribed classes and passed them. All I cared about was basketball and programming (luckily). I had basketball class my junior year, and twice in my senior year. Believe it or not, I really didn't know what a "final exam" was until I got to college. In H.S., it would just be another test to me; "oh a test? whatever".
Actually I can recall one instance where I did push myself.. In my senior year I enrolled myself in Pascal Programming class.. but they kicked me out because I lacked the math pre-reqs. They put me in BASIC. I remember being very annoyed.. because at that time, I had already been fluent in C and several assembly languages (sparc, intel, mips, alpha). I was writing kernel modules, exploits, client/server code, .. all kinds of things. I tried to show the teacher (some old nasty lady) some code of mine. She refused to look at it.
So long story short.. I just coasted through h.s.. I was mostly reading my programming books while class was going on, or actually programming on paper (to transfer it to the computer when I got home); it was that easy. I was in classes full of knuckle heads, trouble makers, etc.. They would interrupt class, cause disturbances, drag the classes down, make it harder for people to learn. The teachers weren't so inspiring.. In fact, on several occasions I got detentions for reading my computer programming/unix internals books in class.. During "Drop everything and read", I had this amazing thing happen to me. I start reading my "Unix Internals by Vahalia" book. English Teacher comes up to me, and tells me to put that away and to find something enjoyable to read. I laughed and told her that I enjoy reading about software engineering etc.. She handed me a magazine. I gave it back to her.. She ended up giving me a detention. LMFAO. I've mentioned this before in my journal.
So high school was trash... middle school was even worse. I went to a middle school that was VERY bad.
College was better, but still a disappointment. I remember once I really got into my major at FAU (exercise science), a really tough class became easy-as-cake once nearly everyone failed the first test. That was another sad moment that stuck with me. It was a fill-in-the-blank/essay question test for Kinesiology. Really tough but I loved it. Tons of questions, really making sure you knew every insertion, origin, action, plane, etc. So after so many people bombed, every subsequent test was multiple choice. It became a joke.
I also challenged this one teach a few times, even went up to the president on the Board of Education etc. She marked questions wrong, that were scientifically correct. For example, she marked an answer wrong where I wrote "rectus femoris". The correct answer to her, was "quadriceps femoris". So I showed her an anatomy book.. She states; "that's not how I teach it in class". She was referring to one muscle, the rectus femoris, as the quadriceps femoris. Long story short, I didn't win.. Even after taking it to nearly the highest office at the university.
I guess those are some quick lessons in "Lesser education" in America.
Had I gone to really prestigious schools throughout (elementary, middle, high, college), I Imagine I would have different stories. But, I went to public schools in a C rated district, then public college (2 year) and finally FAU (4 year, decent but nothing amazing).
so that should give you an example perhaps.. lol.
pC!
On the other hand, maybe college is better there, although I highly doubt it. College is free here, if you qualify. People learn here, using Romania's state money, and then they leave for other countries
free public college would help here.. too many people stop at 12th grade. It should be K-4yrcollege in our current world.