I have to agree.
When I moved between my 9th and 10th grade years, the new school had three levels - basic, normal, and honors tracks. I did not know there were tracks. The counselor put me in the "basic" track - maybe because I was so quiet.
LOL
The next day I went to him and told him I wanted to be in the Honor's track and he laughed and moved me over.
The Basic classes were pretty basic. And the students were pretty basic, too. I was very fortunate to be in a school with levels that had the same expectations for each.
I work with a lot of Chinese and Indians. Their kids are not exceptionally bright. But they work very hard at studying even if the school program is easy. A lot of Anglo parents of bright kids don't like the Asian kids taking all the top honors and NMSF, but OTOH they do not want their kids to put in the hours studying.
Of course, most of PG kids are mostly either in private school or are home schooled as none of the Tier 1 publics cater to them. Its interesting to watch the reaction of the public schools "top" teenagers who are just now in calculus being upstaged by a 12 year old who is taking Analysis in college in local extracurricular academics.
A few "top" public school kids could be on the faster track if the school system was designed to pipeline them into it, but PG is PG. They just learn SO much faster.
When I was in college, we had two kids from Eastern Europe in our math program. They were exceptionally well prepared and had the equivalent of a BS in math from their HS in Europe because they had been in a special program for mathy kids. Everyone in the program was PG so most of us caught up with the Europeans and in some cases, did better.
After getting to know them and the program they loved back in their hometown, I came away feeling cheated by my school experience. Here I was, proud of testing out of all this stuff, and they had done it all by the time they were 14. And they had not even started school until they were 7.
Last edited by Austin; 10/03/11 10:29 AM.
