We water down the textbooks to make the material "accessible" and when it's still too much, we just skip stuff and pretend that the kids are still learning geometry. Then these kids get to college and wonder why they get stuck in remedial classes or wonder why college-level material is too hard for them.
Actually, what we've done in response to this is water down college too. Which makes it a self-fulfilling prophesy that "anyone can do college level work."
AMEN.
My DH and I were both bemused last year when DD's geometry course included so few proofs. This was an honors class, and it was certainly rigorous in other ways (after all, one dis/advantage to a virtual school is that you simply work your way through the syllabus and anything that you don't complete on time becomes a zero... sooooooo... in that respect, the grades DO mean more, I suppose)...
on the other hand, when even the textbooks begin skipping this stuff because most kids find it "too hard" then where
does that leave gifted students who'd be better served by learning the inductive reasoning process, hmm?
I was so sad this year when, in World Civ, DD learned about Sir Francis Bacon and 'inductive reasoning' and had no really concrete examples from which to draw herself. Public school hasn't provided any.
The Socratic method, on the other hand... now THAT she's got some direct experience with, since I pretty much don't have another mode as a teacher. LOL.
