Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How asinine is the US educational system?

NSG, I was really just trying to point out that acceleration-itis is out of hand in US high schools in general. Sure, lot of American kids pass the AP exams, but passing an AP exam doesn't mean that a student honestly understands the concepts in calculus or even pre-calc. That's what I meant when I wrote that they can probably do the homework problems but don't get the ideas. I suspect that this is the case for a great many students.

Our education system is increasingly defining rigorous as meaning a) taught at an earlier age and b) more homework. This approach rushes students through a superficial curriculum as they try to grab more golden math rings, and they end up with a shaky foundation or, for many, pretty much no foundation at all.

I have no doubt that there are some kids who can get to multivariate calculus or differential equations when they're 16 and really understand the subject and what came before it. But their abilities are almost certainly in the top 1% (or maybe even well into the top 1%). I doubt very much that there are enough of them to fill a high school class on the subject. I doubt even more that I'd want them taking these courses in a high school.

What bothers me most is that these classes are seen as being more worthy of a student's time than problem-solving classes that ask a student to connect concepts in order to solve a problem.