Interesting discussion. I can see both sides of it. I think there are kids out there who are not capable of doing the work (although could some of this be because their background math instruction was so crummy?), and also many capable students thinking they can't do it. I also wonder how many Asian students take Alegebra II courses, trigonometry, etc. or if a good percentage of them (the ones under a certain IQ) get tracked into manual labor type courses. If it is just the more intelligent kids taking math, then of course it would make sense to tell them they need to work harder and also that they get "results" from those students.
