I have been saying the same thing since I got to Canada. NYC public education seemed to have the emphasis on STEM, and I was really pleased with her schooling through 3rd grade. When we came to Toronto and I put her in the gifted program, in a really good neighborhood, it was awful. And the whole focus here -- with white parents, is to put them in French immersion programs -- then they qualify for government jobs. You have to be bilingual. No matter how bad your other skills are.
OECD has shown that math and science scores have dropped in Ontario for over 10 years. But parents don't care. As long as they are in French immersion. DD's private academic, which used to be a free private gifted school at U of T, like Hunter in NYC, is 80% Asian. Because these parents care about the STEM education. Most of the CDN reps in physic or chem olympiads come from this school.
I think it is cultural problem. With 2nd generation. When European immigrants came after WW2, all they had was education. They stressed that and kids went into engineering and medicine. Styvescant was considered a Jewish school because of all the jewish immigration and the parents pushing their kids to do well. Now Sty is the asian school because immigrant parents from Asia push their kids to do well. I see Asian kids who are 2nd gen in Dd's school are not pushed and they are not in the physic olympiad. They drive their parents jags and do OK. So I think it is just cultural. The north american lifestyle. To spoil kids more than to thrash them if they do poorly. I think the demands of parents in China is very different as those kids are in school ten hours from an early age, focused on a much harder curriculum. A parent at DD's NYC school, from Beijing, PhD in stem faced a dilemma. Her husband got a job in China so they could move back, but she said her son would never survive in a Chinese elementary after being in a US school, which is so slack. And this NYC gifted school was way better than what I experienced in Toronto.
China has 3X the population. 3X the gifted population. With a more challenging curriculum. People post here about more challenging curriculum for their kids. They do it. Hard to get consensus to do that here. Sorry for the rant. My pet peeve the lack of support for math.
