Postby TUfriend » Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:06 pm
In my high school(USA), there was a huge divide. Either you were in all/mostly honors classes and you learned and did work, or you were in non-honors classes and literally had 8 study halls a day. The few students who were in between often got stuck in non-honors classes and didn't learn anything. I had one non-honors class, history, where I learned about the American revolution, the civil war, the great depression and the world wars. I know nothing about more recent events such as the Vietnam War or Korea. Most of this was because the teacher didn't care, but that could have been a result of most of the class not caring either. From what I understand based on what my friends told me, the majority of non-honors classes were this way in my school.
On the other side of the coin, the honors teachers who actually cared taught us well. I got 2300 on the SATs and perfect scores on all of my SATIIs(Math 2, Physics, Bio). I, like most of my friends in honors classes, was able to get accepted into the top school for my degree program. Now that I'm in college, I'm finding that my classes are easy because high school prepared me well.
My school district is one of the top 10 in the state I'm from.
Just my experience in the American Education system.
Edit: In regards to Math:
I have a professor this year who teaches discrete math as a memorization course. She gives us a proof or a problem in class, we go to our dorms to "memorize" what she taught us and then our exams are exactly what we did in class. If I didn't already know this information, I would not have any understanding of what we are "learning." I much prefer my Calculus teacher from last year's method. He would introduce us to a topic, show us several ways to do it and then answer any questions about anything that was relevant and let us explore whatever it was on our own. He forced us to be curious about Calculus so we all enjoyed it a lot, even though his class was extremely difficult.
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