Education

[rathoriel]

I am going to ramble a bit here, to much stuff to cover in detail but more will come out in later posts.

In the US its a bit odd (I am 39 so its been awhile since I was in High School so i will try to point out a few interesting things) In History Class we covered alot of stuff but it seemed we never covered more recent events. It always ended after world war 2.

Geography wasnt cover too much. Most I learned myself, its amazing that so many people here don't know much about where other countries are. I work for a beverage distributor and we import a beer from Sri Lanka but most people cant even locate them on a map.

Some of this I Blame on our requriements here to graduate HS. You have to take English classes for the full 4 years you are in HS, 2 years for History, 1 year for civics, 2 years for foreign language, science, math and physical education. and a few smaller requirements in stuff like the arts, economics.

[Soryon]

Something I have said before but still holds true-
In the states, you can get completely different levels of education due simply to where you live. Not all school districts are created equal.
As I have also said before, college is where one really starts to learn, everything prior to that is basic education; what you need to know to get by along with groundwork for those who wish to peruse certain subjects more intensely after high school. Unfortunately, unless you can get a scholarship or some sort of grant, college is not the cheapest thing around leaving many of the less well off with slim chances.

Then you have inner city school which are over populated and under-staffed/funded.

[undetz]

History in history classes ended after WW2 here as well. But we also had something called "political science" or "social science" (DON'T confuse this with the identical general term "social sciences", there just isn't any other translation for it!) where we would do all kinds of stuff from learning about the separation of powers and studying the constitution, to exposing bias in newspaper articles. Those were pretty cool classes.

[Burkingam]

It's been a long time but I'm pretty sure we talked about the Quebecois Quiet Revolution. But the system was reformed a few time since then so I don't know anymore.

[Xiong Chiamiov]

Our US history book went up to Bill Clinton, at least - this was in the 2005-2006 school year.  My World Civ teacher made us memorize the capitals of every country and be able to locate them on a map.

Our education system needs reform, sure.  Anyone who's interested in education agrees with you, and has for years.  If you haven't seen Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk on the subject, you should.  He gave another talk in 2009, I think, which has been made into an awesome whiteboard thingy.

[datora]

.
Just wondering if you're making a point?  If you want to discuss how bad or good education in the U.S. is & why ... or compare to world for the fun of it?  'Cause, if this should be in Politics ...

Aside form that, your 4 years of English leave me embarrassed to be your countryman, especially since you're well beyond high school at this point.

I'll add in that my history and civics (graduated in 1981) covered quite extensively through Viet Nam and into the Nixon administration.  Also, I took a LOT of science, 2 years each of Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Computer Science.  I had a third year of elective in each Chemistry & Physics.

I also had four years of English, plus three years of advanced English such as American Literature and European Literature.  Four years of German (shamefully, mostly forgotten by now), four years of Math, and half a dozen sports (swimming, rifle, wrestling, soccer, other clubs).

It depends largely on which school district you attended.  It is false to claim that "In the United States ..."  because it changes quite a bit between counties, districts and states, in addition to who can afford private and who attends public.  I attended three different public schools in three different states.  Fortunately, they were all fairly professional and I got a substantial, quality education out of it.