I was in the thread about "lessons from MIT", and thinking of a degree curriculum I looked at from the UK one day.
It basically expected that students (who were going to learn PL theory) start off with a higher level of math knowledge (right out of secondary school) than most American CS students have in sophomore year. AFAIK, their students don't suffer as much stress or depression as the cohort of Americans who've done "sophomore-level" math in high school.
But for another example, well, every other country seems to have an easier time running a working train system than America does, including those who are running top-of-the-line high-speed rail. Or, to take another, the French have one of the highest per-hour productivity rates on Earth, but take four to six weeks of vacation each year. Likewise, the Germans have one of the most productive economies on the planet, but work some of the shortest hours.
Again and again, we find a principle that efficient, productive, intelligently-arranged systems deliver greater results with less sturm und drang.
The difference in educational levels is economic. If you correct for the income & wealth levels of the international district and match them to american districts with similar levels, you have similar academic results. There's no gap.
The issue occurs with taking averages. The United States is a rich country or a developing country depending on where you look. Few other modern industrialized nations are run this way.
Indeed, if you want the best education in the world, many people come to the American universities (public and private). These American Universities which you can name, sit like jewels surrounded by the serfdom education many Americans experience.
It is the same with primary and secondary education.
> The difference in educational levels is economic. If you correct for the income & wealth levels of the international district and match them to american districts with similar levels, you have similar academic results. There's no gap.
So you do learn two extra languages in high school?
> The issue occurs with taking averages. The United States is a rich country or a developing country depending on where you look. Few other modern industrialized nations are run this way.
That's because it's nothing to be proud of. Your country will be judged by how you treat the lowest, worst-off people. Having a couple of "rich" parts[0] doesn't make it look better.
Indeed there is no sense taking averages for these issues. Some people think they're doing better with the median, but that still hides the poor long tail. If (for purposes of central planning etc) you really do need a single number and the minimum isn't useful because it's zero, there is one statistic and it's called modal income.
> Indeed, if you want the best education in the world, many people come to the American universities (public and private). These American Universities which you can name, sit like jewels
Well, people all over the world used to. Like you say they have the name. Give it ten years. Less if you elect Trump again.
[0] where the homeless (and mentally ill) are either cleaned out, hidden, or simply ignored. It's not like the rich parts of the US suddenly take care of them. A real rich country needs to deal with this too, can't just scrub them from the statistics and hope the unavoidable poor people will move to the next country over because they can't afford living here any more.
>If you correct for the income & wealth levels of the international district and match them to american districts with similar levels, you have similar academic results. There's no gap.
Most well-off American school districts do not teach even their honors students integral calculus and linear algebra by the end of high school. Valedictorians in those districts haven't usually learned that much.
Most of those kids in Palo Alto with anxiety problems over academic competition will not learn that much math in high school. It's just not done in formal school curricula. Some people might get it through taking college courses early or joining "math clubs", but no large mass of students will get it through their curriculum -- let alone the full population capable of it.
Money is being left on the table here because Americans think that real rigor comes from suffering, and anyone inadequate for the extreme suffering and boredom of secondary-school level "slow" learning is obviously inadequate to go ahead and do real work.
Weird... I went to regular HS in Texas (there weren't magnet schools yet) in the 80s and they taught integral calculus, analytic geometry, and linear algebra for everyone. Standard algebra was taught in 8th grade. Several of us finished all of the math by junior year and took college classes.
I guess public school just went down hill from there?
Certainly, private schools teach those classes now.
I went to school in New York, and my wife did in Massachusetts, both in the 2003-2008 sorta range. I'm not sure if any linear algebra was taught (it was new to her when she took it in college, and much of it that you don't see in games-programming books was new to me too). The highest math classes in the school were AP Calculus A and AP Calculus AB, corresponding to Calculus 1 and Calculus 1+2; they were meant to be taken as seniors if you were one year fast and as juniors if two years fast. Analytic geometry as in coordinate systems and such definitely got taught.
I can't name a curriculum I know for the 2000s or 2010s where the first three semesters (Calc 1, Calc 2, Lin Alg) of university-level math got fit into high school for anyone, let alone for everyone, let alone making it the first four semesters by including multivariable calculus.
The same is true of our healthcare system. We have some of the best hospitals in the world, if you can afford the ever-increasing cost of care. Meanwhile tens of millions of Americans are skipping regular checkups due to cost, and a significant number of them will get very sick or possibly die as a result.
Can you elaborate?