Hmm. Sounds interesting at least, but the only schools I see within 100 miles or so that offer Montessori curriculum are preschools :D

@Geobits Yeah, it's more common in Germany.

There's a lot of flexibility at my school (which some people do abuse). My district even has mid-day busing between schools if there's a specialized class you want to take but is only offered at a different school in the district.

It's not for everybody, of course. I mentioned earlier how a substantial percentage of students aren't putting the effort in.

Let me put it this way: My kid's in the second grade (age 8), and they've spent about 4 months now on adding/subtracting 3 digit numbers. With no option to go further in math. It's terrible, yet this is one of the highest rated public schools in the state.

The homework is basically the same thing every day: 10-20 addition/subtraction problems.

English isn't much better. Science/history seem to move a little faster.

@Geobits I remember my dad teaching me exponentiation at that age.

@TheBestOne Sure, and my kid knows much more than addition/subtraction. But he didn't learn it at school.

My 3rd grade school had a (rather bizarre) curriculum/testing program where students worked somewhat individually. If you completed all of the material for your grade level, you moved onto the next.

I don't think they do exponentiation in school until 6-8 grade, so another 4 years minimum.

English is someone telling you to use a capitalized initial letter and a period in a sentence every day for 10 years

there were people at the highest level in my primary school who couldn't read (10/11 years old, I think)

“We’re going to go over this again, as part of our No Child Left Behind program. Some children were left behind Wednesday, I know, because I saw lots of puzzled faces” -- Shankar

Yea, English gets really bad once you know the rules and it's just reiterating them every year.

(and no, my lack of h in "yea" does not indicate a bad education, but stubbornness :)

I skipped 3rd grade and started homeschooling when in 5th grade. I don't know what its like after that in public school.

Other than what my friends have told me :)

Skipping years isn't very common in the UK, I think, I only know 3 people who did that, and one of them isn't from the UK.

And, actually, I don't know one of them, I just remember them disappearing because they'd skipped a year

@Rainbolt by the way, my bother e-mail Dr. Shankar, and he says he's 3/4 done on the book for the second series of physics lectures, should you be interested

I'm not sure when we did addition.

I recall the primary school curriculum being a bit slow.

I got into a Gymnasium in grade 5.

It's a sign of how bad a system of education is when people want to homeschool because they can do better than the schools.

@FUZxxl To protect against the eventuality of the system of education going bad, homeschooling should be allowed.

In certain states of the US, homeschooling has been becoming more restricted. Meanwhile, the education system has steadily been getting worse.

same here too

specially higher education

in hope of attracting more people/ giving more people chance in the top prestigious institutes, they have lowered the standards and entrance exams such that i can no longer call them prestigious

Jim Hacker says my opinion on the matter best youtube.com/…

@Optimizer I've actually been worried about college. It would be quite a bummer if I spent 4 years of extreme boredom only to get a piece of paper saying I learned some stuff I already knew.

Or 2 years of extreme boredom if I took all the AP tests I could beforehand.

is college university?

@VisualMelon Sorry, my family uses the two words interchangeably.

I thought it was usually called College in America, I'm not sure what it means in the UK

it's either Sixth Form or a Subset of a University, or a place that isn't a university

I get very confused

Colleges usually offer 2-3 year programs, while universities usually offer longer programs.

ah, ok

now I must sleep, because I'm ill, and have lots of work stacking up because illness is a great excuse to not do work

"College" can mean a variety of things. A "college" could be a complete organization which only offers undergrad degrees (2-4 years), or it could be part of a university (like "Harvard College" for undergrads or an "Honors College" as a subset of students at the university).

I'm trying to introduce a friend to computer programming. Tips/recommendations?

@PhiNotPi TI-BASIC was my first language.

thx @PhiNotPi

@PhiNotPi Teach them BF. They'll learn all the instructions they need to know in 10 minutes. :D

TI is horrible

a room of sadomasochistic coders is not the right place to ask

(although on a more serious note, where to start programming depends on the age of the person in question)

@feersum After that I tried to learn Z80 Assembly

lol, why do you need more than one calculator assembly?

I failed miserably at learning it :|

@FUZxxl I wouldn't say that for the UK. At least not when it comes to maths.