> As it happens, this particular topic has been rather well researched. Mike
> is exaggerating a bit, but it is certainly true that in the first half of
> the 20th century American high schools taught many subjects that are now
> considered advanced college fare. My favorite example is the fact that the
> material colleges now cover in three semesters of calculus used to be
taught
> in high school as a matter of course. Much the same thing has happened in
> all of the sciences, not to mention literature and foreign languages.
>
> Now, obviously that doesn't mean that every citizen of the day was
actually
> proficient in all of these skills. It does, however, make it clear just
how
> far our current system's standards have declined.
>
Well, maybe most people didn't actually understand all that calculus in high
school. Perhaps its harder than once thought, and so has ended up in uni?
(I'm assuming College is Uni; we do things differently down here).
Emlyn
(Isn't calculus that guy from Tintin comics?)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:09:31 MDT