from le radical galoisien - spiraling in Singapore

It is in part due to the flexible module system, isn't it? Sometimes the prerequisites aren't really cohesive ...

My current American high school generally has it to take one science subject per year, and thereby acquire the entire credit for that subject in one year. The next year, another science subject is taken, and so on. [Catherine: true of all high schools in NY state, I would imagine]

I assume this is standard for most American schools. At first, I thought it rather interesting compared to my old schools in Singapore, but now I am questioning their effectiveness. After all, I have not done any real biology for so long, none of the material is fresh in my head, even though I am very highly interested in oncology and so forth. The same applies to mathematics in terms of matrices, which were taught to me three years ago and were only re-introduced recently in calculus class following the AP exams.

It is this that makes me miss the Singaporean system and especially since I worry that I am falling behind my Singaporean friends.

Perhaps the whole problem is the credit-based system. Credit units should not be used until university. Having to accommodate classes to the nature of credits at a secondary level can make the interaction of knowledge between those classes ineffective.

Interesting.

I had never made the connection between credits and a "flexible module" system of curriculum, although I've skimmed a couple of accounts of the Carnegie unit & how it came to be.

So much of U.S. public education seems to be just a series of random "reforms that stuck"^*... some Committee of 10, or 9, or whatever number it happened to be at the time, and somehow managed to power its ideas into effect.

Of course, the Committee of 10 isn't the best example, seeing as how the Committee of 10 seems to be the last such committee to promote "traditional academic study."


a boy's will is the wind's will

^* Of course, random reforms that stuck may simply be what historians call contingencies, in which case the history of U.S. public schools is no different from the history of anything else... (One of these days I'll learn something about history, possibly after I learn high school math, earth science, chemistry & physics.)