[tayloj7]

Coming from the Canadian school system I'd have to agree with you on almost every point. The elementary and secondary school systems are far to focused on pushing as many kids through the system with the highest grades they can give them so that they look good. Of course changing this would be basically impossible seeing as you'd have to deal with the provincial governments and the teachers union... good luck. I like the idea of course segmentation and I think it would work well in the opposite way. This way for those students who may be slightly ahead of the class in a specific subject could work ahead. I found my first year of university was quite a bit harder than highschool, i hadn't really ever needed to try before and i can understand where the low test marks would come from as some of my first test marks were pretty low. For myself i just realised i'd have to put in a bit of extra work, but too many people seem to think if they all just complain in a giant herd it will make the professors cater to them. Well they didn't understand that for most of the professors teaching is just a secondary job to their research and complaining wasn't going to work (i've even heard of parents going in to argue for their children over their marks, i call them children because if their parents are still arguing for them they have clearly not yet become adults). I'm now finding, as my class sizes have dropped that things have gotten quite better, and that the university seems to have done a fairly good job at weeding people out. However, i agree that the university should not have to do this. I think that many of the people who are now going to university are only doing so because they feel that it is what they should do and are not properly informed of other career options, such as college or apprenticeship programs. Helping students make those kinds of choices is the responsibility of the highschools. Well i've kinda lost where i'm going with all this so i'll stop now to gather my thoughts... umm sorry its all in a big unorganized paragraph, I'm a science student not english so i apologize if my writing isn't the best.