School systems in America.

[angel-d]

Don't worry; it isn't only the school system in America that is messed up.

In most Asian Countries: Memorization is the key. Numbers and facts are drilled into kids which they must regurgitate in order to get good grades. This is why they are good at math, which is basically a bunch of rules and formula that if you memorize you can do moth math problems.

In UK: You have to choose what you want to specialize in at the end of 8th grade. Then you take 5 or 7 GCSE's (depending on how much work you want to do) followed by 3 AS levels (in 11th grade) and 2 A levels (in 12th grade). Although there isn't as much emphasis on memorization, unless you go to a private school in UK you won't get much attention from teachers (over crowding in public school) and they don't care much due to under pay anyway. Basically public school in UK; you are on your own kids.

I'm not to sure about Europe and Australasia as I haven't seen the school systems there, but France puts quite a lot of emphasis on memorization from what I can tell from years of summer school there.

However there is hope. IB is the system used in most international schools and is (in my opinion) one of the best systems out there. The emphasis of IB is using your own mind and figuring out how and why things work instead of just memorizing what happens. For example in Economics, after learning the basic principals, student will go and find companies to analyze and then explain what principals they found there and how they work in the real world.
There is an IB syllabus for all ages from KG to 12th grade which all works in the same way. The best part about it however is when you get to your final years (11th and 12th grade) where instead of specializing, you have to continue taking a broad range of subjects, allowing you 2 extra years to decide what you want to specialize in when you get to college.

The classes you must take for IB 11th and 12th grade are (the examples used are the ones from my school, although there are hundreds of more specialized options):
A1 language- your primary language, normally English.
B1 language- something else, such as French, Spanish or Japanese.
Science- Biology, Chemistry or Physics.
Social science - Economics, History, Geography.
Math - Lower level, Standard level or Higher level.
Free option - (normally used for arts subjects) Drama, Art, Music
TOK - Theory of Knowledge

On top of these classes, if a student wishes to receive a full diploma instead of just certificates in each individual subject they must complete 60 hours in each of these sections:
Creativity- such as performing in a school play.
Action- Playing on a school team.
Service- Community service- either helping in the wider community or within the school.

Finally a 10,000 research piece must be written on a subject of the student’s choice. This can be anything and simply introduces you to writing long papers. I did mine on a comparison between 2 dances, the Balinese Kechak and the Mauri Hakka.

I might be slightly bias as IB is the system my school used, however I think it is one of the best out there as you are taught to think and are able to explore a lot of different subjects all the way through.

If you are interested, this is the site for the IB organization.
http://www.ibo.org/
More specifically for the Diploma program (11th and 12th grade)
http://www.ibo.org/diploma/