:P

Are those really the symbols you use? In America, standard would be something like Delta x = v0t + 1/2 a t2 for the second antiderivative of position with respect to time.

But yeah, I agree with your point. Nobody is going to learn string theory in high school (I mean, at least not anything beyond basic conceptual stuff you could get from books like The Elegant Universe

I spent at least 3 years in school going over the same period of American history: the overview. When history has the capacity to teach us things and be really fascinating, I think public school wasted its opportunities there. If they are teaching history one year, it ought to have been taught and not need to be reviewed and reviewed several more years. What is the message here? I should also recall, other than learning once about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we didn’t actually read it or talk about it in any public school class I ever took, or how it’s interpreted in the branches of government via recent history or current events.

I do remember learning some real science in grade school in addition to basic Greek mythology, we learned about climates and volcanoes and a basic idea of the kind of star the sun is, assured it would not explode until many thousands of years from now, and going to high school, could elect out of science after 10th grade. High school science did not relate whatsoever to grade school science. I don’t think after 8 years in school, science should seem like a drastically new subject, and difficult to grasp, and just as easy to quit.

Social Studies and English were required through 12th, but themselves were divided into electives of personal interest. For one of my English electives, “dramatics,” rather than cover the elective subject, she spent half the semester making sure we learned grammar. In 11th grade. Now while one might say, “good for her, not letting anyone slip through the cracks,” it might have been a good idea if she just tested us and sent the failures to remedial English. Seriously, no plays or anything for 10 weeks, just sentence parsing, 2nd grade style. In poetry, we read, analyzed, memorized, and wrote journals of poetry. By comparison, much more demanding, but also, why again is this required and not science? None of my social studies electives rehashed history or geography or government, but I got to take psychology and… we watched movies and took sorting tests that are pretty much bunk. To keep us off the streets, I suppose. It certainly wasn’t vital information.

I just don’t know what these crazy minimum standards are aiming for and whether I agree with their intentions. Is it to make sure everyone who graduates isn’t a complete moron, or is employable in some capacity, or has been fortified with nationalism, has been babysat under the guise of actual education, etc.?

What I actually learned that is true and probably a minimum of what is necessary or sufficient for the average citizen to learn might have taken 4 or 5 years, if they were really interested in teaching what matters and taught it so it stuck. The other 7-8 years of babysitting could be spent (partially) in remedial if necessary, or filled out with other interesting areas or more in depth study, or a wide variety of necessary and useful information that is already the parents’ prerogative, like money management and sex ed and so many other things – the taxpayers generally do not go for that. Rather they spent twelve years repeating the same few things in case some of it stuck, with a lot of filler and nonsense. Their minimums are silly and arbitrary to me.

I don’t really have faith in such an organization, and so not sure I would have them regulating what minimums I should achieve if I were to homeschool, and yeah, I guess that means they leave all kinds of parents alone with that, parents who don’t know enough to teach, parents who let their kids watch tv all day whenever convenient, or parents who teach myths as scientific truth and fear of satan and evolution, or whatever. I want the country to care about making citizens of purpose, who contain knowledge and curiosity. I don’t know how to reconcile that with what the public school systems are empowered to say what a good minimum is that homeschooling parents need to follow.

After lots of soul searching and talking to schools, we decided to do both. Our daughter is in public school, but we teach her at home too! This may sound a bit bizarre, but it’s working out great. Here in Oregon, we have the second shortest school year in the nation. That (pathetic) fact gives us plenty of time to teach our little one the periodic table, the phylogenetic tree, or the structure of a cell. We get the best of both worlds!

One byproduct of our choice is the influence we’re putting on the other children in her class. She is proudly non-theist, and very pro-science. Her (and our) passion for good science has provided the teacher with a great resource for her class room. We volunteer every chance we get. We’ve also had a few incidences where religion as popped up, and she swiftly put down the theists and their underdeveloped theology. By having us as part of the public school system, I feel that we are aiding the cause of atheism and rational thought.

That seems shortsighted.

I have lived in Canada for ten years and have yet to meet an intelligent Canadian

I think your standards may be a bit high…