Originally Posted by
YardleyLabs
For secondary students too much emphasis is placed on non-academic activities (sports, jobs, social activities) and too little on academic work. When I graduated from high school, where I was a good but not stellar student, I had 32 credits including 18 credits in lab sciences. I took advanced placement classes in six subjects. This compares with US norms of 18 credits in total with limited opportunities for advanced placement classes.
The difference was that I went to school from 8 AM - 4 PM every day with virtually no free periods, taking 8 classes. Homework took an average of 4 hours/night with an occasional (2-3 times/month) all nighter to catch up. That was a "normal" schedule for European schools at that time. While I followed an "American" track in my studies, the European norm was also to complete 13 years of grade school before attending university. A reason for this was that a higher percentage of students did not attend college and the secondary schools were designed to provide a more complete educational foundation, somewhat comparable to what we do through junior colleges. In France and Switzerland, graduation was tied to passing a national proficiency examination covering a broad range of subjects including foreign languages, science, history, primary language, literature, and philosophy. Think how much more could be done in American high schools by adding 2-3 hours to the daily class schedule and by defining proficiency to include a little more than reading, writing and arithmetic.
