Middle School Dilemma Part II

[alpinerabbit]

There are huge demands being placed on schools to perform to certain levels. How many of you can evaluate the meaning of archetypal patterns and symbols that are found in myth and tradition by using literature from different eras and cultures? Or solve problems involving linear functions; write the equation and graph the resulting ordered pairs of integers on a grid?

Those are two things ALL my fifth graders are supposed to be able to do by the end of the year. These kids are ten years old! I have kids who are reading at a second grade level. I have kids who can't subtract 5 from 13 without using their fingers. Yet they are supposed to have mastery of those two things plus more than 50 others. And that's just in math and Lang. Arts, science and social studies add in 30 more.

There must be something seriously wrong in the US system.
How come the demands are so steep and then don't rise anymore by High School? (well hardly unless you want to go to college...) I went to an US high school (public, mediocre and what I saw 10 years later was it got worse) - for a year - my pre-graduation exam (10th (?) grade requirement) was not much harder than what I had to pass after 6th grade in Switzerland.

Most of my "medium" English classmates would hardly have been able to do what you describe - how on earth would 10 year olds be able to?

And linear functions? Are you guys nuts???
That's 7th grade stuff here in Switzerland. AND we start school one year later (!)
So the base is not laid, instead kids are overwhelmed with the above stuff? Quite shocking indeed. We do things slowly, but more kids are able to perform, apparently. Apparently.

Sheesh. I am glad I did not go to school all the way there.