During the last two years my best friend and I had seeral discussions about which school system is the best. I went to high School in Austria and had the opportunity to experience 6 months at an American High School and 2 weeks at a French high School as exchange student. Now the ministery in Austria is discussing the school system and they want to make a openeer curriculum, kind of like the one in the US.
My opinion:
I think the American school system is great for students who love to learn. It opens up many opportunities to try out different subjects, and to challenge oneself. While ambitious students will use the many opportunities, less academic students might want to try to choose the easiest way through school and this way will not acuire the knowldge they schoul.
In contrast to the American School System, students at High Schools in Austria have to take the same classes every year and have almost no chance to further explore their interests. While this prevents less interested students from falling behind it also prevents interested students from learning everything they wan't and can during earlier years.
Concluding, I think that maybe a combination of the two schoolsystems might be a good solution, but first the state has to decide what it expects it's students to know after they graduate, and how useful this knowledge is.
I've only gone to school in public American schools, so I'm not sure how well I can argue. However, I knew an exchange student from Germany who said all students went to the same school pre k through grade 13. At a certain point, you were divided into different tracks and not all students had to go to the final grade. I think there is some wisdom in not requiring all students to take the same classes, however I'm not wild about making kids decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives in high school. I changed my mind several times. I also don't like that students test to see what direction they can take. I think it needs to be up to the student and if it isn't what their aptitude test shows, then they will have to work harder, but again, student's choice. Also, a lot of European schools don't offer any kind of extracurricular activities.
Then again, the school day is also shorter and the students still come out smarter on average.
I do believe we need to offer some classes at an earlier level, including foreign languages.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711