> American schools are too soft on science in general. [...]The Albanian school was brutal in teaching science
How on earth is brutality in teaching a good idea? What was the effect of this approach on the average Albanian or Romanian student? Sure it worked fine for a few of us, but overall the results are disastrous, just take a look at the PISA rankings.
Have you ever wondered how it's possible that the same "stupid" Americans that don't learn integrals and group theory in highschool somehow manage just fine in university and later on in life?
I've also went through what could be considered a "brutal" system, very similar to whats described, although i wouldn't use that specific term.
We had ~40 problem sets to solve every evening for homework, hours of work. I don't think anyone ever got an A+ in anything. If the student was better/stronger at something - they'd only get harder and harder questions thrown at them during oral exams until they crumble, and harder and harder sets added to their homework.
As for the "stupid" Americans? STEM classes are full of foreign kids in top US schools.
There are a bunch of different approaches that can lead to top scores in that ranking. notably Finland does well with a non-brutal approach.
> a "brutal" system, very similar to whats described, although i wouldn't use that specific term.
the term was used by the parent, not by me. We just happened to assess its value differently.
> they'd only get harder and harder questions thrown at them during oral exams until they crumble, and harder and harder sets added to their homework.
It depends on what you think the purpose of school should be. If you want people to understand the world they live in, understand the "why" of things, think critically and creatively etc. then problem sets and ritualistic humiliation during oral exams won't take you very far.
They do just fine because they aren't selected to do jobs where they need those kinds of skills, because they tend not to have them.
If they were taught the stuff at least they would have the choice.
I'm not in favour of brutalizing the kids though, I think that ruins the experience for them. But a lot of kids are more capable than we think and ought to be shown advanced subjects.
at the very minimum, pressure during oral exams taught to work against the clock, develop conviction and do your best to defend your position.
In some students. In others it just engendered the feeling that they're morons and that math is just "not for them". Math and science are for absolutely everybody. Not everybody will make a career out of them, but everybody can enjoy them.
Most people will do just fine with basic math training because it's what you normally need later on in life.
Most of my math training in the Eastern European school system has probably gone to waste. I only saw the point of advanced maths, calculus later on in technial university when I had to apply it in science. During my engineering career I only used the math I learned up to maybe ninth or tenth grade. No calculus. For materials science we also had to use maths up to tenth grade because of non linear properties of materials. However, calculus and advanced math was required to understand the physical phenomena. What went away was solving tricky integrals and series for which you had to think of an obscure substitution - the type of grinding math excercises we had to solve in high school. Last month I had to solve some RSA and ECC cryptography problems at work that could not be easily solved with existing crypto libraries. For example RSA signing checks were reimplemented using a big numbers library. That also did not require advanced maths, but rather a lot of grinding research done by reading crypto standards and technical guides.
In Romania I attended one of the "elite" maths/cs highschools. Except a hand full of people who would win medals in the imo etc. the rest of us were mostly clever, overworked automatons who learned problem solving tricks that we regurgitated on the page come exam time.
I think the subjects where so hard that it forced kids to cooperate, smart kids where considered a resource that potential bullies didn’t like to harm, as they would help them in the future. Additionally there was this sense of … maybe “esprit de corps” as we all were going through the same tough training.
I think that those hard problems were actually very rewarding and I saw very little of the “teenage problems” that are so prominently displayed in American media.
There was some bullying back when I was in school, but possibly less than in the US. However, I think this doesn't have much to do with the curriculum, but with social conditions.
In my case I was bullied in secondary school (by kids in my class) even though school was tough and I was easily part of what you would consider "valuable resources".
The result was that the bullies would copy their homework off of the kids that copied their homework from me and I still got into fights daily.
In highschool bullying disappeared completely, but that's because I went to a selective school (the equivalent of a US magnet hs) where everybody was academically oriented and also came from more stable social environments.
In less academically strong highschools there are a lot of nasty things taking place - students abusing eachother, teachers abusing students, students beating up teachers etc.
This has changed for the worse with capitalism and social inequality. We had some bullying back when I was a primary school student but it was physical bullying by higher graders towards younger students and it was mostly done outside the school. We had none of the psychological bullying that you see in the US and to a greater extent in Korea or Japan. We had roma and very poor students in our class. There was also almost no bullying during high school. The more odd kids were usually ignored and had friends of their own.
> I think that those hard problems were actually very rewarding
Well, maybe rewarding for some. I didn't like them and would rather go outside and play or ride my bike in the neighbourhood. Math for math's sake was never my thing. I only started to really like math in university when I saw its potential to solve real world problems.
I went to American public schools my whole life and never saw any evidence of bullying.
An interesting perspective which I feel might be the actual core of the problem. I grew up after the Revolution, so I can't make a before/after comparison, but (as I mentioned in a different comment) I see a tight connection between how aggressive other students were and how bad their family situation was.
> Math for math's sake was never my thing. I only started to really like math in university when I saw its potential to solve real world problems.
Perfectly legitimate. Pushing hard math early on can actually put you off the subject forever. Some of us started liking it in university, but a lot of capable students decide it's just not for them. With a different approach many might have ended up understanding and maybe even loving it.
Brutal was the term used by the parent, I just picked it up from there.
> if the kid has no interest in Math he/she would regard that as brutal and for others who do have interest it's just challenging and maybe even fun
Throughout my education I was in both camps at different times. The more "brutal" things got (dry, formal curriculum, tough teachers) the more it put me off. On the other hand patient and engaging teachers could get me to spend countless hours after school working on math problems.
Interests are things that develop based on intrinsic attributes but also based on environmental feedback. I suspect the latter is fast more important.
I've went through similar curriculum in Croatia and I hated it - the literature they forced on us was politically correct bullshit some figurehead decided should be common culture. As a result 30% of the class read it and the rest just cheated and studied for test.
It was like this in every class - I hated cheating and studying for the test - I was lazy and it was pointless - as a result I got barely passing grades based on slightly paying attention in class. But in casual conversation I could relate way more of the basics than my peers. And I lost interest in many subjects simply because of how they were taught (study random facts because it will be on the test - no context or application). I had to relearn algebra after highschool because of how badly it was taught - and I was interested in it since I was trying to learn 3d programming and I was going to math competitions in elementary school - teachers couldn't relate any questions I asked to stuff I was interested in.
I hope my kid gets way less material to study and more opportunity to figure out what he wants to learn.
I’ve always thought yours was the right way. There are some students which will do the minimal but will manage if challenged. Seems the equitable way leaves them behind.
And it is clear, if all conditions are equal, still people are not born equal. Some kids are just smarter than others, and some are just dummies, or don't care about school. Since everyone was the same ethnicity, you can't blame 'systematic x'. It was all equal. A doctor and a nurse probably lived in the same apartment, and had similar wages. (think Cuba, or North Korea today. Albania was like the North Korea of Europe).
Grades/marks were 2 - 10, 2-4 was failing, 5 was passing, 10 was excellent (and hard to get).
Grades were given in the basis of
1. homework,
2. blackboard interrogation (you had to solve and explain everything in front of the class, similar to a whiteboard coding interview),
3. Exams, flash quizzes or pre-announced.
You had three types of students:
1. Great students, and are aiming for the 10s (and usually get a 9 or a 10).
2. People that struggle to do the basic, and just want to pass the class and are aiming for a 5 or a 6.
3. Everybody else that got a 7-8.
Every exam or homework, was done with this in mind. You usually had 3 type of questions:
1. Super basic, <- If you were in class, you could do it
2. Medium, <- Some thinking is required
3. Advanced <- Usually only the really good students got these
The teachers knew, that some students would struggle, and they will let them pass if they just did the basic effort. If a student failed even that, they would have to go to 'summer class' and take additional classes and exams to pass. If you failed a class, you failed the whole year and had to repeat every other class as well.
Also, the school over time divided the students by grades. Each cohort-year, might have 4-5 classes (of 30 students). Your class was the people that you studied with, and did everything. The top students usually were placed together, and spread in the class A, and B. The rest were put on the other classes.
So, the top classes had only excellent students, or average students, but not of the failing one. The idea was that failing students will just drag down all the top students and not let them excel. A top student can make an average student better, but there was little chance to do anything with a failing one. If you were initially a failing student but started doing better, you could move up to the better classes. This is similar to the soccer relegation techniques of most soccer leagues in Europe. But: Every class, had the same subjects, and the same load. Even the failing students had to do pre-calc. But the teachers would just be much more lenient on them. Eg. do the very basic, and they will let you pass. But if you wanted a good grade, 8 or higher, you had to work your butt off.
This is totally politically incorrect in today's environment, but even communist Albania knew better. Some people are just not smart at all, and it is better to let them just do the bare minimum and pass, meanwhile let the smarter kids do more advanced work.
I was in class that had an even mix, some really smart kids, some not so much, and some comparable to the worst of the D-class. Like third of the of my classmates went for the sports-focused high-school, because they were decent at basketball and bad at almost everything else. But nobody was failing.
Like, A-class should have been the top students, B and C middling, and D poor. In reality, A was ordinary, B and C contained the best and the average and D was a failure.
Even more anecdotal thing, in my class there were more people doing extra-curicural contests, like Math-Olympiad and the like. We were even encouraged by teahers, along the lines of "No, try it even if you don't have top grades, that is the sort of thing where you need to understand what you are doing, not just ave all the right answers on the test." :D
Last hypothesis of mine is, that because we had a mix of sudents, the smarter(?) of us spend some time explaining to others (mix of goodnes of heart, being bullied and even having like a pay-for-homework manufacture?) ... and as they say, you learn best, when you explain?
But I could be completely wrong, rose-tinted glasses and long forgotten traumas and all that :D
This is certainly an advantage that Albania had over Alabama. There are still people alive who remember the school system having to be desegregated under armed guard. The struggle continues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/1...
Equality of conditions is a good thing to ask for, equality of outcome is stupid, as even in a murderous communist regime, was impossible to achieve as it goes against basic human nature.
That's why event though I am liberal/democrat, I don't like the today's 'progressives', as they seem completely ignorant of human nature, and have no knowledge of the history of countries that went through socialism/communism, and yet want to repeat the same destructive mistakes by trying to achieve 'equality of outcome', which is impossible.
Material conditions being equal don't mean that everything is equal. Some people have parents who value certain things and push their kids. Other people have some anxieties to get over before they can perform. Some people like being ahead of the class and put in effort to stay there.
Some people are naturally stronger and some are weaker. But if you train, you will be stronger than you were, regardless.
You might not become world champion with weak genes, but you'll be stronger than everyone who doesn't train.
DNA
Both of them looking back thought that repeating a year was a good thing for them, they went from being struggling average/below average students to top of their class and regained their confidence.
I think it really depends, in a place and time where repeating classes is more common, it maybe doesn't really destroy confidence as much whereas in areas where it's rare, then the psychological impact is much worse.
Also, one thing to note, both of them, in their experience with education, saw much better results when children were separated by level than when classes were mixed together for exactly the reason the OP mentioned. A top student can help bring an average student up but when there are both top students and very below average students, the teacher has to make the choice to either focus on the below average student or the top students and neither of those choices are good.
In France, we've had a push toward lowering the overall level and removing any elitism at schools. This has increased the amount of kids who graduate from high school with the Baccalauréat which is needed for university but has lowered the level of kids actually going to university (especially at engineering schools and elite institutions) and reduced the value of a university degree. It's a bit similar to what's happening in the US in STEM and I think it's a bad calculation for the long term competitiveness of the country.
Come on, of course it hasn't. Entry requierements haven't changed.
The highschools providing the largest contingents of students to these elite institutions respect neither the national curriculum nor the ban of sorting students by ability without any consequences. Unsurprisingly the two most famous of these highschools are also exempt from the French purely geographical students draft and the places most politician children attend. As usual in France, the rule for all is not the rule for the elite.
In effect, the dumbing down of the national curriculum has just made a system which was already one of the most unequal in Europe even more unequal. But everything is fine. The French system only uses entrance exams and entrance exams are always fair, aren't they?
All countries use entrance exams, it's not something that specific to France and of course there's an inherent unfairness to them, kids from better educated families are always going to get better results. In fact if we were talking about fairness then the disappearance of boarding schools (internats) have actually increased inequality. There was a time when a lot of kids spent the week in boarding schools, for kids from families with less focus on education (like my grandmother who kept telling my mum that she should stop reading because it'd cause her headaches), it removed them from non-optimal environment and put them in situation where they had better access to education. But I'm not sure that's desirable or optimal :)
Usually it was kids that had some discipline problems. Perhaps ADHD, etc... but at the time, no-one cared about those aspects as school psychologist were not a thing at all.
If you failed more than one year in a row, then the teachers will just give up on you and let you just slide the next year as long as you just showed up.
But usually it did not happen that often. When it did happen, it usually meant someone will change schools to a less demanding one (if in high school). So for example you may leave a gymnasium and go to a school for mechanics.
In elementary school it did not happen except for serious disciplinary problems. People with mental problems were able to have special programmes that tailored to their needs, so this did not result in repeating a year.
Teachers did not really like the idea of having someone repeat a year, so if you had a decent attitude you could get a passing grade but you had to put in the effort. This "effort" part is what is in my opinion biggest different, Eastern Europe schooling required you to put in a lot of work, if you were talented you didn't need to use so much time, but if you weren't natural at math, you had to put in plenty of hours to get decent grades. Problems usually were not of the sort that can't be learned through "brute force".
I've done some teaching on the side and when I was teaching a guy in a "US" school for children of diplomats, difference was that their problems were usually much more freeform and required deeper understanding but once understood, used primitive math or physics methods. Our normal schooling was different, it used advanced math or physics but the problems were often times many variants of the same problem (which allowed for brute force learning). Honestly I think that it would be the best to have both, as many of my fellow students did not really understand the material we studied but they could brute force it.
Edit: Switzerland has a different approach where children are segregated by their ability starting from 7th school year. So you go to Gymnasium, A level, B level, C level.
I would be surprised if those people could be solving AP Physics C problems by 8th grade. 1 & 2, easily of course, but C is quite different.
If you found calculus BC hard-ish and physics easy in comparison, I think you were taking 1 & 2 as C was much harder. SAT II physics is a joke.
Virginia probably has some of the best STEM education in the entire country, at least the northern bit. Certainly better than what you can get at most schools outside of some in California, the boarding schools, and NYC magnets.
We had “big soviet encyclopedia” and “kid” one on our bookshelf (A point of pride for my grandparents). Nobody told me that by “kids” the authors meant “teens”, so around 13yo I devoured those books whole.
Taught me structure of the atom, chemistry and lots of fascinating physical phenomena. And made most of the physics material easy to grasp up till last HS grade.
It had little maths, concentrating more on the understanding rather than the rigorous descriptions, which made the maths to describe them quite obvious, when I had to learn them in school.
Not sure if the current state of wikipedia is better or worse for that purpose- it was much better structured and paced for sure.
Inclusive classrooms raise scores of the lower performing students. That's probably true.
It glosses over what it does to people on the other end of the spectrum.
As someone from the other end of the spectrum, growing up never having to put any effort, having few or no peers close to my level, and being constantly encouraged by the people around me to do poorly for curves etc... I can say I developed life long development/psychological problems as a result, and the idea that I or anyone in the future like me should be slowed down so everyone is more equal is deeply offensive.
I started in an average class in my year. Don't remember doing anything extra at home, or much at all, but still had an equivalent of all A's. At some point my parents realised something was wrong and moved me to the strongest class... Only then I started doing something. This is when I realised that some kids were already impossibly far ahead (we had world-level olympiad goers there).
Can't say I become world-class at anything but this helped to concentrate and work through the rest of school and uni without any problems.
But these days, integrated classrooms (as mentioned in your article) tend to be staffed with two teachers: one with a general education background and one with special education. They work as a team and can provide differentiated learning paths. The lower teacher/student ratio can help both the gen ed and special ed students.
And as a certified smart guy I now ask myself and others questions like: Why is it deeply offensive to hold you back when you are literally suggesting to hold them back instead?
It's very hard to disentangle though.
I have a smart, popular nephew from a good home, who also got extra acconodations on exams for dyslexia.
You could spin that either way:
Priviliged people taking advantage of accomodations for those with problems.
Or smart people who previously got written off as disruptive troublemakers being better catered for (though maybe we'll have less entrepreneurs if we keep all the smart people in the standard education track).
In particular, the benefits of living in a society with a basic level of mathmatical (etc.) understanding seems powerful but hard to trace through.
But if we can't even talk about the trade-offs calmly and factually then its just a pointless sgouting match. The people with the academic skills should be leading the way on that.
But Albania can finance rigorous teaching of science ... ?
USA spends a lot more money per pupil than any former Eastern Bloc nation. But you can spend a lot of money on inefficient solutions.
For a less politically charged example: compare expenses of the Falcon rocket family to those of the Space Launch System.
When I managed to attend teacher parent meetings I could see the deference people had for their children’s teachers. And children also deeply respected them for the most part.
The scenes from the beginning of Breaking Bad for example are rather alien to me - I can understand them, but I’ve never encountered such things when I was a kid.
> USA spends a lot more money per pupil than any former Eastern Bloc nation. But you can spend a lot of money on inefficient solutions.
You're not wrong. Financialization of education continuing down from secondar to primary education, commodification of students—I think those are a bit better descriptions of the issue beyond "funding cuts" personally. Its incredibly easy to make things inefficient (or efficient at something else [0]) when quality/efficiency slowly fades from the conciousness of those in charge.
I'd say the more important thing is that there are large failures here, they were building before "Extreme progressive Liberals" (which depending on how I read that I can agree with, from the left even). Saying this as someone who was a STEM kid in high school, took AP Calc at 15, etc.—I'm more mixed on the more static curriculum as described earlier, its not as important here tho
[0] Like cranking out Amazon employees
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/amazon-warehouse-communit...>
"""
Writer Erika Hayasaki visited Cajon High. Here’s what she found:
A dozen students sat clustered at work tables inside an air-conditioned classroom, which was designed to emulate the inside of an Amazon facility. On one wall, Amazon’s giant logo grinned across a yellow and green banner. The words “CUSTOMER OBSESSION” and “DELIVER RESULTS” were painted against a corporate-style yellow backdrop. On a whiteboard, a teacher had written the words “Logistics Final Project,” and the lesson of the day was on Amazon’s “14 Leadership Principles.” Each teenager wore a company golf shirt emblazoned with the Amazon logo.
...
A public high-school classroom designed to resemble an Amazon facility, with students wearing Amazon logos on their clothing as they memorize Amazon’s leadership principles (which, it is worth noting, also include “Ownership” and “Think Big,” injunctions that hold merit for readers of this magazine when imagining how we might solve the problems exemplified by Amazon). Such a relationship between the company and public goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider Amazon as “the major working-class space of suburban and exurban socialization.”
"""
Take Baltimore for example. The public schools are very well-funded by any standard. And yet they have several high schools that didn’t produce a single student proficient in math.
https://www.k12dive.com/news/several-baltimore-schools-repor...
IMO the prosperity of the US has made people entitled and it's easier to complain than to put in the work.
- each public school has the same budget per student. There is no "reduced education funding" for schools in district X vs district Y, or for any school, because the budget per student is equal. Each school's budget is public, and published on the web.
- favoring religious teaching: at least at the school my kids go to there's absolutely no religious teaching. I suspect this is the case for all the public schools in NYC
- nuanced policy difficulties? Not sure what you mean by this
Ok, now to answer your original question: why the fault of progressive left. As you see I skipped the word "extreme", as this is a loaded word; people who vote that way certainly do not perceive themselves as extreme.
At the recent mayoral primaries, the top candidates were the moderates Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia (1st and 2nd place), and the progressive Maya Wiley (3rd place). As far as the education was concerned, the hot topic was the selective "specialized high schools" [1], where the admission is test-based, according to a state law passed about 50 years ago. The current mayor (Bill de Blasio, progressive) has worked tirelessly for the last 4 years or so to lobby the State legislature to get the law repealed. The progressive candidate, Maya Wiley, promised to work towards the same goal. Here's the relevant extract from her platform [2]
>> To remove barriers that separate and label children, we will: [...] Eliminate discriminatory admissions “screens.”
In other words, kill the specialized high schools program.
Eric Adams (the winner, moderate) promised to keep the program as it currently is.
In case you wonder what the admission entrance exam is like, it's just two separate tests, one for ELA and one for math. Both tests are fairly challenging. The progressives think that these tests (and especially the math one) are discriminatory in nature.
Here's a sample math question [3, p.78] "In Centerville, 45% of the population is female, and 60% of the population commutes to work daily. Of the total Centerville population, 21% are females who commute to work daily. What percentage of the total Centerville population are males who do not commute to work daily?"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialized_high_schools_in_Ne...
[2] https://www.mayawileyformayor.com/maya-wileys-plan-for-creat...
[3] https://cdn-blob-prd.azureedge.net/prd-pws/docs/default-sour...
This is supposed to be a "challenging" problem? It seems quite obvious to me: we simply cannot answer the question as given, because we aren't told how many in the Centerville population are classed as 'both male and female', or 'neither male nor female'.
I'm very against the idea that struggling students should just be "sacrificed" for the advanced student, however, which some of the other comments seem to be implying.
"What percentage of the total Centerville population are males who do not commute to work daily?"
Otherwise you do need that first bit.
Virginia moving to eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade as part of equity-focused plan https://forums.somd.com/threads/virginia-dumbing-down-educat...
Educational malpractice in the name of ‘equity’ By Post Editorial BoardApril 30, 2021 | 6:14pm | Updated
https://nypost.com/2021/04/30/educational-malpractice-in-the...
How?
You have advantage of being aware
There is literally a major political party in the US that parrots science to be fake & that religion/faith in god is all that matters. Also, that "progress" (in a technological/scientific sense) is a bad thing
Last I checked, it was not the progressives that identify with this line of thinking.
Come on.
On the other hand, the democratic party openly and literally claims there is no distinction between male and female.
There are dumb policy positions all over the board. No one denies science as a whole. Everyone picks and chooses.
Consider my state of Oregon... they're literally removing the ability to do math and read as graduation requirements and the GOP minority is left asking 'why'? How can you honestly make the claim the democratic party is uniquely the party of science
Why should I care about them? The internet exists. Let them learn on their own if they’re so interested. Why am I being forced to subsidize people that will just grow to resent me as a leech on society due to my “inferior mathematical ability” as you surely do?
Poverty is a far bigger problem than some Virginia schools not teaching Geometry in 8th grade (for the record - I took Algebra in 8th grade and most people in my tiny high school took it in 9th).
We should obviously care about improving education, for the good of society as a whole, for innovation, for pushing the economy forward, etc. It's dumbfounding that this would even be asked, I'm not sure anyone outside of America (i.e. no pervasive anti-intellectual culture) could conceive of a question like this
> Why am I being forced to subsidize people that will just grow to resent me as a leech on society due to my “inferior mathematical ability” as you surely do?
Why is American society so centered around appearances and perceived judgment? You'd rather damn an entire state to stagnation than risk being looked down upon by some hypothetical elitist? And math is only one of many, many subjects.. I firmly believe everyone is good at something.
> Poverty is a far bigger problem than some Virginia schools not teaching Geometry in 8th grade
And how is terrible education supposed to help with poverty? Education is a great way, arguably the primary way, that people lift themselves up.
Also, for the record - it's not hypothetical, you're literally an example of this hypothetical elitist as an Ivy grad (top schools only exist in order to enforce segregation against lesser people like me). I'm sure you took calculus in 8th grade while I took it in senior year but I'm not subhuman because of it.
And given we are otherwise doing just fine, I think stagnation is far more likely to come from somewhere else.
Given typical HS math curriculum (algebra/geometry up to calculus) being able to offer geometry early gives enough time to offer calculus; otherwise a school could teach it late and it won't matter because math education stops early anyway.
Also connotes to a degree college-track vs non college-track students, again due to the highest math a HS offers. It is extremely desirable to take calculus in HS to prepare for college, but if most students don't go to college, no need to take/offer calculus, no need to start the math sequence early, etc.
I went to HS in the US and I remember a split in the math curriculum starting in 10th grade (I didn't go to my HS in 9th grade so I can't say). The vast majority of kids planning on college took a combined algebra 2/trigonometry class in 10th grade; the other kids took either algebra 1, geometry, or algebra 2 (without the trig) depending on previous courses.
So the comment "taking geometry in 8th vs 9th vs 10th grade" would mean something like comparing schools for numbers of college-track students and funding (8th grade great - implies a HS with a large body of students going to college, well funded in order to offer variety of classes; 10th grade not good - implies a HS with a small body of students going to college; not well funded, math stops before calculus, etc.)
American schools are too soft on science in general. I did grades 1-11 in Albania and my senior year of HighSchool in the US. Some of my schooling in Albania was done under communism, and some after communism fell in the 90s.
The Albanian school was brutal in teaching science. Biology started at 5th grade, pre-Algebra at 5, and full blown Algebra at 6, physics at 6, and Chemistry at 7. Then in highschool you did the same, but more advanced. There was no choice at all, you had to do them all. The only choice in HS was a second foreign language. The whole idea was that you have to know all the basics of ALL sciences, so in college you know what to choose and pursue. If you never tried, you will have no clue if you liked something or not. (also basic music knowledge, sheet reading, and arts was a requirement as well).
When I came to the US, I was flabergasted how behind most of the kids were in science. I took AP physics, and it became boring as it was things I had done in 8th grade. I got 800./800 on the SAT 2, physics.
The math part, I took AP calc, and it was advanced enough, especially the part B to challenge me. But this was clearly an elective that only about 30 students took it, while back home it was a requirement for all.
Unfortunately, the current movement on dumbing down math and science in the name of 'equity' is a step behind and very dispiriting. It is bound to hurt poorer but smart kids, that can't afford private tutoring and have to rely only on public schools. Extreme progressive Liberals are killing science and progress in this country, and are becoming actually regressive and backwards.
P.s. The only advantage of American teaching on science was that it relies more on experiments to teach concepts, while the Albanian one had no equipment, or lacked the basics of it. Heck, in the 90s we didn't even have glass on the windows and had to freeze all winter. Also basic electricity was lacking half of the winter.
Ps2. Most Americans have it good (condition wise), they just don't know it
Ps3. This is a good video how schooling was back then (in 88). Notice how the kids are wearing jackets inside, as there was no heating https://youtu.be/yZD1jaKbz2g?t=251