[h4ch1]

Everytime I see the United States crying about marginalized communities and "bridging the gap" between communities I remember how starkly different it is in India, where there's a standardized curriculum(CBSE) that's a hundred times more complicated than anything that the US ever had and it's a constant accross communities that are much poorer and marginalized than the lowest communities in the states.

I still remember first time meeting a kid from the US due to an exchange program and while I could do integrals in my head at 15 they could barely multiply/divide in their head. While doing integrals as mental math may not be very useful in the "real world" as I was told by them back then, it sets a precedent for learning and exercising your brain so you can tackle more complex problems that come later.

I'm not saying that it's perfect here either btw, I'm very aware of the engineering/medicine rat race since I've lived that for 4 years, but I'm amazed how nerfed education in the US is for people who are much more financially in a better position than most Indians.

[seanmcdirmid]

There is a huge difference between middle class and marginalized communities..in the USA and India. You don’t compare the low end of the USA to the high end of India, of course. We could also compare to China, where education isn’t even compulsory after the 9th grade (not sure about India), so you have very different populations of high schoolers. And then there is the over emphasis of Euclidean geometry because of the gaokao.

Still, I’m disappointed I didn’t learn integrals until the 11th grade (and there were only a few seniors and juniors in that class which was well rated for the Seattle area), I could have learned them in middle school and maybe I’d get more out of my secondary education. I didn’t even get to linear algebra until my second year of college.