Haha. To be fair, even here those are the exceptions, and this is in Québec, which has notoriously fucked-up public education. If you’ve never heard of CÉGEPs before, now is the time to take out your barf bag. Cégeps are essentially what is normally the last year of high school (or grade 12) everywhere else in the world, but split into two years and is non-compulsory. Calculus is not even mentioned until Cégep. Most people here, even with cégep diplomas, have never done any Calculus course whatsoever—there are many Cégep courses that don’t have Calculus in them.
In general, education here is still superior to many (most?*) developing / “third world” countries, and it’s much less horrible in the rest of Canada. There are plenty of good scientists throughout Canada and a relatively decent amount of good teachers, but as for good science teachers… I generally hold the whole lot in lower expected esteem and expect lower competence, doubly so in Québec.
* (I have no comparative statistics whatsoever, so I’m guessing based mostly on availability of skilled labor, professionals and PhDs.)
Heh. In Florida, USA, Calculus wasn’t typically allowed until the last year of fully-subsidized schooling, and there was only one class of ~15 students in a graduating class of 300 that took it. I managed to get into (and complete) that class in my penultimate year, but for my final year there was literally no math offered at the school which was an appropriate progression.
Glad to know that my country is further away from as-fucked-up-as-plausibly-possible than I previously thought, but still… WTF?
Haha. To be fair, even here those are the exceptions, and this is in Québec, which has notoriously fucked-up public education. If you’ve never heard of CÉGEPs before, now is the time to take out your barf bag. Cégeps are essentially what is normally the last year of high school (or grade 12) everywhere else in the world, but split into two years and is non-compulsory. Calculus is not even mentioned until Cégep. Most people here, even with cégep diplomas, have never done any Calculus course whatsoever—there are many Cégep courses that don’t have Calculus in them.
In general, education here is still superior to many (most?*) developing / “third world” countries, and it’s much less horrible in the rest of Canada. There are plenty of good scientists throughout Canada and a relatively decent amount of good teachers, but as for good science teachers… I generally hold the whole lot in lower expected esteem and expect lower competence, doubly so in Québec.
* (I have no comparative statistics whatsoever, so I’m guessing based mostly on availability of skilled labor, professionals and PhDs.)
Heh. In Florida, USA, Calculus wasn’t typically allowed until the last year of fully-subsidized schooling, and there was only one class of ~15 students in a graduating class of 300 that took it. I managed to get into (and complete) that class in my penultimate year, but for my final year there was literally no math offered at the school which was an appropriate progression.