> > I am currently a sophmore in high school, and I have noticed a disturbing trend. Remember the days of elementary school and you would tell your parents what you were doing in school, like learning about the difference between sugar and protein or how plants make oxygen? What did your parents say? Well mine would always say "wow, I didn't learn that until the ninth grade!" or "gee I didn't do that until grad school!" What I'm getting at is that the things that kids are expected to know nowadays are not necessarily what they need to know. And it is becoming worse and worse. For example, at my school the freshman science class my freshman year was "Foundations of science", which you could skip if you wanted to (and passed the test) and go into Biology, mostly a sophmore class. I got into biology. This year, my sophmore year, they administration got rid of Foundations, and now Biology is the freshman science class.
> > My english class is reading The Scarlet Letter, an accepted American Classic, a tale of the human heart and human nature going up against strict Puritan values. This is a book reserved for college guys, and they like that book. Nobody in my class doesn't hate it. Shoving this college reading material down our fifteen and sixteen year-old throats is not only unnatural, but it has ruined a book that I might have enjoyed, or at least understood, while in college.
> > This is seriously scary, the inflation of education. Everyone is trying to get ahead, but what's happenning is like the academic version of an arms race, where schools figure that they can get kids more prepared by teaching them more and more complex, adult stuff at a very adolescent age. We can't handle it.
> >
> > A very concerned Finchplucker
>
> I know what you mean. I still don't know what what sin and cosin are for, and I had to use the two years a row in high school.
>
> Spider-Iloathanddispisemath-Boy

I remember seeing a PBS show about children's learning abilities. During one experiment, the "teacher" showed the children two vessels, one tall and thin and one short and wide. The teacher filled the tall one up and asked the children to pour the contents into the short one. The short one obviously (to you and me) had the exact same capacity as the tall one, as the liquid fit in it perfectly. The six year old children, however, INSISTED that the tall one had more in it -- because the liquid CAME UP HIGHER. The point was that their little six year old brains simply could not yet comprehend that the volume could be the same even if the outside measurements were different. Ever since then, I have believed that we can only learn what we are ready to learn.

That's what you must be going through.

Mou"though we did read and comprehend The Scarlet Letter in high school (15-odd years ago)"sie