Readit NewsThen came senior year. AP Calculus was a sh/*tshow, because of a confluence of factors: dealing with parents divorcing, social isolation, dysphoria. I hit a wall, and got my only quarterly D, ever.
The, "if you get left behind, that's on you, because we're not holding up the bright kids," mentality was catastrophic for me - and also completely inapplicable, because I WAS one of the bright kids! I needed help, and focus. I retook the course in college and got the highest grade in the class, so I confirmed that I was not the problem; unfortunately, though, the damage had been done. I'd chosen a major in the humnities, and had only taken that course as an elective, to prove to myself that I could manage the subject. You would never know that I'd been on-track for a technical career.
So, I don't buy that America/Sweden/et al. are full of hopeless demi-students. I was deemed one, and it wasn't true, but the simple perception was devastating. I think there is a larger, overarching deficit of support for students, probably some combination of home life, class structure, and pedagogical incentives. If "no child left behind" is anathema in these circles, the "full speed ahead" approach is not much better.
In the school district I live in, they eliminated all gifted programs and honors courses (they do still allow you to accelerate in math in HS for now, but I'm sure that will be gone soon too), so a decent chance you might not have taken Calculus in HS. Problem solved I guess?
It's like this in the US (or rather, it was 20 years ago. But I suspect it is now worse anyway)
Teachers in my county were heavily discouraged from failing anyone, because pass rate became a target instead of a metric. They couldn't even give a 0 for an assignment that was never turned in without multiple meetings with the student and approval from an administrator.
The net result was classes always proceeded at the rate of the slowest kid in class. Good for the slow kids (that cared), universally bad for everyone else who didn't want to be bored out of their minds. The divide was super apparent between the normal level and honors level classes.
I don't know what the right answer is, but there was an insane amount of effort spent on kids who didn't care, whose parents didn't care, who hadn't cared since elementary school, and always ended up dropping out as soon as they hit 18. No differentiation between them, and the ones who really did give a shit and were just a little slow (usually because of a bad home life).
It's hard to avoid leaving someone behind when they've already left themselves behind.
I'm sure it's regional, but my oldest kid started school in SoCal 13 years ago, and it is definitely worse. Nearly every bad decision gets doubled-down on and the good ones seem to lack follow-through. I spent almost a decade trying to improve things and have given up; my youngest goes to private school now.
[0] - https://xkcd.com/2347/
It also was originally authored by the same person who did lzexe, tcc, qemu, and the current leader for the large text compression benchmark.
Oh, and for most of the 2010's there was a fork due to interpersonal issues on the team.
1. https://www.npr.org/2008/06/11/91363837/water-thirsty-golf-c...
2. https://www.mwdh2o.com/building-local-supplies/pure-water-so...
We have a swimming pool that leaks (we were quoted $125k to fix it since the deck will need replacing, and with interest rates being what they are, borrowing to fix it would be rather painful), and we use only 51gal/person/day at our home. I estimate that if fixing the pool would save another 10.