Re: [Phys-l] The percentage of Americans who....

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

I'll emphasize JC's by noting I was streamed into the preprofessional one at Santa Barbara High after being kicked outa the private college prep school. (1955)  I found all the courses' standards just as high.  (Going to the Private HS was a waste of money.).  The maths teacher thought I was unprepared, so I took a voc. course, electronics.  The teacher quickly sized me up and let me just play w/ the equipment, mainly surplus X-band microwave.  He gave me the echo box.   The other students were not goof-offs.  The only thing I remember his lecturing on was multivibraters.  I remember they had wood, metal and auto shops.

bc

On 2010, Nov 11, , at 12:04, John Clement wrote:

> Even in the 1950s there were a large
> number who repeated the 7th and 8th grade so they dropped out at age 16.
> The result was that the entering HS students generally stayed the course.
> Now they have to stay to 18, so they cause problems in HS.  Would things
> improve if we let them drop out at 16, but strictly enforced and
> investigated what happened to students when they checked out of a school?
>
> At one time the schools had a vocational track, but this has gone away.
> When I went to HS the majority did not take more than geometry and business
> math.  Let us face it, not everyone needs algebra because they will never
> use it.