US education system: Junior and High School - what and how is it taught? Part 1

Some years ago, a conversation with a sixth-grader son about Russian courtyard sayings and problems started.
For the seed, I took the classic courtyard counting:

A and B were sitting on the pipe
A fell, B disappeared
Who stayed on the pipe?
')
The son pondered and then rather quickly guessed. I was hurt in the best feelings of the Russian courtyard slang decided to complicate and asked to translate into English. Sawa (this is the name of her son), without hesitation, issued the following:

AN 'B were on a tree.
A fell down, so did B.
Who is left on the tree?

The result somewhat stunned me, after which I decided to make these notes on the system of general education (a very good school) in the USA.

Primary school from 0 to 6 grade

I will say theses that all the schools in the USA are quite different, so I will not describe how-yes-what, I will tell you what I think is interesting in that elementary school where Sawa studied.

In my opinion, mathematics, the school spends quite a bit of time on mathematics, the mathematics program is comparable to the Russian one, but the number of hours is clearly less and the children are trying to teach something different ... I would say, a pronounced humanitarian bias.

In the second grade, children are explained the concept of writing a literary work in such a way that at the end of the second grade the child already has a finished book. The approach is rather sketchy at the level of diagrams with questions like who is the main character, who is a negative character, what is the plot of the plot, where is the conflict and how is the conflict resolved in the final piece. In general, everything is grown-up, for a man of seven years old, in my opinion, quite nontrivial, but as the result shows, it is real.

Here is the final battle scene from the savvina book:



The third class has already frightened not only me, but also the spouse of a linguist with two higher educations. The child brought a lot from school and a book of poems. In general, a teacher in the third grade made an attempt, in my opinion, successful - to explain the technique of writing poetry. Here are some of the poems as you can see the technique is limited not only to the well-known "iamb and trochee":

Red food.

Inside watermelon, chery, strawberries-
red
Gives me the feeling I want to eat.

The shopper

I went to a store
To buy a toy boar
I stopped on my way
To gaze at the bay

An arrested

He was a pest
And was under arrest

The ebola

Ebola
Scary tiny
Cutting, dividing twisting
Alive, deadly, and dangerous
Virus

The mouse's house

One there was a little gray mouse
That lived in a little gray house
She had a long rake
And was safe from the snake
In her house, there was never a louse.

Secondary school from 6 to 8 grade

The first year at the parents' meeting a teacher of English and literature, 40+ years old, said she would teach how to write blogs. In my opinion, as of today, the skill is rather exotic, especially since it is too early to teach twelve children. But, so to speak, this is the USA. Said and done.

In the third month of intensive training, son Sawa rolled up with a short story to ask my opinion. Personally, I simply went nuts, not even in the sense that in terms of the English language, I have long lagged behind my children, but how the story is written, what kind of ricoche should there be in a twelve-year-old head to sketch this during the lesson ?!

Moreover, fulfilling its promise, the teacher specifically forces students to read all the stories and choose the best from the class or classes. Those. the children are already writing in such a way that it is interesting to read to their classmates, and that the story should be in the class rating.

Quite entertaining, whatever one may say, but the son is now going to the school in English with genuine enthusiasm. Here is the story itself, which made my brain:

“The Epic Battle of Himmelsdorf”

During a war of two war tankers, a team of fifteen tanks wait. Then they split up, heading in different directions. Four of them go to the railway station, where there are several deactivated trains lie. He was a T29, he was a T29, a tanker, and a tanker, a tanker, and a tanker. Suddenly, a pair of environmentally friendly tanks looking at the radar, behind a building. It is a scammer that hasn’t gotten it’s out, it’sn’t been it. It is clear that the process repeats itself. It slowly comes out and BOOM! In the place of the tank, it was a metal sprinkler, spitting out. The T29 Came While the crew was trying to repair it, it was a pounding train, but it was a bit more difficult to do it. The track was scored for a few days, it was repenting, it was a smoking wreck. When the track was fixed Next time it popped out, a missile hit it.

A menu popped out afterwards. He added that he was hitting the ball and he wondered where he was, for the word “Tank in Battle”. The mouse clicks on the SU-85B and clicks “Battle”.

Course debate

In the 7th and 8th grade one could choose a special course of debate. About the debate must be told separately. The topics are quite well-known, for example, “Death Penalty”. It is necessary to prepare both for and against. A team of 3 people in each - the first stands for five minutes, building an evidence base why for or against - depending on the lot. The second one also performs for five minutes, consolidating the command-based evidence base and also starting to introduce counter-arguments why the opposing team is not right. And the last, third team member for three minutes is exclusively engaged in debunking the evidence base of the opposing team.

The essential moment of the debate lies in the fact that until the last moment the teams do not know what they will stand for - for or against.

Mathematical competitions and technical circles

Although the school curriculum is not as tense as it would be desirable in technical areas, the abundance of serious circles and competitions in the areas of robotics and mathematics is impressive.

It was also remembered that during science lessons ice cream was prepared and how it was necessary to dissect the cow eye, each student was given an eye in a container and supposedly, the scalpel was cut…

In general, I would say that education in the USA is indisputably different and what level - it is quite possible to judge by the results of the children and the tasks that teachers try to give in their classes.