> Surely reading/writing are useful skills that most people did not have before school was mandatory.
Citation needed. I've heard it repeated a lot, but never by someone with actual historical credentials. It varied from society to society (and many societies were sexist so boys and girls would have different results). Likely most is correct, but also misleading as it appears many societies were very literate even among poor people.
From what I understand (recognize I'm not a historian!), Jewish boys have long had a right of passage of reading the bible in the local synagogue. Most languages are not that hard to learn the basic phonics of and thus read and write. You wouldn't be good, but you could do it.
Historians have told me that most of their references for is literate were from time/places where literate meant Latin. The common person know much Latin (despite going to mass in Latin), and couldn't read/write it. However they would have had more education in their local language which was never counted.
No, I don’t think that’s true. The 12 years of the pre-uni education set you up for being a member of society. You don’t see it because it became a part of you. You also learned to read, write, all basic math, geography, …
The uni taught you more real-world expected skills but I‘m certain you learned more before uni.
> Why couldn't I have learned university courses and these other skills at the same time?
Was that not offered at your school? It was at mine.
University level courses do presume you have some basic skills. But in many places, schools do offer university level courses for those who are prepared.
I think it would have been theoretically possible, but obviously logistically difficult as I would have had to skip multiple classes in other fields to attend.
It's also not like I was particularly interested in mathematics at that point in my life. I essentially chose my field of study based on what I had the best grades in. Only during my studies, when the material actually became difficult, I started to be interested and engaged in the subject.
Schools in the US often offer different tracks within the same school but still offer different difficulty levels within them, including university level courses.
There is no such thing as a 12th grade level. 6th grade is all the farther English is taught. There are sometimes things called levels above that, but they are not levels in English they are levels in some specific specialization and have more to do with that specialization than reading. (doctors would not be expected to understand deep computer science writing even though doctors have very advanced reading skills in a medical ___domain).
I understand Spanish only goes up to a 5th grade level while Japanese to 9th. This is a reflection on how complex the writing systems are, and not the kids, intelligence, or school systems.
The years after you have your basic reading down are used to learn other skills that are of general use in life for everyone.
> It takes people twelve years to learn to read and write at a 12th grade level.
Nah. You are mixing up the skill 'writing glyphs on a piece of paper and retrieving that information via optical means' with 'being well-grounded in a wide array of subjects so you can express an idea in a way that is mentally stimulating to a potential reader'.
Neither takes 12 years to learn. The first, we teach within a year, at most. The second we do not teach at all, and the best 'writers' often are those who were challenged outside of school, by parents who gave them a rich, intellectually interesting environment, not within it.
We most definitely teach number 2. That's what English class is - you read books, plays, maybe documents, and then you write essays on them. You need to be concise, persuasive, have a unique voice.
Just because you, and other's, did not pay attention or were not good writers, does not mean we don't teach that. We do, for years.
> In a single semester of university I learned more than in 12 years of school.
You keep saying this but I have a hard time believing this is true; in fact I'm not even sure what "more" means (objectively) in this context.
Let's see, in the 12 years of schooling you've learned at the very least: how to read and write, how to interpret texts, how to read literature, how to compose an essay, how to speak, read, and write a second language, a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some discrete maths, several topics of physics and chemistry, biology, geology, and other natural sciences (in more or less detail), several years of history, and mandatory physical exercise to top it off. What magical university did you go to that in a single semester you learned more than that :D Unless I'm missing something.
In school I spend 8 hours listening to some teacher or playing silly learning games and did some busywork as homework. I never learned for any test or found any of the material particularly interesting.
In university I actually had to study, take notes, research the subject, study for many hours, etc.
>a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some discrete maths
Hilarious to say this. As it turned out, my first semester of university mathematics was spent on learning everything I did not learn in school. And it made it extremely clear to me how badly school had prepared me.
You would think that school would put me in a position where university mathematics were just a continuation. Nothing further could be from the truth, nearly everything taught in school was taught in a way which made it useless for actual mathematics.
In school we learned nothing about: Sets, logic, deductions, Axioms or Proofs (which turn out to be really important!), we did however spend years solving integrals, which turned out extremely unhelpful for actual mathematics.
Really unnecessary snark, I'm trying to understand your position (unless you're just doing justice to your username!).
Two things:
1. You're not the only person in school. I sympathise that you understood the material quickly and wish you had been presented more advanced stuff (I do so too, it's a valid criticism!). But at least around me I noticed that most people were just barely catching it or even actively struggling. So yes, perhaps more "adept" students should be given more challenging material and students that struggle should be given more support so they're not left behind (interesting discussion to have; this has been touched on elsewhere in this thread), but it's important to realise that unless education is based around a 1:1 teacher–student ratio (unrealistic), this will always be a problem that is hard to work around.
2. You conveniently left out the parts where I mentioned subjects other than maths (I assume you studied maths in uni or an adjacent discipline). School is not just there to teach you whatever you end up needing in your academic or professional life when you're 18 years old. I'm glad I was forced to study history, and read literature, and learn a 2nd and 3rd language, and do physical exercise at least 2× a week, because while I might be curious and study science on my own I sure as shit wouldn't do any of these of my own volition as a kid.
You're either not arguing in good faith, have an unusual definition of "more", or hate school so much that it clouds your judgement.
Do you honestly believe that is you were sent to University (or some other educational institution) with absolutely zero school knowledge, not even literacy and grade school math, you would be able to learn everything you learned at school in less than one semester?
Seems experiences vary: For me, the first year of university mathematics was to a large extent a continuation or even what was covered in school (sets, axioms, proofs etc were covered in school). That said, that wasn't the case for everyone as far as I could tell.
