From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: Re: Spheres and Calculus [Re: Cyber (was Introduction was Eh?)]
Organization: Data I/O Corporation
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 19:38:36 GMT

In article <1992Dec19.234517.5334@ucc.su.OZ.AU> DM writes:
>
>DM is surprised. "Don't you folks in the US learn calculus in high
>school? 

Liralen is a little surprised at all the answers that other people have
given.  Not a lot, though.  Her first high school offered advanced courses,
including AP (Advanced Placement) calculus and physics courses which were
geared to be good enough to get out of most college's first year courses.

Her second high school was a lot like everyone else's, as far as math
went; but had that second high school had focussed all it's advanced
studies on English Literature, Creative Writing, the Performing Arts, and
Music.  So the second high school had turned out about a dozen Juliard
students in just her class alone and dozens of others that went on to do
performing arts.  The lady who played Buttercup in _The Princess Bride_
was from La Jolla High School.  Another member of Liralen's class was on
the technical credits for the second Aliens film, two of the Star Trek
movies, and the first Batman film.

So, after proving that she could pass her second high school's pre-calc
final, she'd taken her calculus at the University of California in San
Diego (UCSD).  The physics at her second high school was good enough to
put her in the advanced sections at Caltech.  She'd gotten 5's (out of 5)
on the calculus, physics, and English Lit AP tests, along with a 1550 (out
of 1600) on the SAT's; and had felt herself to be just above average in
her classes.

The difference, it seems, is that both the high schools that Liralen went
to were high schools in rich areas with parents who had already achieved so
much that on the whole, they couldn't stand to see their kids held back.
With all the parents being 'gifted' to being with, their kids were, in very
unaverage numbers, intellectually gifted as well.  So there were classes of
30-40 in every advanced subject.  She had never been made to feel as if she
were somehow terribly different than anyone else.  There had always been
enough people at her level to learn with.  Plus, some *really* wealthy
parents had always given grants to the schools for advanced work.

However, in elementary school, in Indiana and not a rich area, most of the
reading had been done on an individual basis, not by grades.  There were
colors for what level one was on, not numbers.  So each kid read at the
level they could manage.  There was no class-based stuff after the third
grade.  Each kid went about as fast as they could, until the latter
classes, when they'd seperate folks by how far they'd gotten in the colors
into seperate home classes and started analyzing and working on real
literature as opposed to just the reading, for those that could and wanted
to.

Though, like /*, she *had* been bored in her classes at times; but the
teachers at all her schools, on the most part, didn't mind if she brought
another book into the class as long as she did well on the material.
After one geometry teacher had 'caught' Liralen with a book and asked a
string of 10 questions on the day's material that Liralen answered
perfectly, the teacher sent Liralen to the competitive math team, where
she learned a *heck* of a lot about math that she wouldn't have learned
anywhere else and was never bored enough to read a book.  In fact, to stay
up with 'the guys' (as in three different schools, she was the only female
on the math team) she had sometimes felt like she was floundering at
times in how *much* she had to learn.  Math of all kinds has never been
exactly intuitive for Liralen, but it's usually been a fun challange, even
in her information theory classes in college.

A very different past, it seems, than all those who are frustrated with the
U.S. public school system.  But then she was lucky to have parents that
really *pushed* having a good education all through her life.

-- 
Phyllis Rostykus    | "... and how you feel can make it real  | - _US_
aka Liralen Li      | Real as anything you've seen            |   Peter
li@Data-IO.com      | Get a life with this dreamer's dream."  |   Gabriel
Newsgroups: alt.callahans