<p>^^ You’re completely right. I don’t see how the curriculum could be dumbed down at all. Quite frankly, at the moment, we’re at the bare minimum! If US students can do it, why can’t we??</p>
<p>Well, lucky for me, my school is an IB school, so I won’t be very affected by this. It is absolutely terrible though. There is absolutely no point in removing it!!! The three math courses in grade 12 are completely optional! If you hate/don’t think you’re ready for calculus, just don’t take it!! Simple as that. I’m going to start a petition against this. It will put students at a HUGE disadvantage. Since each province has it’s own special curriculum, and each of them has calculus, how do you think Canadian hs students will stand when it comes to college admissions?! This is so ridiculous!!</p>
<p>You know, I find it funny that some of you think the US curriculum is much harder than the Canadian. All these years of my mother telling me that American schools are useless, only to find we’re on par with the world. then again, she’s Asian.</p>
<p>On topic: Dumbing down the curriculum? Spoon-feeding might work in grade school, but college won’t wait for that.</p>
<p>I think that’s ridiculous. I went to grade school in Canada, and I’ve always had much respect for the public school system there, but this? I would drop out from boredom if all subjects followed suit…The difficulty of calculus is overrated. (well first-year calculus anyway, as in basic derivation and integration).</p>
<p>Okay well, here’s the link to the petition. I didn’t have a lot of time to verify some of the information, or to edit it to make it better than it is. If you find any mistakes, please tell me so that I will be able to correct them.</p>
<p>Anyone can, there are absolutely no restrictions on it. </p>
<p>For the Canadian people on here, please tell other Canadians about the petition. After all, it can’t be solely composed of American signatures :P</p>
<p>I went to a US public elemetary school, and we had an enriched math class from 4th grade. We were separated that early. I wonder if that has any effect. Because that eventually led to 4 different classes in 6th grade, each with different levels, except that if you did well, you could go up a level, or if you didn’t, go down. </p>
<p>I still don’t understand why Ontario would take away Calculus from its HS education though. Is the government that confident about keeping people employed? Nowadays, with globalization, isn’t it getting really hard for people without post-secondary degrees to find jobs in developed countries? Has the effect not reached Canada yet?</p>
<p>But something similar has happend in Japan as well, a few years earlier. Now the elementary school kids learn that pi is 3, not 3.14. So much for the high standards of education Japan used to have. A lot of people in Japan are appalled by this. And you know, Japan does well in those education ranking stuff because they only test the 15 year olds. In Japan, getting into highschool and getting into college are really difficult. But once you’re in college, nobody studies at all because all that matters is what kind of connections you have. So prestige=good job placement. That’s why Japanese and Korean parents are so keen on education. I think it’s similar in China too.</p>
<p>^^ yep yep, in China it’s super difficult to get into a good HIGH SCHOOL and then get into a prestigious university…but once ur there, it’s all about the connections. My mom who went to a really prestigious uni in China claims that by the time she went to uni, she learned most of the material in HS already. </p>
<p>anyway ya, i went to middle school California and moved to Vancouver for high school. Frankly I was quite APPALLED by the easiness of the math curriculum here…btw i think its quite similar for BC and ontario. From my experience only, i think its because theres not much seperation in Canada, like in my high school theres only one math track everyone follows, and if ur advanced u can skip a grade and do AP Calculus AB in senior yr, which btw is the onli AP class my school has or if ur not gd at math u dun have to make the standard gr 12 math, which is like precal. In elementary/middle school, everyone takes the exact same class. theres no GATE or honors or stuff like that. so im not surprised to find ppl challenged by the calculus program in ontario, but i really think there should a more flexible curriculum for ppl like advanced CCers…:S</p>
<p>The truth is that the curriculum is seriously lacking with calculus. Shall we try to imagine what it will be like without it? The University of Waterloo (the university with the most competitive mathematics program in Canada, and definitely one of the best in the world) has a number of professors protesting against this.</p>
<p>hey im from the US but im a canadian citizen and im applying to Ontario schools: York, Carleton, Windsor, U of Toronto, and Queens. Anyone else?</p>
<p>“hey im from the US but im a canadian citizen and im applying to Ontario schools: York, Carleton, Windsor, U of Toronto, and Queens. Anyone else?”</p>
<p>American in Canada applying to Carleton, Windsor, U of T, Ryerson, McGill, and two american schools</p>
<p>“That’s not that bad. Afterall, they could take it at the local community college during highschool if they wanted.”</p>
<p>Well, it’s not ENTIRELY true that Canada/Ontario only has one track for everyone. In Ontario, they’ve got the Gifted Program, which is slowly rotting away by itself due to the lack of funding. Some schools offer enriched courses, but not all.</p>
<p>Wow, they made all high school seniors learn calculus in Ontario? That is really advanced, I’m impressed. In California, high schoolers only have to complete geometry in order to graduate and that’s even less advanced than algebra II. What happens here is that there are no tracks for math. People only have to take up to a certain level and then if you’re good at math and want to go on, you can go on, otherwise, you just take what’s required in order to graduate. It’s really independent. You can take any math you want no matter what your grade level as long as you fulfill the prerequisite for that class and most high schools offer first-year calculus so you can get up to calc if you want to. And even if your school doesn’t offer calculus, you can still take it at a community college. I feel so grateful for the academic freedom!</p>
<p>For science, there’s no track here either. You just have to take the minimum number of years of science in order to graduate and then some go on to take more advanced classes if they want. </p>
<p>For a number of subjects, it works this way, too. You just have to take a number of years of that subject to graduate but you can go on further. </p>
<p>The only subject I know that isn’t enforced like this is english. You have to take english all four years of high school so everyone takes the same level of english (there is AP english, however). </p>
<p>I really like how they do it here where I live. It gives advanced students the chance to take advanced classes that most students can’t keep up with if they made everyone take the same class levels.</p>
<p>Sorry for the long post that’s maybe off topic! I’m just very interested in education systems around the world. Perhaps someone can explain the system in Ontario. It sounds pretty interesting.</p>
<p>^^ Yeah I think thats the problem. Because they’ve eliminated it if a senior in high school wants to learn it for credit there is no where to turn to do so.</p>
<p>I honestly think they want to dumb down kids to be simple workers. Look at all the policy changes in the curriculum in the past few years…cut funding to this, eliminate that part of the course material…and now just dumping courses all together…but at the same time boosting co-op work placements and adding more “career” courses that focus on trades and not academics.</p>
<p>“I honestly think they want to dumb down kids to be simple workers. Look at all the policy changes in the curriculum in the past few years…cut funding to this, eliminate that part of the course material…and now just dumping courses all together…but at the same time boosting co-op work placements and adding more “career” courses that focus on trades and not academics.”</p>
<p>That’s a very toronto centric view, and yes, education is a provincial responsibility in canada. However most of the votes come from toronto, and toronto public high schools are facing a growing drop out rate, that’s why they’re starting to encourage kids to get into trades, and plus there aren’t enough trades people in ontario.</p>
or if ur not gd at math u dun have to make the standard gr 12 math, which is like precal. In elementary/middle school, everyone takes the exact same class. theres no GATE or honors or stuff like that. so im not surprised to find ppl challenged by the calculus program in ontario, but i really think there should a more flexible curriculum for ppl like advanced CCers…:S</p>