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<p>Back in the '50s era ROC(Taiwan), to continue onto an academic high school needed to remain on the “college track”, one must have completed calculus by the end of 8th grade. If not, one was put onto various vocational track high schools or if not qualified for those schools, be told that school’s over and they needed to find a job on the farms, factories, etc. </p>
<p>Only exception to this was if one was from a well-off family willing to put their kids through a private “remedial” high school. However, students who went through such schools were regarded as students with “more money than sense” and tended to not be competitive for the top or in some cases…any schools in the ROC(Taiwan). In the latter case, the “academic safeties” were usually Chinese universities in Hong Kong or Malaysia as they were regarded as academically inferior back then and more expensive to boot.</p>