>teachers at grade N do not know for sure what the students already know, so they repeat a lot of the background, then jump around to cover a lot of material, m

>teachers at grade N do not know for sure what the students already know, so they repeat a lot of the background, then jump around to cover a lot of material, much of which is never mastered. I spent my freshman year of high school in France, and went to a French school (this is 3ème, for my fellow Frenchmen). I recall being stunned -- in the best way possible -- when our biology teacher started his class on the first day with: "So. You've seen X last year. Now we're going to talk about related-thing-Y". That had never happened in my US curriculum. Never.