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Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. I have had similar thoughts recently as OP thinking about what

Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. I have had similar thoughts recently as OP thinking about what I want for my young kids and what my experiences in school were. Being _really_ good in one thing should allow you to make up for being subpar in other areas, but it doesn't. You can only get an A (or A+) in math for example, even if your a genius. But maybe you should be able to get an A++++ that makes up for D's or F's in English for example and still get accepted into top universities. We need a system that accommodates spiky people better.

irjustin 2y ago
> Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. Being specific, it's not school, it's what school grants you i.e. a paying job. The higher paying, thusly more coveted jobs, generally filter against good grades which then the requirement pushes downwards into schools because, at scale, it's a decent system; leveraging the schools to help decide who is good. > Being _really_ good in one thing should allow you to make up for being subpar in other areas, but it doesn't. I counter with, if you are "_really_" good, it shows because you truly are a genius and you get fast tracked on that subject, but I think your "_really_" is actually just "_pretty_" and you're trying to include more than the 1 in 100 million. To directly answer your point, for the "slightly smarter than everyone else" my middle school allowed kids to attend highschool in specific subjects and then highschool into the nearby community college and considered "harder/more prestigious" than the AP programs - admittedly only in math for this latter part. The school was in a more affluent neighborhood so I recognize the privilege.
- WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
  > but I think your "_really_" is actually just "_pretty_" and you're trying to include more than the 1 in 100 million. I don't quite understand your point. Pretty good still puts you far ahead of the average. I could easily handle second year college maths and computer science while in high school. And I couldn't hold a candle to Ramanujan. I still needed to do well in my other courses in order to be able to get into my chosen college.
  - elijaht 2y ago
    I think that's the point - "pretty good" isn't good enough for a top school to want to admit you. Second year college/CS is pretty good but I went to a great high school where there were 50+ kids at that level. That's not enough to stand out in a meaningful way. Whereas if someone was Ramanujan-level, their raw talent would be so apparent they wouldn't have this issue and would clearly stand out.
    - WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
      > Second year college/CS is pretty good but I went to a great high school where there were 50+ kids at that level. That's not enough to stand out in a meaningful way. It is not enough to stand out in the current system. The parent was saying selecting the 50 kids who can handle it is a much better approach than just taking the highest overall grades. The average A's across the board high school student can't handle second year college maths. Yet they will be placed ahead of the observably better at math kids. Imagine if jobs worked like this - "Yes, we know you are a great developer but you don't really understand economics. Sorry". Being well-rounded and having exposure to a bunch of topics is valuable to an extent. However, in my experience most of the people making a real difference in the workplace and academia are not particularly well rounded. Thankfully in tech there are alternative pathways. However, for many professions there aren't and these high performers are simply excluded to societies detriment.
      - fn-mote 2y ago
        > Imagine if jobs worked like this - "Yes, we know you are a great developer but you don't really understand economics. Sorry". This is exactly the route to exploitation by MBA managers. Great developer, loyal, doesn't understand the need to change companies to get paid a competitive salary. Perfect hire. The person who doesn't understand economics pays the price themselves.
      - kiba 2y ago
        Being well-rounded and having exposure to a bunch of topics is valuable to an extent. However, in my experience most of the people making a real difference in the workplace and academia are not particularly well rounded. You can only progress so much in a field of expertise before hitting diminishing return. At some point it makes sense to broaden your knowledge and skillset.
jyunwai 2y ago
The admissions process to universities in the province of Ontario in Canada has a direct solution for this, which applies to well-known universities in the global technology industry, such as the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo. Most of these universities look at an applicant's grades for just six courses. After looking at the courses required for certain programs (such as calculus and physics for certain programs), the remainder of the six courses comprise the student's top grades for any courses at the Grade 12 (final year) level. So, a high school student aiming for a top engineering or mathematics program will not be hamstrung by a poor grade in Grade 12 English, nor will a student aiming for a top international relations program be hamstrung by a poor grade in Calculus. At the same time, the student going into a STEM program will have an exposure to Shakespeare, which can provide inspiration and a rich set of works to explore later in life. The student going into international relations may later be inspired some years later to study mathematics for its beauty as a hobby, some years later. I remember the feeling that I was wasting time with many of my courses in those years, despite having good teachers for many of them—I thought my time spent on mandatory humanities courses like music took time away from more practical subjects, and I wish I took a programming course (though I did love my English classes). Perhaps this remains true for many students, but I personally took an interest in music performance as a hobby years later in life, and the years-old lessons in music theory came back to me. My English classes also introduced me to literature, which has remained a very important part of my life that has guided me through highly consequential life decisions for the better. It is unlikely that I would have taken an interest in literary works without my exposure to English in school.
- chongli 2y ago
  To add to this I feel the need to point out that the writing skill demonstrated by the average mid-length Hacker News comment is above the level you’d need to pass grade 12 English in Ontario. It’s an extremely low bar! Of course, if English is not your first language then you’re not required to take this course. You have an alternate path which may be a lot more work for an English-language-learner but it doesn’t demand the critical reading and writing skills you would need for grade 12 English.
  - 2y ago
jojobas 2y ago
So in grade 5 you maths is A++++ (like college entry level), you're excused from English, Civics and what not, and when by the time of graduation you've fizzled out (which most prodigies do) you're just an unemployable nerd. School education standards are the barest minimum and anyone of IQ > 85 can make them.
- ChadNauseam 2y ago
  Personally I can’t say I learned anything professionally useful in english or civics. An actually decent math class in just one of my years of k-12 would have been much more useful.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    It's weird to say that about English when good communication is essential for success in any engineering field. Even if all English does is force you to read more, it's probably a win in this regard.
    - nordsieck 2y ago
      > It's weird to say that about English when good communication is essential for success in any engineering field Some of what's taught in English classes is about clear communication, and some of it isn't. I think learning the 5 paragraph essay structure was very useful. But that's maybe 3 months worth of learning. The rest was English major stuff. Which is fine, but please don't pretend that it has a lot to do with "good communication". > Even if all English does is force you to read more, it's probably a win in this regard. It's not enough to say people had to read for English classes. You have to compare it to the counterfactual. In that regard, I don't think it stood up well. 1. I was already reading a lot. I just read different things. 2. I came to hate pretty much everything I read in class. It's only decades later that I've been able to appreciate some of the classics that we read. On this point, I think English class was a net harm, at least for me. Of course, everyone has different circumstances; I'm sure there are people for whom a similar program as what I went through would have been a benefit.
meiraleal 2y ago
> but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. It requires a very small success on a very basic level. It is not good to be a super math genius and know nothing about geography and history.
panta 2y ago
The school should form decent individuals before than useful workers, and for that it's necessary to have a passing level of culture. For example, everyone should have a basic grasp of ethics (and know a bit of history), even those of us working in technology or science. Geniuses like Ramanunjan or John von Neumann are such a rare occurrence that the school system can not and should not optimize for them (and my very personal view is also that we'll have even less geniuses in the future, as our distraction-based society is not conducive anymore to cognitive development).
dclowd9901 2y ago
Something about this sniffs as elitist to me. A person who’s intelligent is curious and a person who’s curious should be curious about all things, not just some limited set. Now, that’s not to say the only issue is someone’s curiosity. Traditional teaching methods make it very hard to be interested in some topics (history and language comes to mind), but barring that, I’m not sure I accept “it’s not interesting” as a reason not to explore a subject.
- ben_w 2y ago
  The only intelligence on earth capable of being equally curious about all things, of not needing to discriminate and focus only on preferred subjects, is the artificial kind of intelligence. The rest of us don't live long enough compared to our reading speed.
atoav 2y ago
A few points on this: - How and when would you know a subject doesn't click? In my case German (my first language) and English sucked for roughly 8 years. I ended school with A in both and was the only student in my school without a single mistake in my exam. - School gives you good grades if you managed to learn the topics at hand. Being able to learn what is needed or what you are bad at — not what you want and are good at is a skill in itself that can be important in life. I'd argue unless you are an exceptional genius (unlike 99,999% of pupils) you gain more from pulling through than you would if you called yourself a genius and focused on a single topic. Schools goal is to educate the majority - pupils (and often also their parents) are utterly unable to judge which bits of school will be essential to their later life. I had many collegues who utterly hated every second of a multitude of subjects, only to years later tell me how glad they are now to have had been subjected to it (which brings me back to my first point) We could (and should!) argue on how school works as a system of grades, teachers and pupils — ideally teachers would motivate students to become curious about and proficient in subjects without the motivation of good or the threat of bad grades. But if my experience as an educator at the university levels (without grades in mh case) shows one thing it is that those first semester students who are really able to judge what will be useful to them later on are not many. Many of them are more like the dog in the meme: "Only stick, no take" — they want to be able to do the cool thing without knowing what is needed to do the cool thing.
- FeepingCreature 2y ago
  I mean, just as a counter-note: I utterly hated every second of a multitude of subjects, and indeed now I am 37 and I never needed them and was entirely correct about what I would require later.
  - weweweoo 2y ago
    Personally I loved history, social science and geography, but none of that has been useful in working life. Being good at mathematics is prerequisite for nearly all well-paying jobs, humanities are not of much use except for being able to write and read well.
wiz21c 2y ago
In my experience, people who are really good at something usually are at least average on many others. Thus they can do the minimum in other courses to pass, it's just a matter of working enough. In my country, there are several students (12-18 years old) who can mix sport at high level (national championship) and a lighter school activity. They work like mad but they do it. But they have to prove there are good enough to get it, which is OK to me. Being really good is not something you appreciate yourself, it's the others that notice.
anal_reactor 2y ago
In my country there is a system where a kid applying to high school gets accepted based on a standard test, or can skip the line by performing well on a contest organized by the ministry of education. In my class something like 80% of kids were admitted through contests. When applying to the university there's a similar thing, except it's much harder to skip the line, but universities are free to set up their own admission rules as long as the rules are based on the national standard test. In my case, the final admission score was calculated something like "90% maths 10% everything else"
graemep 2y ago
That is an advantage of the British system. You have a wide education until 16 and sit a broad range of exams at that age (GCSEs) and then specialise in a few (most often three) subjects from 16 to 18. You usually need to pass English and maths GCSEs, but universities mostly care about the subjects you do in the last two years (except for very competitive courses). This can be a problem for those who want to keep options open until they are 18 (like my younger daughter). Even the system up to 16 is pretty flexible. There is a huge range of available subjects - although most schools offer only a limited selection (my kids were out of school by secondary school age so we had a huge choice and did some less usual subjects like astronomy and Latin).
- dagw 2y ago
  As someone who did my GCSE's but then moved abroad before my A Levels and ended up taking the International Baccalaureate, I'm in hindsight really glad I didn't do A Levels. Had I stayed in England I would have studied just maths, physics and chemistry. Being forced by the IB program to also study english, philosophy and economics really expanded my horizons and has been huge boon to me in my life and I'm really happy I was afforded the opportunity to do so.
  - sensanaty 2y ago
    I did IGCSE's (the international version as I lived in Indonesia) and AS/A levels myself, while a lot of my friends who went to a different school did IB and I generally disagree. My most hated school years were the IGCSE times, exactly because I was forced into learning about crap I didn't care about in the slightest, like English Literature when all I wanted to do was the various sciences and especially mathematics. I feel like the IGCSE times were more than enough exposure to those other subjects to give me a reasonably well-rounded image of those subjects. Now, a decade later, I'm definitely glad I went the STEM route rather than ever touching on any humanities subjects in any amount of detail.
    - graemep 2y ago
      IGCSEs per se are a lot more flexible about that. You can do any subjects in any combination you like. Its a decision by the school to make English literature compulsory. Home educated kids often do not do it, on the other hand there are are huge number of subjects they can pick from: https://he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Subjects https://he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Subjects British universities do often (usually?) require English language (or an equivalent) and maths (I)GCSEs, as do British employers and further education colleges etc. so its a really bad idea to skip those. I do think its good to give kids a broad education, and for some it would be good to continue that for longer. For others (like you) its just boring. I also think there should be more opportunities for adult education, so if you decide later in life that you would like to learn about English literature or physics or whatever you should have a chance to do it. AT the moment in the UK things seem to be going the other way, with an over expansion of universities sucking up money, and further education colleges that used to offer adult education putting the resources into "16 to 18" courses.
vishnugupta 2y ago
> maybe you should be able to get an A++++ What does an A++++ mean? I guess it's equivalent of publishing a novel result/idea, solving a long standing conjecture sort of ability? If yes then I'd say the system does accommodate them. Terrance Tao for example was fast tracked and didn't get lost in the system. Though it probably requires some effort from parents to figure out the right path for their prodigies.
high_na_euv 2y ago
>but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well It doesnt, at least in my country. Here you have a few school leaving exams that you need to perform at Math, native lang and english. And one at advanced level, but its your choice when it comes to subject. What you are talking about is GPA and GPA is meaningless tbf
jncfhnb 2y ago
That’s irrelevant to 99.99% of people. An A in math is not especially difficult to achieve. To actually be meaningfully better at math you need to go far, far further than the coursework presented in schools, at which point it becomes an extra curricular which is already considered. If you’re a math savant proving novel theorems, they will notice that. But nobody gives a shit if you’re just really, really good at factoring polynomials from Algebra 2 tests.
leptons 2y ago
I was put into the "advanced" class in grade school, only to hate the increased homework load, and I missed my friends in the non-advanced class, so I intentionally refused to do the work so that I would be put back in the "regular" grade school classes. I was great at math, I taught myself fractions and algebra at a young age. I just didn't like spending so much time on the other subjects, they seemed too easy or too boring and took up too much school time. They wouldn't let me into the computer programming class in High School because I hadn't passed geometry, and the teacher was a total asshole - I failed his class, but I got an A in the make-up class with a different teacher. I got kicked out of electronics class because some other students stole stuff and blamed me for it - I had nothing to do with the theft, I was the teacher's favorite and had access to everything, I didn't need to steal anything, he gave me anything I wanted. God I hated High School so much. After graduating High School, I couldn't really see myself sitting through 4 more years of basically the same subject material - history, English, social studies, etc... when all I really wanted to do is use my talent in electronics and computers that I'd been accumulating since I was 5 years old. So I went to a trade school for electronics and computers instead of a college, this was back in the late 80's. I can't say that not going to college hurt my job prospects at all, I've been highly paid for many years for doing something I love. Jobs hired me based on experience, not because I went to a college. That may have changed a bit now, since some tech companies favor college graduates, but I've worked with some college graduates that are just dumb as shit and couldn't get anything done - not all are like that, but going to college isn't an indicator of success at all.
kenjackson 2y ago
If you’re sufficiently good or accomplished at one thing then you’ll be fine. But most students aren’t. Most students who are good at math are just good at math. But if you win two golds at Math Olympiad while in high school or publish a groundbreaking result then your mediocre grades in history will be ignored. But a 780 on the math SAT isn’t likely to put you in the company of people whose math is sufficient to ignore poor grades otherwise.

irjustin 2y ago

> Exposure is good, but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. Being specific, it's not school, it's what school grants you i.e. a paying job. The higher paying, thusly more coveted jobs, generally filter against good grades which then the requirement pushes downwards into schools because, at scale, it's a decent system; leveraging the schools to help decide who is good. > Being _really_ good in one thing should allow you to make up for being subpar in other areas, but it doesn't. I counter with, if you are "_really_" good, it shows because you truly are a genius and you get fast tracked on that subject, but I think your "_really_" is actually just "_pretty_" and you're trying to include more than the 1 in 100 million. To directly answer your point, for the "slightly smarter than everyone else" my middle school allowed kids to attend highschool in specific subjects and then highschool into the nearby community college and considered "harder/more prestigious" than the AP programs - admittedly only in math for this latter part. The school was in a more affluent neighborhood so I recognize the privilege.

WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
> but I think your "_really_" is actually just "_pretty_" and you're trying to include more than the 1 in 100 million. I don't quite understand your point. Pretty good still puts you far ahead of the average. I could easily handle second year college maths and computer science while in high school. And I couldn't hold a candle to Ramanujan. I still needed to do well in my other courses in order to be able to get into my chosen college.
- elijaht 2y ago
  I think that's the point - "pretty good" isn't good enough for a top school to want to admit you. Second year college/CS is pretty good but I went to a great high school where there were 50+ kids at that level. That's not enough to stand out in a meaningful way. Whereas if someone was Ramanujan-level, their raw talent would be so apparent they wouldn't have this issue and would clearly stand out.
  - WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW 2y ago
    > Second year college/CS is pretty good but I went to a great high school where there were 50+ kids at that level. That's not enough to stand out in a meaningful way. It is not enough to stand out in the current system. The parent was saying selecting the 50 kids who can handle it is a much better approach than just taking the highest overall grades. The average A's across the board high school student can't handle second year college maths. Yet they will be placed ahead of the observably better at math kids. Imagine if jobs worked like this - "Yes, we know you are a great developer but you don't really understand economics. Sorry". Being well-rounded and having exposure to a bunch of topics is valuable to an extent. However, in my experience most of the people making a real difference in the workplace and academia are not particularly well rounded. Thankfully in tech there are alternative pathways. However, for many professions there aren't and these high performers are simply excluded to societies detriment.
    - fn-mote 2y ago
      > Imagine if jobs worked like this - "Yes, we know you are a great developer but you don't really understand economics. Sorry". This is exactly the route to exploitation by MBA managers. Great developer, loyal, doesn't understand the need to change companies to get paid a competitive salary. Perfect hire. The person who doesn't understand economics pays the price themselves.
    - kiba 2y ago
      Being well-rounded and having exposure to a bunch of topics is valuable to an extent. However, in my experience most of the people making a real difference in the workplace and academia are not particularly well rounded. You can only progress so much in a field of expertise before hitting diminishing return. At some point it makes sense to broaden your knowledge and skillset.

jyunwai 2y ago

The admissions process to universities in the province of Ontario in Canada has a direct solution for this, which applies to well-known universities in the global technology industry, such as the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo. Most of these universities look at an applicant's grades for just six courses. After looking at the courses required for certain programs (such as calculus and physics for certain programs), the remainder of the six courses comprise the student's top grades for any courses at the Grade 12 (final year) level. So, a high school student aiming for a top engineering or mathematics program will not be hamstrung by a poor grade in Grade 12 English, nor will a student aiming for a top international relations program be hamstrung by a poor grade in Calculus. At the same time, the student going into a STEM program will have an exposure to Shakespeare, which can provide inspiration and a rich set of works to explore later in life. The student going into international relations may later be inspired some years later to study mathematics for its beauty as a hobby, some years later. I remember the feeling that I was wasting time with many of my courses in those years, despite having good teachers for many of them—I thought my time spent on mandatory humanities courses like music took time away from more practical subjects, and I wish I took a programming course (though I did love my English classes). Perhaps this remains true for many students, but I personally took an interest in music performance as a hobby years later in life, and the years-old lessons in music theory came back to me. My English classes also introduced me to literature, which has remained a very important part of my life that has guided me through highly consequential life decisions for the better. It is unlikely that I would have taken an interest in literary works without my exposure to English in school.

chongli 2y ago
To add to this I feel the need to point out that the writing skill demonstrated by the average mid-length Hacker News comment is above the level you’d need to pass grade 12 English in Ontario. It’s an extremely low bar! Of course, if English is not your first language then you’re not required to take this course. You have an alternate path which may be a lot more work for an English-language-learner but it doesn’t demand the critical reading and writing skills you would need for grade 12 English.
- 2y ago

jojobas 2y ago

So in grade 5 you maths is A++++ (like college entry level), you're excused from English, Civics and what not, and when by the time of graduation you've fizzled out (which most prodigies do) you're just an unemployable nerd. School education standards are the barest minimum and anyone of IQ > 85 can make them.

ChadNauseam 2y ago
Personally I can’t say I learned anything professionally useful in english or civics. An actually decent math class in just one of my years of k-12 would have been much more useful.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  It's weird to say that about English when good communication is essential for success in any engineering field. Even if all English does is force you to read more, it's probably a win in this regard.
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    > It's weird to say that about English when good communication is essential for success in any engineering field Some of what's taught in English classes is about clear communication, and some of it isn't. I think learning the 5 paragraph essay structure was very useful. But that's maybe 3 months worth of learning. The rest was English major stuff. Which is fine, but please don't pretend that it has a lot to do with "good communication". > Even if all English does is force you to read more, it's probably a win in this regard. It's not enough to say people had to read for English classes. You have to compare it to the counterfactual. In that regard, I don't think it stood up well. 1. I was already reading a lot. I just read different things. 2. I came to hate pretty much everything I read in class. It's only decades later that I've been able to appreciate some of the classics that we read. On this point, I think English class was a net harm, at least for me. Of course, everyone has different circumstances; I'm sure there are people for whom a similar program as what I went through would have been a benefit.

meiraleal 2y ago

> but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well. It requires a very small success on a very basic level. It is not good to be a super math genius and know nothing about geography and history.

panta 2y ago

The school should form decent individuals before than useful workers, and for that it's necessary to have a passing level of culture. For example, everyone should have a basic grasp of ethics (and know a bit of history), even those of us working in technology or science. Geniuses like Ramanunjan or John von Neumann are such a rare occurrence that the school system can not and should not optimize for them (and my very personal view is also that we'll have even less geniuses in the future, as our distraction-based society is not conducive anymore to cognitive development).

dclowd9901 2y ago

Something about this sniffs as elitist to me. A person who’s intelligent is curious and a person who’s curious should be curious about all things, not just some limited set. Now, that’s not to say the only issue is someone’s curiosity. Traditional teaching methods make it very hard to be interested in some topics (history and language comes to mind), but barring that, I’m not sure I accept “it’s not interesting” as a reason not to explore a subject.

ben_w 2y ago
The only intelligence on earth capable of being equally curious about all things, of not needing to discriminate and focus only on preferred subjects, is the artificial kind of intelligence. The rest of us don't live long enough compared to our reading speed.

atoav 2y ago

A few points on this: - How and when would you know a subject doesn't click? In my case German (my first language) and English sucked for roughly 8 years. I ended school with A in both and was the only student in my school without a single mistake in my exam. - School gives you good grades if you managed to learn the topics at hand. Being able to learn what is needed or what you are bad at — not what you want and are good at is a skill in itself that can be important in life. I'd argue unless you are an exceptional genius (unlike 99,999% of pupils) you gain more from pulling through than you would if you called yourself a genius and focused on a single topic. Schools goal is to educate the majority - pupils (and often also their parents) are utterly unable to judge which bits of school will be essential to their later life. I had many collegues who utterly hated every second of a multitude of subjects, only to years later tell me how glad they are now to have had been subjected to it (which brings me back to my first point) We could (and should!) argue on how school works as a system of grades, teachers and pupils — ideally teachers would motivate students to become curious about and proficient in subjects without the motivation of good or the threat of bad grades. But if my experience as an educator at the university levels (without grades in mh case) shows one thing it is that those first semester students who are really able to judge what will be useful to them later on are not many. Many of them are more like the dog in the meme: "Only stick, no take" — they want to be able to do the cool thing without knowing what is needed to do the cool thing.

FeepingCreature 2y ago
I mean, just as a counter-note: I utterly hated every second of a multitude of subjects, and indeed now I am 37 and I never needed them and was entirely correct about what I would require later.
- weweweoo 2y ago
  Personally I loved history, social science and geography, but none of that has been useful in working life. Being good at mathematics is prerequisite for nearly all well-paying jobs, humanities are not of much use except for being able to write and read well.

wiz21c 2y ago

In my experience, people who are really good at something usually are at least average on many others. Thus they can do the minimum in other courses to pass, it's just a matter of working enough. In my country, there are several students (12-18 years old) who can mix sport at high level (national championship) and a lighter school activity. They work like mad but they do it. But they have to prove there are good enough to get it, which is OK to me. Being really good is not something you appreciate yourself, it's the others that notice.

anal_reactor 2y ago

In my country there is a system where a kid applying to high school gets accepted based on a standard test, or can skip the line by performing well on a contest organized by the ministry of education. In my class something like 80% of kids were admitted through contests. When applying to the university there's a similar thing, except it's much harder to skip the line, but universities are free to set up their own admission rules as long as the rules are based on the national standard test. In my case, the final admission score was calculated something like "90% maths 10% everything else"

graemep 2y ago

That is an advantage of the British system. You have a wide education until 16 and sit a broad range of exams at that age (GCSEs) and then specialise in a few (most often three) subjects from 16 to 18. You usually need to pass English and maths GCSEs, but universities mostly care about the subjects you do in the last two years (except for very competitive courses). This can be a problem for those who want to keep options open until they are 18 (like my younger daughter). Even the system up to 16 is pretty flexible. There is a huge range of available subjects - although most schools offer only a limited selection (my kids were out of school by secondary school age so we had a huge choice and did some less usual subjects like astronomy and Latin).

dagw 2y ago
As someone who did my GCSE's but then moved abroad before my A Levels and ended up taking the International Baccalaureate, I'm in hindsight really glad I didn't do A Levels. Had I stayed in England I would have studied just maths, physics and chemistry. Being forced by the IB program to also study english, philosophy and economics really expanded my horizons and has been huge boon to me in my life and I'm really happy I was afforded the opportunity to do so.
- sensanaty 2y ago
  I did IGCSE's (the international version as I lived in Indonesia) and AS/A levels myself, while a lot of my friends who went to a different school did IB and I generally disagree. My most hated school years were the IGCSE times, exactly because I was forced into learning about crap I didn't care about in the slightest, like English Literature when all I wanted to do was the various sciences and especially mathematics. I feel like the IGCSE times were more than enough exposure to those other subjects to give me a reasonably well-rounded image of those subjects. Now, a decade later, I'm definitely glad I went the STEM route rather than ever touching on any humanities subjects in any amount of detail.
  - graemep 2y ago
    IGCSEs per se are a lot more flexible about that. You can do any subjects in any combination you like. Its a decision by the school to make English literature compulsory. Home educated kids often do not do it, on the other hand there are are huge number of subjects they can pick from: https://he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Subjects https://he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Subjects British universities do often (usually?) require English language (or an equivalent) and maths (I)GCSEs, as do British employers and further education colleges etc. so its a really bad idea to skip those. I do think its good to give kids a broad education, and for some it would be good to continue that for longer. For others (like you) its just boring. I also think there should be more opportunities for adult education, so if you decide later in life that you would like to learn about English literature or physics or whatever you should have a chance to do it. AT the moment in the UK things seem to be going the other way, with an over expansion of universities sucking up money, and further education colleges that used to offer adult education putting the resources into "16 to 18" courses.

vishnugupta 2y ago

> maybe you should be able to get an A++++ What does an A++++ mean? I guess it's equivalent of publishing a novel result/idea, solving a long standing conjecture sort of ability? If yes then I'd say the system does accommodate them. Terrance Tao for example was fast tracked and didn't get lost in the system. Though it probably requires some effort from parents to figure out the right path for their prodigies.

high_na_euv 2y ago

>but success in school requires you to be successful in these subjects as well It doesnt, at least in my country. Here you have a few school leaving exams that you need to perform at Math, native lang and english. And one at advanced level, but its your choice when it comes to subject. What you are talking about is GPA and GPA is meaningless tbf

jncfhnb 2y ago

That’s irrelevant to 99.99% of people. An A in math is not especially difficult to achieve. To actually be meaningfully better at math you need to go far, far further than the coursework presented in schools, at which point it becomes an extra curricular which is already considered. If you’re a math savant proving novel theorems, they will notice that. But nobody gives a shit if you’re just really, really good at factoring polynomials from Algebra 2 tests.

leptons 2y ago

I was put into the "advanced" class in grade school, only to hate the increased homework load, and I missed my friends in the non-advanced class, so I intentionally refused to do the work so that I would be put back in the "regular" grade school classes. I was great at math, I taught myself fractions and algebra at a young age. I just didn't like spending so much time on the other subjects, they seemed too easy or too boring and took up too much school time. They wouldn't let me into the computer programming class in High School because I hadn't passed geometry, and the teacher was a total asshole - I failed his class, but I got an A in the make-up class with a different teacher. I got kicked out of electronics class because some other students stole stuff and blamed me for it - I had nothing to do with the theft, I was the teacher's favorite and had access to everything, I didn't need to steal anything, he gave me anything I wanted. God I hated High School so much. After graduating High School, I couldn't really see myself sitting through 4 more years of basically the same subject material - history, English, social studies, etc... when all I really wanted to do is use my talent in electronics and computers that I'd been accumulating since I was 5 years old. So I went to a trade school for electronics and computers instead of a college, this was back in the late 80's. I can't say that not going to college hurt my job prospects at all, I've been highly paid for many years for doing something I love. Jobs hired me based on experience, not because I went to a college. That may have changed a bit now, since some tech companies favor college graduates, but I've worked with some college graduates that are just dumb as shit and couldn't get anything done - not all are like that, but going to college isn't an indicator of success at all.

kenjackson 2y ago

If you’re sufficiently good or accomplished at one thing then you’ll be fine. But most students aren’t. Most students who are good at math are just good at math. But if you win two golds at Math Olympiad while in high school or publish a groundbreaking result then your mediocre grades in history will be ignored. But a 780 on the math SAT isn’t likely to put you in the company of people whose math is sufficient to ignore poor grades otherwise.