That's a very good point. I find it funny (well, sadly ironic is more accurate) that a public system paid for by our taxes can't seem to figure out how to put people in easier or harder classes based on the person's skill, yet there have already been video games made that will adapt the level difficulty, doing essentially just that. If these game designers can figure out how to program a disc or, in some cases, even a download, to do that, there is no excuse that our school system, with all its resources, can't do the same thing.

That's why in Alberta we have something called the "Gifted Program". It lets students who are have higher skill then their grade practice skill from higher up grades. 10X better than normal school.

Yes, but it's for gifted children only. Why doesn't it extend to every child, but in specific subjects.

Economy can't pay for everyone to go to it.

Huh? What's the extra pay? It's just normal classes but instead of kids being in Year 11, they'll be doing Year 11 Bio, Year 12 Chem, Physics, Maths Methods and Adv.Gen and Year 10 English. I don't see what you have to pay for.

 

The Gifted Program is a national thing in all of Canada. It feels like being a test subject at times. My grade two teacher (who developed a personal vendetta against me because of it, by the way) saw that I exhibited some of the "symptoms" of a gifted child and had me tested. I tested positive, and my parents received a huge letter in the mail explaining to the letter what challenges anyone dealing with me - themselves included - would face. "Symptoms" like asking too many questions, defying orders, and challenging superiors.

 

On the upside, it did allow me to skip five years ahead in a subject no questions asked. I will never forget the look on my seventh-grade teacher's face when I strolled into class two hours late, my excuse being that I had to take the German 12 provincial exam that morning. The score came back a gleaming 100% several weeks later.

 

It's almost disturbing how unusual people can perceive you to be for having a proficiency that doesn't correspond with your biological age.

 

Then again, if my classmates' English essays I marked for my English 11 teacher last year were any indication of the academic proficiency of the average person my age... my case probably is unusual enough to warrant being slotted into the Gifted Program.

 

The Gifted Program is a national thing in all of Canada. It feels like being a test subject at times. My grade two teacher (who developed a personal vendetta against me because of it, by the way) saw that I exhibited some of the "symptoms" of a gifted child and had me tested. I tested positive, and my parents received a huge letter in the mail explaining to the letter what challenges anyone dealing with me - themselves included - would face. "Symptoms" like asking too many questions, defying orders, and challenging superiors.

 

On the upside, it did allow me to skip five years ahead in a subject no questions asked. I will never forget the look on my seventh-grade teacher's face when I strolled into class two hours late, my excuse being that I had to take the German 12 provincial exam that morning. The score came back a gleaming 100% several weeks later.

 

It's almost disturbing how unusual people can perceive you to be for having a proficiency that doesn't correspond with your biological age.

 

Then again, if my classmates' English essays I marked for my English 11 teacher last year were any indication of the academic proficiency of the average person my age... my case probably is unusual enough to warrant being slotted into the Gifted Program.

Oh, so it's country wide...Good to know.

"Symptoms" like asking too many questions, defying orders, and challenging superiors.

That's a challenge? Aren't we supposed to encourage those kind of things?

On the upside, it did allow me to skip five years ahead in a subject no questions asked

My god, five years? How are you that good at German? Funny thing is, that you thought I was "hellishly far in everything". Modest much?

For example, they cannot operate classes with fewer than 25 students

Wow. My Spec class has 13 students, in two classes. If I was in Canada, Spec would be cut and I would have been devastated. Spec is probably my favorite subject to study.

With how low the school's budget actually is, I honestly cannot blame them for wanting to be eligible for every extra dollar the Ministry throws their way. So they need to place some restrictions on how freely their students can shuffle between courses in the interest of self-preservation.

Honestly, it isn't a problem with the actual shuffling of the subjects as much as how the Ministry hands out its funding, right? I'd say improve that, rather than just make the students suffer.

@,

Alberta is in Canada? I thought it was somewhere in America. It sounds American.

Yeah, I'm awful at geography. Deal with it.