and everything's fine

Man, there are times I wish the American grading scale didn't suck so much. I would give anything to have the rest of the world's grading scale. Above 50% is passing? Hell yes! I have been struggling for years with the most insane grading scales-- hell, my primary education years had a more insane grading scale than pretty much the rest of the United States, even.

And extra credit? ... Well, maybe it's common in some universities, but it's next to unheard of in mine. Especially since I'm taking only upper division classes now. So, great. Great.

I wish the United States would focus less on grading scales and focus more on teaching-- especially for primary education. There's no reason we should be as low as we are in math and science.

The more I think about it, the more in favor I become of a nationalized education system. I mean, I talked with my mom about it, and she did put in a good point against it, despite her otherwise paranoid ramblings, but our current education system relies too much on how rich the area you live in is. I understand that a national education system is by far easier to manipulate than our current system, especially in regards to things I feel are important: history, propaganda, politics, etc...

But there has to be some sort of balance. If we could manage a mass reorganizing of American priorities considering education (way too many people are hoping for NBA slots or otherwise ~awesome~ jobs) without changing our system, I'd be in favor of that. Hell, maybe if we could find other means of testing students capabilities without the use of standardized, multiple choice tests. Not everyone can do those sorts of tests, and they're impractical besides because when does the answer to a math problem ever come with an a, b, c, or d next to it in an lab situation?

I do honestly feel that a lot of Americans are otherwise fairly intelligent, but that we aren't using that potential. Either we have ingrained expectations for them that limit them, they're limited by god forbid their parents being poor... or a multitude of other unfair factors.

I think we're limiting ourselves by focusing exclusively on how we're doing in comparison to that public school the next county over. We should be focusing on that Japanese high school, or maybe that Indian elementary school if we're going to compare anything.