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Comment by graecea | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand most people in the 50/60s would also fail the brevet (or baccalaureat for that matter). I can't speak for the math level but I do know that school in the 60s required you to learn every single prefecture and chef-lieu by heart in geography classes, and the name of every single bone and organ in biology classes. Sometimes modern reforms aren't all that bad.

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They wouldn't, check the subjects of current brevet, bac and textbooks, it's just fluff.

One fault is the drop in teaching hours : https://www.reseau-canope.fr/musee/collections/cache/a65f40c... this is a schedule from 1952.

We are lying to kids and parents : https://twitter.com/loysbonod/status/1356128734508679168

Or Pierre Colmez writting : https://webusers.imj-prg.fr/~pierre.colmez/lettre.pdf and https://images.math.cnrs.fr/R-eduire-les-in-egalit-es.html?l...

I was about to submit some objection but it turns out you've posted quite interesting links so I'm going to ponder that for a while. If I don't edit this post consider that you've successfully convinced me and changed my mind. Thanks for the pointers!

I took my daughter out of her school two weeks ago for her own safety (sexual harassment with school/direction turning a blind eye), so while I was following a bit how a kid is educated in today world, the last 2 weeks were fairly interesting and just motivated me even more to home-school her (cannot afford what seems to be good private schools here), and I don't see the point to pay 3k a year (Hattemer distance learning and similar) for the same resources that I already have.

So I can drop more stuff, it's just what I had on hand :P

(i'm assuming you're French):

I've worked with home-schooled kids ("good" ones, with parent invested in their education). I don't know if the program still exist, but we had satisfied parents and good results, and i think now the experiences we made are available with manuals for the parents: https://www.lespetitsdebrouillards.org. (i was in Loire-atlantique at the time)(i just looked at it and it seems less science-focused than it was).

At the time we only heard issue with science programs (bio, PC), and maybe it was a bias as "les petits debrouillards" are a club focused on science experiments, but we've heard that the CNED program on those subjects were not engaging enough for the children (again, could be a sample bias). I guess now it might be easier to find engaging resources on those subjects, but still, don't hesitate to take a look at this club.

Also, if your daughter have issues with mathematics, wolfram Alpha is an amazing support to teach her, my sister did not do any kind of math since 2016, and was quite bad at it in school, i taught her enough in less than two weekends for her to validate her first semester of college (Basics + Complex numbers the first weekend, derivation, integration and function analysis the second one).

Good luck, school is supposed to support parents, but if you can't trust them with your child, it is worse than useless.

Thank you for the information, I will check back Wolfram Alpha, otherwise our case is a bit special as school was a way to slow down her learning speed (otherwise 7, not 11...insane situation, kid brains are rotten in some areas )

> One fault is the drop in teaching hours : https://www.reseau-canope.fr/musee/collections/cache/a65f40c... this is a schedule from 1952.

Is that really more than today? It doesn't seem like it.

20 years ago from http://www.sauv.net/primeng.php So while the whole duration might be the same, the amount of time dedicated to French or Math is slashed to teach other "subjects".

> - The drastic reduction of the overall time allotted to the acquisition of basic knowledge and skills. Over the last 30 years, for example, French first-graders have lost six hours a week of language instruction --- 15 hours a week in 1967 compared to a mere 9 hours today. Within the elementary school cycle as a whole, such reductions mean, in practical terms, the loss of an entire year of schooling in that subject area.

Well, I guess it depends what you value. Some of these French hours went to a 2nd language, and personally I think it's a good tradeoff.

You say that like it’s a bad thing. More people should fail. We as a civilization deserve higher standards than what can be achieved by the average student.

I never implied that, in fact I'm pretty noncommittal on the matter and would do away with the baccalaureat (or maturite, or whatever) entirely.

60 years ago a test was hard and most people failed it. Today it's easy and most people pass it. What's the difference? Why even have a test? Since we're somehow talking about French-speaking countries, Belgium doesn't have such a test and isn't worse off for it.

You had different certificates that were valid (check a "dictée" from a CEP at the end of primary school, I am not sure that many people would make less than 4 grammatical mistakes).

Now you have private certificates that employers start asking (voltaire certificate) and there will be similar in math.

Regarding Switzerland, check the subject and grading of ECR in Vaud https://www.vd.ch/themes/formation/scolarite-obligatoire/eva... and an 8P example https://www.vd.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/organisation/dfj/dge... it's at the end of the first year of middle school // 12years old. Considering the way of grading, my daughter would pass it at 7.

They are failing, it’s just happening later (when they try to get a job).

Clearly things are broken.

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