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jancsika

> i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math.

"gaps" implies a critical mass of students who require middle-school math reteaching.

> i teach.

If you've taught for a non-trivial amount of time, you did one of the following with that class:

* graded on a curve so you don't fail half the class

* failed half the class, and got suspended (pours one out for my compsci professor in college who did that!)

Which was it?

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I had a professor who made sure to give an early exam before the no-penalty drop date, which helps a lot of that test's outcome is predictive of success in the rest of the class. Then people just drop out early if they're going to fail.

(at least in Budapest, many moons ago) highly technical programs had some really infamous classes. but people had a lot of chances to pass the exams. each semester about 3. and it was possible to take the class 3 times (the 3rd required a permission, but it was formality, it was granted almost to everyone)

so in the end if someone was unprepared, they had at least a year to get their shit together. (but the exams rarely required real maths mastery, mostly rote memorization of proofs and a few typical problem types with really mechanical solutions.)

it's so strange to read about a professor getting suspended for being too strict.

I graduated in Brazil almost 2 decades ago and the only places that suspended professors for being too strict were crappy for profit universities, everywhere else professors could fail the whole class if they didn’t meet standards.

>If you've taught for a non-trivial amount of time,

i have

>you did one of the following with that class: [...] Which was it?

these are not the only two options.

I'm genuinely interested in how you approached that kind of situation, then. (And I'm not the commenter who presented what you're saying was a false dilemma)

Where I graduated, the hardest classes were expected to fail about half of the class

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