What are the differences between French and American education systems?

What are the biggest differences between the American and British education systems?

• Answer:

  In the British education you specialize much earlier. When I was 13, you chose five subjects plus math(s) and English. I chose French (because otherwise you had to go and see the French teacher and explain why), chemistry, biology, physics, and geometric and engineering drawing.   You also had to take English (literature and language) and math(s). I think that you have to take a science now. Then at 16 you specialize further. I chose biology, chemistry and psychology.  I found chemistry too mathematical, and switched to environmental science (which was essentially applied chemistry, biology and a bit of geography). By dropping chemistry, any chance I had of medical school (which was essentially none anyway) was gone. At university, you are similarly specialized. I went to university to take psychology, and took two courses that were not psychology in the first year, after that, I did nothing except psychology. There isn't really any concept of liberal arts, or of people deciding what their major is going to be. If you want to do a popular subject, and you didn't go to university to study that subject, it is almost impossible to transfer into it. You can quit and start again, but that's pretty much your only option. On graduation, British students know a lot more about their subject than American students. But they know a lot less about everything else. British PhDs are shorter than American PhDs, because Brits have covered more in undergraduate than Americans. For example, if you have a degree in psychology in the UK, I know that you have taken courses (and passed them) in social, cognitive, developmental and abnormal psychology and I know that you have studied research methods. I also know that you've completed an independent study project - usually, but not always, a piece of empirical research. But I also cannot assume that you haven't studied any other subject, possibly since the age of 16. I've taught statistical methods to nurses and to postgraduate Health Sciences students in the UK, and it's safe to assume that most of them will not have studied any math since the age of 16. They will probably know how to do percentages, but it might be 15 years since they did algebra or trigonometry, and they will have zero memory of it. They have almost certainly never studied calculus.