dampingwire wrote:I'm a little surprised that there is anywhere where you don't specialise much before heading off to university: that must be a steep learning curve once you suddenly have to up your game in one subject all in one go ...
In my opinion, my American high school education wasn't that specialized. It was hard for me at the time, but if I had to redo it with the wisdom I have now, I'd say, "Hey, this isn't so bad..."
At my school, we had to take 4 years of English, 3 years of math, 3 years of history, etc. If you wanted to look good for a specific college, you could take more courses specific to the major or school you wanted to apply for. But we didn't have a wide range of classes to select from. If you wanted to be an English major, you had a select few electives to pair up with your main, required English classes at the secondary level, like Creative Writing I and II. Some of those electives never got signed up for, so you'd be out of luck if you wanted to bolster your curriculum in that case.
The amount of years a subject was required was determined by the state. So the 3 years of math was state mandated. It could be any level of math, I believe, just as long as you kept progressing and didn't keep repeating the course. So that meant summer school in a lot of cases for kids who slacked off or just struggled. But most colleges require high school study of math up to Algebra II, which at my school came after Geometry, which came after Algebra I, and after Pre-Algebra...
And like a college, you had a certain amount of elective requirements to fill. At my school, which was known for being academically strong, it was easy to graduate with more credits in the elective category and perhaps in total than necessary because a lot of kids studied hard and wanted to study.
They messed with how many periods we had in a day halfway through my high school career, switching from seven to eight, for reasons I forget. Perhaps to give us more time to study? To fix the lunch schedule? I don't remember.
But our periods never exceeded more than eight per day. In senior year you had to be signed up for at least six classes, but some who wanted to take Advanced Placement, do internships, or study at a community college concurrently studied for all eight, and I remember one student who was considered particularly bright who might've convinced the registrar and principal that he should be taking ten classes at once. But again, I don't remember in detail.
The point here is there was no guidance in what to pick, usually. Just requirements that had to be met.
It was possible to be more "specialized" by picking one elective and going through all the levels offered, but it's nothing like what I'm about to describe...
At the high school my bus runs out of now, they work on a "major" system. That's the best way to describe it. You pick a fine arts major, or a STEM major, and stick with it throughout high school. Most kids, I've heard, pick STEM. But it's not for reasons of interest - rather it's just because everyone else is doing it.
There's a lot of variance in public high schools within my local district, and even more if you count the private or charter schools.
It is a differently paced system, which I guess gets balanced out later, at the university. At that point, you start winning, because our universities are poor and bad and too obsessed with themselves. 
