I received an email from someone in Canada asking me “to compare Canadian schools to US schools.” I did not think my experiences are valid today. I went to high school in the Toronto area back in the 1958-59 school year. That was 62 school years ago! I’m sure many things have changed. The one difference that I noticed was you were expected to rely on what I called rote learning in Canada. By that, I mean you were expected to memorize a process without comprehension of it. I remember an algebra class that I took which was almost the total repeat of one I had taken here in the States. On one test, they asked me to prove the quadratic equation. The one they had taught in Canada I thought was rather long compared to the one I had learned of the United States. It made sense to me to repeat the shorter proof of the quadratic equation. Of course, my proof was marked is wrong. I complained to the teacher. I was told that the proof seemed to be correct, but it wasn’t the one that had been taught.
It was nine years later, and I was working for the University of Pennsylvania. They were looking for what we call programmers then, but today is we call them coders. The other restriction was they had to be grad students in electrical engineering. I was not part of the hiring process but I listened to a discussion between professors who were doing the hiring. There was more than one coding job available. One coder would be doing what you would call a “standard” coding task. That would be like creating a program to balance your checkbook. The other coder would be working with totally different things where there wouldn’t be any standard. There were a number of grad students and the professors immediately chose one from Canada for the “standard” coding task. I asked later why they made that choice. I was told that Canadians were trained to code in a very specific way and not to deviate from it. That seemed to be what I had learned from my experience in high school in Toronto.
I think both educational systems back then were good in specific ways. I took a course in Middle East history. It seemed to be one war after another. I knew I had to remember the various Assyrian, Babylonian, and other dynasties. Plus, I had to know about the major battles and their dates. Overall these years, I have lost those dates, but I do know the major dynasties in the Middle East in that time period. I also know they fought one another leading the fall some dynasties. I would say the Canadian system was better at teaching fixed things such as history. However, the US system was better at fostering creative thinking. Oh, I did get credit for my quadratic equation answer after my teacher went down to the University of Toronto math department and was told it was a more modern proof of the quadratic equation.
