Is the US the only country that keeps kids in school till they're 18?

As far as I know, no European country keeps their kids in regular school until their 18th birthday (or 12th grade). The English boot them when they're 16, the Germans do too, unless they get tech school or college. It just surprised me that Canada would, too (don't know why,I just was).

I was glancing thru a post on Drudge about some stupid yearbook prank in Montreal. I was coasting down when I saw -
"We have concluded that the two offensive comments were intended as a 'secret' that the two 16-year-olds thought no one would notice," he wrote in a letter sent yesterday to the parents of all LCC students. "The incident stemmed from a personal disagreement between two boys and was isolated in nature."

Mr. Bennett said that it does not reflect the views of the school's 745 students, and that the authors have Jewish friends and are not anti-Semitic.

The culprits got letters of reprimand in their files but cannot be disciplined because they have graduated."


Ok, I didn't graduate from college, or win any scholastic awards. In High School I was a B/C student because I didn't apply myself, but I did stay until grade 12 with a state that (back then) had a decent education system. Anyone reading this who has any kind of decent English (the class, not the country) background can see that I wasn't an English Major. As a matter of fact, I HATED composition in school. Kinda ironic that I chose this as a hobby, huh?

I don't know about Canada, or the rest of Europe, but the conductor and passengers are from the UK. The way I understand their schooling is - they start about a year earlier. Oh, they have "Whole Language" over there, too, the Brits just sound smarter because of their accents, not their education system.

Our approach is basically do the core curriculum of 3-4 classes fairly deep, and expand as the student goes up in grade. The English way is kind like spreading butter, spread it out over everything- very thin, and keep adding layers till graduation. If I understand what I was told when the 13 yr-old was having her problems. (Ok, part was that she was put a grade above where she would have been in the UK, another part was her "friends", part 3 was needing stronger glasses, and the last was their division -not to mention she was pulling the 'we didn't do that yet' trick).
Suffice it to say that she stayed back and will until she "gets" the way we do things here. She had motivation to undestand our long division, and can do it now! She knows that working with fractions, you can't do something to the bottom without doing something to the top- like taking the bottom half of a layer cake and leaving the top doesn't work well.
At least she's giving it her best.

Hopefully we will have done what parents are supposed to do. I hope that our two will be self sufficient adults, and at least not be anchors on the ship of civilization.