Quote Originally Posted by Photolysis View Post
In the UK at least, the GSCE and A level courses always struck me as being somewhat poorly designed. Why are integration and differentiation part of different AS level modules when they're practically the same thing! Not to mention that that level of calculus is so easy that it could be taught years beforehand...

EDIT: Apparently I've developed the ability to send messages 5 hours back in time.
Several hours, that's pretty impressive bro. Edit: I can post before I've even posted though, which is even more impressive.

I think they were just in separate modules because of time constraints. I dunno, I think it's good to get to grips with differentiation before you move on to integrals. My main criticism about calculus would actually be that nobody actually has the foggiest idea what an integral is. They can do them symbolically, but if you asked a novel but easy problem, like calculate the length of a curve, nobody would have the faintest idea how it even related to integrals, let alone how to go about the calculation. I don't imagine very many people at all would be able to tell you where differentiation formulae come from, either.

By and large the A-Level is fine, I just think that firstly schools should stream better and not hold bright kids back when they could be doing the A Level years in advance, secondly that there should be less algorithmic questions to test understanding (although that would require competent teachers), and thirdly that there should be a pure A Level, so that kids don't think that mathematicians sit around doing integrals all day, and are better prepared for uni.