I'm German and in 11th grade I did an exchange year in the US. Since I had to return to my regular curriculum after, I wanted to take French. When I told them I've already had 6 years of French at that time, they didn't even know what to do with me.

as a german, seeing the way school works in the US is so confusing with all the credits and stuff like we don't have that at ALL

I go to an American school, and I gotta say... dude you went to a wild school. Your graduation requirements are so so different! And your class offerings are much better funded than the highschool(s) I've attended! We didn't get any culinary or family development or any language but Spanish (No French, German, etc, but one of the schools I went to did have Mandarin, but you could only take it if you had it through elementary and middle school)! And music classes are NEVER individual instruments. I've never seen Piano I or Piano II on a course listing. And we're required to take as history: Global studies (modern geopolitical issues and geography), World history, and US history (1 year of each), + econ and US government. It's so weird that you didn't take full world history?

Wow, you went to a way better American H.S. than most of us get here. Room to take 17 electives? Hell, that 17 elective choices even exist in one school is wow! Our school district doesn't even have homec anymore.

A- Where are you from? B- Oh I’m from Scotland A- Oh I love the Scottish accent! B- Oh no I’m from Scotland, South Dakota

The problem with saying "US education" is that nearly every state has different educational standards. Edit: I'm saying this not as a defense of the us system. It's one of the major reasons that's it's so bad in particular areas.

I did English As A Second Language in primary school and then always came first in "normal" English because I was actually taught how English worked.

Fun fact: In Austria you put a lot (a lot!) of emphasis in the two world wars (at least in my school) In my 7 years of lessons, we worked through the whole topic twice with almost 3/4 of a year just for WWII We really don't want to repeat what had happened when someone doesn't get accepted into our university of fine arts (it's still nearly impossible to get in though, but that's due to the almost one-on-one lessons about learning the specific techniques required for some of the courses)

“I generally feel like Americans would benefit from something not American...” he sheepishly remarks. I concur!

Evan: "Naval Science" My brain: the science of belly buttons

For the record, not all American high schools have drivers ed. I'm jealous tbh 😅 We just called it Technology but there was a woodshop class for people who actually knew what they were doing. In Technology, we worked a little with wood but most of it was playing a game called Bridge Builder on the computer and basic design drawings.

I fly over to London for work in a weeks time, I was telling a friend about it last night… she was convinced London was in Paris France… as a pretty “die hard” American… it upsets me that our education system has failed so many in so many similar ways, I don’t know if I would ever necessarily want to live outside of where I’m from as I’m a very “home body” type of person who likes where I’m from, but I do want to travel the world and experience other countries and cultures and diversities within those nations, and not from a tourist perspective like “oh I have to go see Big Ben!” But from a working class pub and have conversations with locals about anything and everything

Americans: "Getting a driver's licence is expensive" Germany: *laughs in the background*

As the video goes on, the fear in Corry’s eyes grows EDIT: woah that’s a lot of likes

This all sounds so very complicated. In the UK, you start the year, you're given a timetable of all your classes and you follow that timetable for the whole year. At a certain age, when certain subjects become optional, they'll ask you in advance which of the humanities subject you want to choose (usually people either pick history or geography) and which language you want to choose (usually a choice between German, French and Spanish) and that's it.

I always took pride that my high school offered Japanese and Latin as language courses, though I find it strange yours didn't at least have German. Spanish, French, and German were like the standard 3 languages that you could learn at any of the schools. Sadly I missed out on Latin, but I took 2 years of Japanese which was fun.

Best highschool class I took was Forensic science. We solved fake crimes and calculated when people died using body temperature, rigor mortis, and maggots.

"I love my country, but we need to start seeing other people" - bumper sticker in US

One year of foreign language is wild. We had at least 3 forgeign languages during our entire education. + Ancient Greek and Latin but that was optional. Languages was half of our education.

I love how hilarious Evan finds everything about Scotland High School in South Dakota... and how alternately bemused and offended Corrie is! 🤣

Interesting thing, you can literally tell where you are in the US by the language requirements. As you get close to the southern border, classes start to ramp up foreign language course requirements, and put more and more funding towards Spanish programs.

Man, this guy's school was so well funded. My highschool didn't have half the extra curriculars and upper science courses he listed.

This was more "Showing a Brit how my highschool was at one school in one district in one area of one state in America" rather than showing a Brit how American highschool was in general. America is soo big, and so there are soo many different kinds of school, even within a single county. Funny video nonetheless! :)

Our requirements were REALLY different. At my school, in NY, even the credits were calculated differently. I took Latin as a foreign language. A lot of your options were clubs for us. For band, it was just band (marching AND concert in one) and stuff like jazz band was an after-school activity.

I have to say, only 1 year of "world language" sounds so strange to a European... when I graduated high school in France, I had studied English for over 9 years, and German for 7. Of course it makes sense for it to be different in the US, as you guys speak the universal language, but it sounds shocking! I think it's super cool that you can choose electives though!!

It’s Design and Technology where I’m from in the UK or Design Tech, covered everything from graphics and word work to electrical systems.

Your school was so well funded lmao our only foreign language was Spanish (only 2 courses) we only had one AP course offered and half the teachers were coaches who had no business teaching

I've only seen your school so far, but as a fellow American I am shocked by how relaxed the educational requirements in New Jersey are!!! My school you needed 4 years of English, 3 for Math 4 for Science and 4 years for History (2 US and 2 World) and we needed 3 years of a foreign language and 2 years of an art/music.

Corry: “When are we gonna learn Algebra?” Teacher: “We’re passed that... this is complex Calculus...”

I'm Canadian, so about half my experience aligns with American schools and the other half seems more British. Like a swirly ice cream cone.

The fact that there’s a Scotland, South Dakota reminds me about a great bit of trivia about American and Canadian geography. There’s a New Jersey, New Brunswick in Canada, and a New Brunswick, New Jersey in America. I found that out when I told someone that I was from northern New Brunswick, and they thought I lived in New Jersey.

I went to school in NY I had to take 4 years of Language, English, Math, Science, History. Also had to take Regents test which were state tests. We did study world history. We did not have all these electives. AP classes I took were hard because we had some crazy ass teachers who thought we should take extreme writing intensive classes while taking all the other courses we had.

Disclaimer: all these electives are not offered in all public schools. These electives that he went through such as: Biomedical ethics, must be from High Schools located in middle and high class income areas in the USA.

That fact your school had money for all of those electives is amazing. I’m from Oklahoma and our public schools cut all funding for the arts electives but didn’t for the sports programs.

4 years of US history in American public schools, and we still learn almost nothing about *actual* American history! We should rename the requirement "American propaganda!" (Born & raised American, moved to the Netherlands 2 years ago - my 12yo son started secondary school this year & the difference is insane!)

I'm British but I live in the US and this was so helpful. So many conversations make so much more sense lol

"Could I take Scots, maybe? Is that one of the languages there?" "I don't believe they know that's a language." 😂

How is there less Maths than PE???

Class of 2022 here, so a senior.. I go to school in a relatively well funded district in SE Michigan. You need 4 years of ELA, 3 years of social studies (2 of those being American and World History, respectively, and 1 of them being split between Government and Economics), 4 years of math (divided by type of math), and 3 years of science, though if you take a special career center course in junior year you get to skip out on physics, like I did! 1/2 a year of art, and 2 years of foreign language are required, though if you take a whole lotta art you only need 1 year of that language.The Career Center is a special thing where it takes up 2 hours and you get bussed to this other building that all 3 high schools in the district share, where you get taught high-quality, very funded career oriented classes. Mine was graphic design, it was fun but very regimented. Not many people take career center which is a bit of a shame. They also offer a community service class, where you can help either elementary school kids, or the cognitive impairments program. I chose to help the cognitive impairments program because it's right in my school so I don't have to travel.

You only have to have 1 year of foreign languages? I'm from Romania, and we have mandatory English since primary school, and another mandatory language starting middle school, it's usually French or German. So from the 5th grade you have to learn 2 foreign languages at the same time. Actually most kindergartens also teach English, mine did. We also have 1 mandatory year of Latin, since Romanian is a Romance language, rooted in Latin. Apart from that, there are lots of schools where everything is taught in Hungarian (Hungarians are the biggest minority here, over 1 million people) or German instead of Romanian, so there are lots of people who finish highschool speaking at least 2 - 3 languages fluently, some even 4 but that's pretty rare. Everything is pretty standardized untill highschool, and if you have an idea of what you want to do, you can go to a highschool that is specialized in certain subjects, such as IT, mathematics, languages, art, sport, agriculture and even teaching. I went to an art school all 12 years, 5 years of music and 7 years of art. In primary school i had 4 hours of piano and 2 hours of music theory every week. In 5th grade i had choir, rithmics (?) and more piano hours on top of those from primary school. Then i moved to the art department and we had 2 hours of painting, 2 hours of sculpture, 2 hours of drawing and 1 hour of history of art every week. In highschool we had to choose a specialty from the arts, mine was graphics (not computer graphics), so i had 2 hours of sculpture, 2 hours of painting, 9 hours of graphics and 1 hour of history of art every week. All of that was on top of standard classes that everyone has to take, like Romanian, foreign languages, history, math, sciences and sport. It was a lot of work, but i liked it a lot, especially the art classes. Now i'm studying for my degree in engineering geology lol.

totally missed opportunity: how much wood would a wood tech tech if a wood tech could tech wood?

Your high-school was so much better than mine. Small town America here- we didn't even have half of what you listed in the curriculum by 2012. I'm so jealous.

It’s easier to choose what you want in the UK because you have to do almost everything the school has to offer for 3 years before you choose your options

Corry: American history takes two years? How? Me: I took two separate years of US history and they spent so much time making us memorize useless dates, we only got to about 1900 when the school year ended. Both times.

"Lady courses!?" There was more guys in my Food Tech class than women when I was in school so not sure what you're on about with lady classes.

with the english as a second language, my principal kept pushing my aunt to write that my cousins second language was english even though she couldn’t speak a word in another language (i’m australian)

The credits system is so confusing but I like that there are opportunities for kids to try things out and drop stuff after a year if they don't like it. American timetables seem really crammed though - my school (UK) had 5 lessons per day, 1 hour each. Seems like American kids are a lot busier!

"We do a lot of foreign languages" : 3 years. In France, the minimum for many people is 7 years of English and 6 years of another language (Spanish, German...). Many people even learn a 3rd language in high school. And I don't think we're the most extreme country. It's just that 3 years of a single language is nothing

"You don't really have enough history to warrant two years and not learning anyone else's history." Not only that, but by the time we get to high school it's about the sixth time we've gone over the same events, as it's the same history we're taught again and again in the lower grades - at a different depth, granted, but as a student it's so boring to go over the same dates and people over and over again. And then my community college required ANOTHER US history class as part of the basic curriculum requirements (just in case we missed the first 8 times I guess).

(U.S. - New Mexico) We didn't have as many elective options, but being adjacent to the reservation it was pretty cool that we had a Navajo language class offered. When I went there was film studies and drawing (side courses taught by an English teacher and a Social studies teacher.) Theater, band, choir. Dance class mostly for the drill team, and I think they had weight training for the athletes on the school teams. Interesting that these courses could be taught during school hours yet jazz band and swing choir had to be zero-hour. Marching band got PE credit and there was summer PE offered at one point where you could do bowling. We had to have two semesters of language (on block schedule which is 2 hour classes.) Driver's Ed was a summer thing not affiliated with the school. What else... yearbook, also a business class that ran the concession stand at lunch, woodshop, home economics was only offered in mid-school, some kids were office aids, the Gifted and Talented doing whatever they did in that room... and the GUILD class where you got to do an apprenticeship with a professional in the community of your career interest. We did have to have world history (and New Mexico history in mid-school.) We got to dissect cats and go to a cadaver lab for AP Anatomy. Not a high-income area. Snow days for a light dusting of snow! (The rez gets muddy)

I went to a college prep school for my first two years in HS, then transferred to public school. The requirements for graduation were so wildly different that when I got to my new school I’d already gotten my credits for history and science so I just took electives like culinary and even raised a pig for one class it was so much fun.

It’s so crazy watching Evan say “well in US schools.....” and then he says something I’ve never encountered in my whole life as an American 😂 what are they up to in NJ???

"Do they have to learn Scots?" "I don't believe they know it's a language" I almost spit my coffee.

10:31 "So it was Lincoln and then, now" He is basically giving us a retrospective of all the US history he learned in Scotland, lol

High schools in the US are all so different. Everytime I see a video on someone talking about their high school experience it’s so different

“Then we showed up and everything was good again” sums up all of the American history I’ve ever been taught....

"American TV shows are making so much sense now" same

When I graduated high school, the highest level of math I had to pass was algebra and there was only one algebra. My kid had to know calculus to get into community college. The levels of core courses in college guarantee that you’ll have to attend for a minimum of two years. If u skip a core or cannot enroll as planned, ur a semester behind ur deadline. For a while, elders on SSI got free college classes for enrichment. It was lovely because colleges were so focused on certificates in trade jobs that all the seniors just collected certifications. They stopped that and the colleges started picking up high school students. The college will take 9th graders, who have never even seen algebra, and stick em in college pre-algebra. Remember, my kid had to be calculus-ready. He was homeschooled. See, a homeschool dual college kid gets free tuition, but a public school dual college kid gets free transit, a laptop to borrow, PC platforms, textbooks, fees, and tuition out of the k-12 budget. Hey, that’s where my taxes go. My kid is a Spartan, from UNCG. He’s in his 1st year of his BA at 20. This is the same kid who got a Bomb threat assessment on 9-11 in 7th grade for telling guidance he played World of Tanks that weekend. Our school tried to stuff my kid in ISS because he wasn’t all that charismatic or feral. Now he’s speaking Japanese, got his orange belt in MMA, and gosh I can’t decide if he’s still Sheldon Cooper or if he’s turning into Leonard. He IS quite the “needy baby, greedy baby.” Lol

One of the things I noticed going to school in Southern California was many times the quality of education depended on the teachers. I went to a somewhat mixed school. Most students lived below poverty and gangs ran rampant. There were other students that were very well off. (Or at least they were from appearances). I had so many teachers that wouldn’t give up on their students. They encouraged them to learn, find subjects the students were passionate about and set goals. They always encouraged us to change our own future. Considering it was free, I think I got a great education and learned many important life skills. I changed my future and it was because of my teachers encouragement. I’m not saying the system functions well. I’m not saying that, considering the amount of public taxes spent on schools, the system shouldn’t be better. There is also a huge difference between schools in more wealthy areas and those schools in more poverty stricken areas. This was a great piece! I have been trying to understand how the British education system works. Can’t wait to see the next video!!!

My favourite quote, Ambrose Bierce: “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography."

us schools are so confusing with this credit stuff, and when they say stuff like "this guy is from my english class" im so confused cuz we just go to school with the same exact class that we had since day 1 with the same people for 11 years and we all go to the same lessons that we didn't pick whatsoever also most subjects we have every year

This is very interesting. The electives sound great! It seems like the aim is a more well-rounded education (with electives like cooking, music, animation, driving etc) which in theory at least is a good idea imo. I'd say doing more world history and languages is something that gives european schools a leg up. I'm from south europe and we did do a lot more history and languages. Maybe the better solution is somewhere in the middle.

This man went to a fancy school let's be honest.

Remember, too, that curriculum and options are also affected by the socio-economic status of the school district. It seems that Evan's high school provided many options and that is not going to be reflected in every school district. I've lived in big urban cities and rural areas, both of which had schools severely lacking resources. *edit*: further, some school districts are in very religious counties and the education system reflects this in science and health curricula (at the very least).

Wait, so Americans didn't make a volcano cake in year 7 for geography homework?? Crazy

not that this necessarily makes up for everything, but it helps to remember that high school in the US is 4 years. A lot of those classes like World History and Geography are required in middle school, so someone could have gotten those credits in grade 8, rather than in 9-12.

1 year of a world language...says so much about the values of the people that live there.

'this year were doing trigonometry' What the heck? We did that shiz in 2 weeks!

YOU ONLY HAD TO TAKE THREE YEARS OF MATH???? i wish edit: wasn’t expecting this much interaction! at my school you need 4 math credits to graduation (i’m american btw)

I purposefully took an extra class in World History at University and several classes in both Mexican and European culture. I was from a small town and wanted to not remain ignorant. It is sad that most US schools do not cover Europe in History, considering it is where most of us descended from 😜. One of my sons chose to take both Spanish and German. Their school offered two years but he took three.

For me I have to do History- 4 years English- 4 years Math- 4 years Science- 3 years Health- 1 year PE- 3 years Electives- 4 years (2-3 classes per year, 3 if you take no lunch) If you’ve gotten a year ahead during your middle school years in math you’re 1-2 years ahead so in your later years you can choose mostly. You can also get a year ahead in science but not ‘til 9th. In 12th you can go the the community college nearby for some classes.

What’s ironic is that in the two years of US History we don’t even learn a comprehensive amount of slavery, Native American history, American women’s history, minority studies in America, anything like that. So when you do get to college you think you have a good foundation of history for the country you live in and then you realize you’ve basically been lied to by process of omission for 12 years.

7:44 my brain heard “navel science” and i wondered how you can learn so much about belly buttons that it becomes a whole subject

That look when Evan starts reading out the Scotland Highschool school song. I feel your pain, pal. I feel your pain.

English as a second language - studied 2nd through 12th grades (between 9th - 12th grades I had 8+ English classes per week, we studied literature, translated literary texts, wrote essays every week, etc). French - 5th through 12th grades - 2-3 classes per week. Latin - 9th through 12th grades, 2 classes per week. Maths - 11 to 12 years, depending on what you study in high-school. If you choose something with a deeper focus on languages, you don't study Maths as often per week in high-school, and not at all in 12th grade. Having said that, others have 3, 4 classes of Maths per week, if they chose to go that route. Chemistry - 7th through 10th grades, Biology - 5th through 10th grades, and Physics - 6th through 10th grades - 2 classes per week, each. If you choose a more STEM-leaning curriculum, you'll study these three in a lot more depth, and all throughout high school. Geography and History - all throughout school, 2 classes per week each. World Geography and History. Philosophy - 12th grade. Economy - 11th grade. Psychology - 10th grade. Music & Drawing/painting - 1 class per week. Don't remember if we did this in primary school (1 - 4), but it definitely started in 5th grade. All of this is in available in Romania.

I feel like something that wasn’t really touched on at all is that American education and college admissions is really focused on extracurricular activities, whereas British schools don’t even have extracurriculars on their applications. So the American curriculum might look a lot easier, but for more ambitious students, it’s supplemented by a lot of demanding clubs and competitions and other activities. Edit: Sorry, to clarify, I didn't mean that British schools don't have extracurriculars, just that the UCAS application doesn't involve listing extracurriculars and British universities don't focus on it in admissions, whereas extracurriculars are really important in the US Common App and admissions process.

To clarify: Agriculture is farming. Landscaping is planning lawns, gardens parks and stuff.

it’s even crazier as i thought

Either my school sucked or things have really progressed since I graduated. I feel like "well-rounded" is one of the last adjectives that I would use to describe my high school education.

I don't get why everything is so specific in the us school system. In the UK we just pick general subjects to do for gcse (ie geography, art, music) and then we cover specific subjects within that. Everyone needs to do maths English science as well

Oooh Evan do a History GCSE exam like the maths and English one!

Here in JCPS in KY we have to take: 3 Years of English 3Years of Science 2 Years of Foreign Language 4 Years of Math 2 Years of any History 2 Years Health/Safety/Physical Ed Then the rest are Electives

Cadets at school? lol and driving too. Blows my mind.

"We get to mess around with biomedical ethics" Hey Evan, just remind me NEVER to get healthcare from anyone who went to a New Jersey high school

“I have fired many, many… guns” that is the literal most American thing I have heard from a non-American. Edit: The funniest part about the comment is that it was entirely a joke and a substantial amount of Americans don’t own guns or want to. I myself have never even fired a Nerf gun, my mom said they were “too violent” and would “corrupt my innocent soul.”

It's interesting to see all of the differences between my highschool & these ones, for starters in 9th & 10th grade you take global, very very little about America but with a focus currently on Eurasia & the beginnings of civilization. Also, my school is very understaffed in the language department so the only language we get is spanish. We do also have a lot of art classes though which I am thankful for (even if its so hard to choose)

What the US calls "wood tech" in the UK is "woodwork" , the UK has "metalwork" the US has "Shop", in the UK a shop is where you buy groceries.

This explains why Bella's class schedule in Twilight only seemed to have Biology and no other science! I genuinely always wondered about that, like, when do they study physics and chemistry?!

At my high school the NHS was actually, like, A THING. We were expected to keep the honor by doing 50 hours of community service around the district.

This honestly explains a lot. It’s so interesting to see how things are different.

I think what’s really funny here is how different this US high school is from the one I went too 😂

That history bit is funny. In my 13 years of school in Germany, I had 2 years of modern German history (basically half a year of anything leading up to the founding of a unified German state, half a year of the Empire and WWI, half a year of Weimar Republic and WWII and half a year of Cold War/Reunification) and 7 years of just general European and world history. There is just so much more emphasis on the world in general (though I feel like you still miss out on a lot of history of the Americas and Asia).

PA resident here. I didn’t do Drivers Ed in school 🤷🏻‍♀️ we just learned from anyone who already knows how to drive and schedule our own tests at the local DMV

"We saved Europe" unfortunately, that is pretty much how it's taught 😂

As someone who grew up in the rural midwest, hearing all of these courses and extracirrculars is insane. we didnt have half of these

The American system both makes complete sense, but also baffles me at the same time.... ... .. . Brain...what?

Freshman year: World Geography or AP Human Geography Sophomore year: World History Junior year: US History Senior year: US Government and Economics But prior to high school, I had to take TWO years of Texas History

In the 80's, my public HS in the Chicago suburbs had PE every day for all 4 years (something schools today have cut back on to save money.) With 2,000 kids taking it every day, we had lots of fun options to choose like cross country skiing and orienteering in addition to the usual swimming, basketball, weightlifting, etc. But the rest was similar to your HS. One of my electives was sewing and I made a fully lined, tailored, wool blazer the 3rd year. My oldest son did a Culinary Arts program at a Technical High School for half the day. They had a restaurant that served lunch. His last year, he got 6 weeks as head chef including creating the menu. My youngest son did the IT certification program at the Tech HS and got a job right out of school. But my kids needed US history in High School because they went to elementary/Junior high school in England and Norway and only learned the history of those countries. Thank you to the person who mentioned that the written history of North America began more than 200 years ago. Our classes start with when it was discovered (Vikings in 1021 / Columbus in 1492) and really gets going once the English settled in Jamestown in 1607.

Thinking about a hung over teacher listening to badly played wind instruments 😂😂😂😂

9 courses a year! That’s it! In the UK I had to take at least like 14 courses that I can think of for the first 3 years and then 11 for my GCSEs and that’s not including the short courses I had to take alongside it!