Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

I suspect that if we actually got to the point where, say, 85% of high school students were achieving a passing grade in grade ten academic math, it would mean that, in turn, 85% of those would be able to handle university-prep calculus. I have no problem with student choice as a streaming method after grade ten; that is, I would rather see different strands of mathematics offered than different levels, but if a student wanted to focus on financial math in grade eleven rather than intro to trigonometry, at that point I wouldn't care too much. That's partly because if they change their minds later, the difference is two courses, not four or more as it is if they're streamed into applied math in grade nine.