The Problem with Rote Learning (3 Viewers)

[Sy123]

I think that having that in university is enough right? Where there's complete independence in terms of course choice etc.

E.g. how many 99+ers do you see doing humanities, and how many do you see doing 4U maths, physics, chemistry?

This isn't simply because the 4u maths, phys, chem students are the most hard working/"intelligent" students - many of them exploit the system and take advantage of these subjects and their scaling capabilities.

These subjects are very broad, I am sure that HSC could take out bits from the subject that actually make sense and teach some of it while in Uni they go into really advanced stuff. I mean, its not like the extra stuff I would like to see in Physics is the stuff of uni. Its just calculus addition and just other stuff that makes sense.

Yeah sure they may exploit the system, but its like a 'vicious cycle' if you will. At first the subject scales well because there are more hardworking people doing that subject, then you start to get people who exploit the system, but that will exist with any system in place, people will find a way to exploit it somehow.

Lets say there are 1000 people on Extension History and 1000 people doing Mathematics Extension 2 that are also doing English Advanced (English is used as a reference).
Now of those doing MX2, there are more hardworking people then there are doing Extension History, hence MX2 students get higher in other subjects, hence MX2 scales better, and the reverse happens for Extension History students despite there being some really hard working students in Ext History.

That is just the product of the culture of subject selection.

 

[GoldyOrNugget]

Controversial opinion time: I believe MX2 is objectively the hardest course on offer, in terms of the level of abstract thinking required, and students who perform well in it are more deserving of a high ATAR than students who do well in a humanities subject. *shields head*

 

[Carrotsticks]

Controversial opinion time: I believe MX2 is objectively the hardest course on offer, in terms of the level of abstract thinking required, and students who perform well in it are more deserving of a high ATAR than students who do well in a humanities subject. *shields head*

I like where this is going.

Will give a proper response some time tomorrow, a bit tired atm.

 

[theind1996]

Controversial opinion time: I believe MX2 is objectively the hardest course on offer, in terms of the level of abstract thinking required, and students who perform well in it are more deserving of a high ATAR than students who do well in a humanities subject. *shields head*

Yeah fair enough, but it's what you believe, not the Board of Studies haha.

For me, I don't care what they do after 2013 lol.

 

[Sy123]

Controversial opinion time: I believe MX2 is objectively the hardest course on offer, in terms of the level of abstract thinking required, and students who perform well in it are more deserving of a high ATAR than students who do well in a humanities subject. *shields head*

You aren't alone in thinking that. I believe it as well to an extent.
This is the reason why Rote learning is nigh on impossible for MX2, you can rote learn for every other objective based subject and do reasonable. If you try and rote learn MX2 you will die.

 

[RivalryofTroll]

You aren't alone in thinking that. I believe it as well to an extent.
This is the reason why Rote learning is nigh on impossible for MX2, you can rote learn for every other objective based subject and do reasonable. If you try and rote learn MX2 you will die.

Oh yay, I'll die.

 

[Absolutezero]

Controversial opinion time: I believe MX2 is objectively the hardest course on offer, in terms of the level of abstract thinking required, and students who perform well in it are more deserving of a high ATAR than students who do well in a humanities subject. *shields head*

...

 

[Sy123]

Oh yay, I'll die.

Don't be so stubborn in rote learning, give understanding a try, you will love it.

 

[someth1ng]

The change to critical thinking from rote learning is definitely a big step and a big change. You can't really just change it overnight.

 

[RivalryofTroll]

Don't be so stubborn in rote learning, give understanding a try, you will love it.

Well, don't be so stubborn on hating on rote-learning.

tbh, I cannot escape understanding. There has always been times where I had to embrace understanding.

But obviously that doesn't happen too often.

 

[Rezen]

I want to address two points raised so far,

First is that the humanities are scaled 'unfairly'. Subjects are scaled relative to how the students do in other subjects, in particular English since it's the only compulsory subject. Intuitively, one would expect the opposite if you assume students that do humanities are good at English. Then humanities would scale better than the sciences. This however doesn't happen, probably because those students who are not the brightest or academic focused tend to choose humanities as an 'easy' option. This makes the pool of students that do the humanities on average less capable then their science counterparts. Hence the scaling down. You might argue this is unfair, but the whole point of scaling is to make it fair. If the pool of students doing one subject is 'less able' than another, then it is in fact easier to score a higher percentile and hence without scaling would unfairly weight one subject against another.

Secondly, is the use of mathematics in physics and chemistry. Both subjects used to be closer to what you would expect out of a first year uni class, and that really is how it should be, especially for chemistry. It doesn't really seem like an effective system when university's start from scratch and pretty much reteach everything. If your doing physics or chem at hsc, then your likely to be doing it in uni. So why do the university's have to waste time reteaching things? Compare the hsc syllabus with the IB syllabus. heck, compare it with the old hsc syllabus. The removal of mathematics was a bad idea and really doesn't help to learn the subjects in the slightest, a lot of the intuition for physics comes from the mathematics. If you want to teach the history/ social implications then make a subject on the history of science then.

 

[Sy123]

I want to address two points raised so far,

First is that the humanities are scaled 'unfairly'. Subjects are scaled relative to how the students do in other subjects, in particular English since it's the only compulsory subject. Intuitively, one would expect the opposite if you assume students that do humanities are good at English. Then humanities would scale better than the sciences. This however doesn't happen, probably because those students who are not the brightest or academic focused tend to choose humanities as an 'easy' option. This makes the pool of students that do the humanities on average less capable then their science counterparts. Hence the scaling down. You might argue this is unfair, but the whole point of scaling is to make it fair. If the pool of students doing one subject is 'less able' than another, then it is in fact easier to score a higher percentile and hence without scaling would unfairly weight one subject against another.

Secondly, is the use of mathematics in physics and chemistry. Both subjects used to be closer to what you would expect out of a first year uni class, and that really is how it should be, especially for chemistry. It doesn't really seem like an effective system when university's start from scratch and pretty much reteach everything. If your doing physics or chem at hsc, then your likely to be doing it in uni. So why do the university's have to waste time reteaching things? Compare the hsc syllabus with the IB syllabus. heck, compare it with the old hsc syllabus. The removal of mathematics was a bad idea and really doesn't help to learn the subjects in the slightest, a lot of the intuition for physics comes from the mathematics. If you want to teach the history/ social implications then make a subject on the history of science then.

Very good points
+1

 

[nifkeh]

Sure, knowledge must be part of any syllabus, but there are different ways we can give people knowledge and different ways to examine them on it. For sciences, questions are repeated A LOT, we can rote learn pretty much all the answers of previous tests and rote learn everything in syllabus and get B6.

The syllabuses of particularly Physics, Chemistry and certain Maths levels should be changed in order to accommodate less and less rote learning, sure it will always exist, but we can always minimise it and punish those who dare to rote learn such a vast knowledge base.

English syllabus can be changed so that people don't rote learn their essays and such.

yes, but how else are you supposed to know stuff like le chatelier's principles in chemistry without rote learning? you kind of need a solid understanding of it, i.e. rote learning to get all the marks instead of just going in the exam relying in what you know so far. people really do past papers to improve that marks, and rote learning happens during that process to remember what not to do again and how to answer the question for the full marks.

maybe you are confusing theory in the sciences with the actual calculations in the course, you have to rote learn the theory and apply critical thinking to calculate stuff like comparing pH of solutions and stuff and like things in physics such as special relativity. you just rote learn the formulas and maybe the method, apply it to a question. to do the question needs critical thinking to determine what formula to use, without much practice/overview of such questions you can be able to get the question wrong since you applied the wrong formula or did the wrong process for it.

people do still write notes for science, and they are also state rankers as well. I am pretty sure they rote learn their content to do that. but with a syllabus, and since you know the topics that will the appearing in the HSC it is hard not to rote learn for your exams given such major clues. the only time rote learning will become irrelevant is when you set a purely randomised exam that will no longer be HSC chemistry or physics anymore, just random general knowledge and stuff that won't require a syllabus which would mean schools would teach aimlessly rather than to the syllabus.

most maths students aiming for B6 would know that rote learning how to do maths is very very bad and actually doesn't help lol, back in the day I used to rote learn formulas and then pretty much yolo the exam, wasn't that great because you get trolled by the exam question because you don't know how to do it and you lack practice a lot. when people do maths past papers, I wouldn't consider it as rote learning how to do questions, but rather just practicing - how else are you supposed to learn for maths without being introduced to steps and formulas like that. Learning for maths is different from sciences, and can't be compared to humanities. In humanities, you basically rote learn and retain stuff and regurgitate, especially for legal studies. now try to make sure that the B6's in those courses don't rote learn lol, the whole course of humanities is just remember every detail or else you lose marks for no detail. you have done history before, you should learn that people that ace humanities pretty much are very good at rote learning. the only critical thinking required is when you interpret the question, other than that if you haven't rote learnt it properly then you're basically screwed for the exam.

"English syllabus can be changed so that people don't rote learn their essays and such." - BOS has done stuff to circumvent this such as marking those with a general/generic response with the highest mark of a C grade or 70 and also making questions to throw people out who don't have a good grasp of their texts, such as asking a specific scene in Shakespeare or like a fairly specific question on belonging or a thematic/language question in the texts. People still inevitably rote learn essays, I did for my year 11 yearlys, in fact the question didn't change much from my practice essay and I basically rewrote almost the same thing but still answered the question (so it wasn't a generic response). I rote learned or read over my practice essays just to have a memory jog of the texts and also to remember to write those important stuff from my essay into the test if the question asks for it though. it is possible to go in into the exam with a good grasp of the texts without doing a practice essay, but you will find it to be a little harder in the exam to write from scratch if you haven't revisited concepts in the texts and memorised some quotes in some detail.

so it is possible to get through the HSC without rote learning (except humanities) but rote learning can aid the theory/content required to be covered in the exam, doesn't seem like the BOS condone rote learnt generic responses apart from English though

 

[nifkeh]

If your doing physics or chem at hsc, then your likely to be doing it in uni. So why do the university's have to waste time reteaching things? Compare the hsc syllabus with the IB syllabus. heck, compare it with the old hsc syllabus. The removal of mathematics was a bad idea and really doesn't help to learn the subjects in the slightest, a lot of the intuition for physics comes from the mathematics. If you want to teach the history/ social implications then make a subject on the history of science then.

true, they dumbed down it for HSC and made it more theory based which in some ways is throwable knowledge and maybe trivia at best. The IB syllabuses are hard, apparently they are first year uni content for chem I heard

 

[elissajean]

Rubbish. I mean, I'm not at all surprised that we are removing it from the curriculum, but in my experience, rote learning is extremely valuable and reducing its use in Australian schools (they've been teaching teachers the evils of rote learning for a while now) has been extremely detrimental. I'm not saying that it should be all rote learning, but particularly in primary school and perhaps even the early years of high school it would be extremely valuable. Rote learning isn't at all dangerous in the way that quote suggests unless you force students to learn some form of ideology by rote (which would probably not be tolerated anyway). I think there needs to be an awful lot more of rote learning in the early years of schooling, and if this were the case it could be phased out in later years. What people don't seem to recognise is that you can have both rote learning and critical thinking. You just have to be a good teacher who can think critically yourself. Rote learning is not to blame for our poor educational ranking - it's the fact that students get into high school ill-prepared and with inadequate literacy (and thinking) skills. Rote learning is in no way to blame for that. It's one of my pet hates. Also - studies have shown that rote learning can help develop the memory centres of the brain and are extremely beneficial to students learning (which is why I think primary schools should incorporate a lot of it into relevant subjects).

 

[Sy123]

yes, but how else are you supposed to know stuff like le chatelier's principles in chemistry without rote learning? you kind of need a solid understanding of it, i.e. rote learning to get all the marks instead of just going in the exam relying in what you know so far. people really do past papers to improve that marks, and rote learning happens during that process to remember what not to do again and how to answer the question for the full marks.

You are confusing rote learning with understanding here. You give me a theory and I understand it, I try to understand why this theory works, and the questions should be about the theory. Sure in the HSC there are some good legit questions, but a lot of them are just horrible. Doing past papers for other subjects is not really considered rote learning but rather practise. Unless you are doing the same past paper or very similar ones over and over again.

maybe you are confusing theory in the sciences with the actual calculations in the course, you have to rote learn the theory and apply critical thinking to calculate stuff like comparing pH of solutions and stuff and like things in physics such as special relativity. you just rote learn the formulas and maybe the method, apply it to a question. to do the question needs critical thinking to determine what formula to use, without much practice/overview of such questions you can be able to get the question wrong since you applied the wrong formula or did the wrong process for it.

There is potential to ask loads of theory based questions that do not require calculation. For instance:

'Explain why we can have water at pH6 yet still be neutral'

That question requires understanding of what pH means, and about what happens when the temperature increases. That isn't rote learning, its called using what you already know to explain different scenarios.

people do still write notes for science, and they are also state rankers as well. I am pretty sure they rote learn their content to do that. but with a syllabus, and since you know the topics that will the appearing in the HSC it is hard not to rote learn for your exams given such major clues. the only time rote learning will become irrelevant is when you set a purely randomised exam that will no longer be HSC chemistry or physics anymore, just random general knowledge and stuff that won't require a syllabus which would mean schools would teach aimlessly rather than to the syllabus.

That's the problem here, people who purely rote learn should not be given priority over people willing to understand and actually learn. The syllabus needs to change to accommodate people who think.

most maths students aiming for B6 would know that rote learning how to do maths is very very bad and actually doesn't help lol, back in the day I used to rote learn formulas and then pretty much yolo the exam, wasn't that great because you get trolled by the exam question because you don't know how to do it and you lack practice a lot. when people do maths past papers, I wouldn't consider it as rote learning how to do questions, but rather just practicing - how else are you supposed to learn for maths without being introduced to steps and formulas like that. Learning for maths is different from sciences, and can't be compared to humanities. In humanities, you basically rote learn and retain stuff and regurgitate, especially for legal studies. now try to make sure that the B6's in those courses don't rote learn lol, the whole course of humanities is just remember every detail or else you lose marks for no detail. you have done history before, you should learn that people that ace humanities pretty much are very good at rote learning. the only critical thinking required is when you interpret the question, other than that if you haven't rote learnt it properly then you're basically screwed for the exam.

Economics has a bit of rote learning (only for financial structures), however a lot of it is application of logical system.

"English syllabus can be changed so that people don't rote learn their essays and such." - BOS has done stuff to circumvent this such as marking those with a general/generic response with the highest mark of a C grade or 70 and also making questions to throw people out who don't have a good grasp of their texts, such as asking a specific scene in Shakespeare or like a fairly specific question on belonging or a thematic/language question in the texts. People still inevitably rote learn essays, I did for my year 11 yearlys, in fact the question didn't change much from my practice essay and I basically rewrote almost the same thing but still answered the question (so it wasn't a generic response). I rote learned or read over my practice essays just to have a memory jog of the texts and also to remember to write those important stuff from my essay into the test if the question asks for it though. it is possible to go in into the exam with a good grasp of the texts without doing a practice essay, but you will find it to be a little harder in the exam to write from scratch if you haven't revisited concepts in the texts and memorised some quotes in some detail.

so it is possible to get through the HSC without rote learning (except humanities) but rote learning can aid the theory/content required to be covered in the exam, doesn't seem like the BOS condone rote learnt generic responses apart from English though

Rote learning will be inevitable, but it should always result in a mediocre mark.

 

[nifkeh]

It is a culture among the harder working students to pick these standard subjects, so when scaling is calculated, we get higher scaling for these subjects.

I'll put it frank though, there is a culture among students wanting to do well, to pick subjects like chemistry/physics and so on and when they pick it, they do well in it and other subjects hence scaling it up. You don't have as many of these types of students (asians etc) picking humanities due to the general culture of it.

wrong.. I'm not trying to brag here, but for statistics sake I go to a 2012 top 5 ranked school, it's selective and a girls school. so hmm you might know where I am already but that's not the point. And also the majority of our school is asian, even in the humanities department the ratio is probably preserved

sorry for tl;dr response coming up btw

the number of people (at my school) doing modern history is around 50 something in my school, compared to chem at 100, bio at 20-30 and physics at 33. number of people doing Hist ext at ~50, legal at around 35, ancient at 23 and eco at around 50 or so too. now you can see that lots of people at my school are doing humanities more than the range of sciences available. apart from chem because I think everybody thinks chem is cool or something, not too sure but the latest prac threw everybody around in terms of time and detail of answers required. There are about 70-90 people doing 4U maths in our school (not too sure atm because lots are dropping) and for 3U + 2U inclusive there are 88 students.

I'm sure that people pick humanities in my year because they don't like science or they do badly at it, so it is more favourable for them to pick stuff like humanities as they know their effort will not go to waste, I asked a couple of my friends in ancient who don't do sciences at all why they didn't choose something like bio, which has a lot of content in it. they said that they just sucked at science in year 10 and hated it so they didn't bother choosing. and yet, with their mostly dominated humanities subject combo they are marginally (by a few marks = 10% already) beating me in ancient lol. to say "It is a culture among the harder working students to pick these standard subjects" is an insult, we state ranked more this year in modern history, ancient and economics and legal than ever before, to say that these people doing humanities are not as hard working as those doing sciences are 3/4 unit maths is truely sad. state ranking is hard in itself, let alone in humanities it is easy to miss mentioning herodotus in your essay and getting a mark off, putting you behind a couple of people that got 25/25 in your assessment already. to say that state ranking for science/maths is harder than humanities - hey if you didn't know your essays in humanities are double marked - that is one marker gives you a mark, and another marker does, and you get an average of their marks, which are non-nego. getting a 25/25 is harder due to this btw, making state ranks just as hard as any other subject and they are calculated to a decimal point.

If you haven't looked at the merit lists, look at IPT - the top 10 state rankers are 8 people from NSB and they are all in year 10 doing accelerated. that is a hard feat in itself, considering only 1 NSB state ranked for it last year also as a accelerant. This NSB cohort is just as hardworking as a ruse cohort at any subject, just because IPT isn't like maths or science doesn't mean the cohort is immediately less hardworking because they chose a theory subject, rather than a calculation based one. Getting a state rank in IPT or any humanities cannot be matched by a 90 in physics, chem, bio or 2U/3U maths. you can't define students as hardworking because they do chem or 4U maths, these subjects aren't known for their prestige or something. they're just hard. Is the JRAHS state ranker in chem, bio, physics and Maths ext 1 & 2 more hardworking than the SGHS state ranker in English Adv, Modern History, Ancient? No, getting a state rank is hard in itself, you cannot say that the histories are easier than studying for sciences/math, to get to be the top of the top needs major scrutiny and work both at home and in the exam and to also make sure that the effort you put in won't easily be iffy with a HSC marker especially for history which doesn't have set in stone criteria like maths/science. So they both require lots of work to master.

 

[nifkeh]

Due to a lack of foundation, practice and exposure in their early years, there are students out there who don't have the capabilities to think critically at that specific point in time. By forcing them to understand why something is the way it is could be too difficult for them because they may see the concept as too abstract. Rather if they rote learn a concept such as the distance formula, overtime (after putting in hard work) they may get the opportunity to extend their critical thinking capabilities to understand that it comes from the Pythagoras' theorem.

+1 they should teach simple calculus in 9.3 maths already, instead of putting it in year 11 because especially at the end of year 10 term 4 turns out to be a waste of time and just watching movies and yet they still can't cover the year 11 courses yet

 

[Sy123]

Rubbish. I mean, I'm not at all surprised that we are removing it from the curriculum, but in my experience, rote learning is extremely valuable and reducing its use in Australian schools (they've been teaching teachers the evils of rote learning for a while now) has been extremely detrimental. I'm not saying that it should be all rote learning, but particularly in primary school and perhaps even the early years of high school it would be extremely valuable. Rote learning isn't at all dangerous in the way that quote suggests unless you force students to learn some form of ideology by rote (which would probably not be tolerated anyway). I think there needs to be an awful lot more of rote learning in the early years of schooling, and if this were the case it could be phased out in later years. What people don't seem to recognise is that you can have both rote learning and critical thinking. You just have to be a good teacher who can think critically yourself. Rote learning is not to blame for our poor educational ranking - it's the fact that students get into high school ill-prepared and with inadequate literacy (and thinking) skills. Rote learning is in no way to blame for that. It's one of my pet hates. Also - studies have shown that rote learning can help develop the memory centres of the brain and are extremely beneficial to students learning (which is why I think primary schools should incorporate a lot of it into relevant subjects).

You are not arguing anything here, basically that rote learning is not dangerous even though I have given many rebuttals against that statement. Rote learning is a cancer to education because it entirely defeats the purpose of education itself. And that is to learn. Rote learning is not learning, it is memorising.

wrong.. I'm not trying to brag here, but for statistics sake I go to a 2012 top 5 ranked school, it's selective and a girls school. so hmm you might know where I am already but that's not the point. And also the majority of our school is asian, even in the humanities department the ratio is probably preserved

sorry for tl;dr response coming up btw

the number of people (at my school) doing modern history is around 50 something in my school, compared to chem at 100, bio at 20-30 and physics at 33. number of people doing Hist ext at ~50, legal at around 35, ancient at 23 and eco at around 50 or so too. now you can see that lots of people at my school are doing humanities more than the range of sciences available. apart from chem because I think everybody thinks chem is cool or something, not too sure but the latest prac threw everybody around in terms of time and detail of answers required. There are about 70-90 people doing 4U maths in our school (not too sure atm because lots are dropping) and for 3U + 2U inclusive there are 88 students.

I'm sure that people pick humanities in my year because they don't like science or they do badly at it, so it is more favourable for them to pick stuff like humanities as they know their effort will not go to waste, I asked a couple of my friends in ancient who don't do sciences at all why they didn't choose something like bio, which has a lot of content in it. they said that they just sucked at science in year 10 and hated it so they didn't bother choosing. and yet, with their mostly dominated humanities subject combo they are marginally (by a few marks = 10% already) beating me in ancient lol. to say "It is a culture among the harder working students to pick these standard subjects" is an insult, we state ranked more this year in modern history, ancient and economics and legal than ever before, to say that these people doing humanities are not as hard working as those doing sciences are 3/4 unit maths is truely sad. state ranking is hard in itself, let alone in humanities it is easy to miss mentioning herodotus in your essay and getting a mark off, putting you behind a couple of people that got 25/25 in your assessment already. to say that state ranking for science/maths is harder than humanities - hey if you didn't know your essays in humanities are double marked - that is one marker gives you a mark, and another marker does, and you get an average of their marks, which are non-nego. getting a 25/25 is harder due to this btw, making state ranks just as hard as any other subject and they are calculated to a decimal point.

You are not arguing anything here either, its an invalid point. You are assuming that just because at the high end at your school there are a lot doing humanities, you are trying to give an indication of the quality of the whole humanities cohort. You need to go to a lower ranking school to understand the calibre of the students there attempting humanities as an easy way out. There is a social stigma towards the sciences that it is harder. This is why harder working students will pick it. Whether or not humanities are harder or not is out of the question, the point is society creates this stigma that sciences are harder (and they mostly are). Difficulty to state rank =/= Difficulty of subject.

If you haven't looked at the merit lists, look at IPT - the top 10 state rankers are 8 people from NSB and they are all in year 10 doing accelerated. that is a hard feat in itself, considering only 1 NSB state ranked for it last year also as a accelerant. This NSB cohort is just as hardworking as a ruse cohort at any subject, just because IPT isn't like maths or science doesn't mean the cohort is immediately less hardworking because they chose a theory subject, rather than a calculation based one. Getting a state rank in IPT or any humanities cannot be matched by a 90 in physics, chem, bio or 2U/3U maths. you can't define students as hardworking because they do chem or 4U maths, these subjects aren't known for their prestige or something. they're just hard. Is the JRAHS state ranker in chem, bio, physics and Maths ext 1 & 2 more hardworking than the SGHS state ranker in English Adv, Modern History, Ancient? No, getting a state rank is hard in itself, you cannot say that the histories are easier than studying for sciences/math, to get to be the top of the top needs major scrutiny and work both at home and in the exam and to also make sure that the effort you put in won't easily be iffy with a HSC marker especially for history which doesn't have set in stone criteria like maths/science. So they both require lots of work to master.

Again you are drawing arguments from your own experience. I never said there are no hardworking humanities students, in fact I could probably say some humanities students work harder than some science students, its just that they are disadvantaged by their fellow humanities students however we should allow ceteris paribus and let it be that way if society wishes it to be.

 

[Peeik]

+1 they should teach simple calculus in 9.3 maths already, instead of putting it in year 11 because especially at the end of year 10 term 4 turns out to be a waste of time and just watching movies and yet they still can't cover the year 11 courses yet

I dont believe that the 9.3 should start calculus yet. I think calculus should be restricted to only year 11 onwards. Rather they should do stuff involving functions and relations and at most informal definition of continuity and perhaps limits. Some schools do these topics in term 4 so it gives students a taste of 2u/3u.

The reason why I dont think it is a good idea to teach simple calculus in term 4 is because after the summer holidays students may of forgotten the key concepts. And in most school, they wont revisit calculus until term 3 (for 2U students) or term 2 (for 3U students). Hence what they have learnt in year 10 term 4 would have been wasted. Instead, it is better to use that term for topics that can be completed (as a whole) within that term e.g. functions and relations or even the plane/circle/coordinate geometry. Calculus is to big to fit into one term and starting calculus in term 4 and not revisiting it until term 2 is not the best way to teach it.