Well, all I can say is I wish I had started playing guitar at that age. Educatedfilm, American public schools have 12 "grades." You can enter first grade immediately after graduation from kindergarten, where you've proven that you can say your ABC's and count to 10. So you're about 6 or 7 in first grade. Then you jump through the hoops, passing little tests to continue on to the next grade. Each grade lasts about a year, from August to June. If you play the game right, you finally graduate 12th grade when you're about 18 and you're done with high school, ready to go to college or just go to work. 8th grade is usually a part of a middle school, or a "junior high school," and you're about 13 or 14 in 8th grade.

Of course, our public schools are a microcosm of the meritocracy we call a democracy here, thus kids are rewarded with love and good grades if they perform well, but punished and humiliated if not (Another Brick in the Wall). So the cycle is perpetuated, the rich get richer because they do well in school, the poor get poorer because it is difficult for them in school. And we pretend that it is fair by using phrases like "an even playing field." But at as the metaphor suggests, it is still a very competitive game with inevitable winners and losers.

DC

[Edited by David C on 07-18-2002 at 08:54 AM]