An outsider looking in perspective: For some reason, one of my teachers decided to have an America week at school. We got the same textbooks ($$$ for a week?) as people in our grade in America, switched to the class-rotation system, ... all that stuff. The way it's teached wasn't bad i.m.o. (or my teachers just didn't do it right), but the content was horrible. Your textbooks were basicly stuff we learned 3-4 years ago and I think that has partly to do with being able to choose your classes so much (I don't know any other reasons). In here you choose your objective and then you get the classes needed for that objective, at most you get to choose between art or morals class. For instance: I chose informatica as my objective and as such I got the basic classes of TSO (a level in Belgium, basicly 3 hours math / 2 hours dutch / 3 hours french / ...) + 6 hours software, 4 hours hardware and 2 hours economics. In order to go to the next level, you need to pass for all those classes or do work in the summer for the maximum of 2-3 classes (depending on how important) you failed. This doesn't nececairly mean staying behind if you do fail but that's not relevant atm. I really like this way of education because you get all the stuff you need for your objective, it's not that hard to change objective because everyone is kept at a certain minimum level (ASO/TSO/BSO) and even after graduating and going to further education it's still possible to change your objective. The impression (because I don't actually know) from your educational system is that you can pick and choose subjects you like and that there isn't really a basic knowledge that everyone must get (for instance everyone must have finished geography, history, dutch, french level 1 by the age of 12). To me it seems like just picking and choosing and maybe advancing but that's not really nececairy and it looks like a giant mess. But I could be wrong, I'm not the expert.

You have tracks that you pick (sort of like objectives) which are based on whether you're planning to go on to college or not. There's still a core level of math, science, and language/social studies that you must complete before graduation. You can choose classes that exceed the core studies, but you have to have at least the minimum. Unfortunately, because the US is so huge, educational standards can differ from state to state, so there's not much uniformity as you might have in a smaller country.