American schooling is similar to europe, but its what we teach that differs.
Often children at the age of 4 are placed in "Pre-School" this is to get children accustomed to group learning. They mostly play interactive games like musical chairs and duck, duck, goose. Also they are taught base colors, if they do not know them already.
After pre-school children go through 13 years of schooling. The first year is called Kindergarten. its german for child yard, which makes not a lot of sense. Since pre-school is not mandatory, many parents do not send their children there and kindergarten is basically slightly advanced pre-school. In addition to colors they are taught letters and numbers, sesame street stuff. After this the grades are numbered 1-12. 1-5th grade is called "elementary" school, 6-8th is called "middle school and 9-12 is called High School. More recently, many children, since they skipped pre-school have a hard time adjusting to the group environs. So instead of moving onto 1st grade, or re-taking 1st grade the are moved to pre-first, where they focus more on group activities and developmental skills than learning factual information. The average age of a High school graduate is 18, but in the coming years when the first "pre-first" generation comes there will be many 19 year olds among the graduating classes.
One of the major differences between american schooling and european schooling is the introduction of languages. In every school I've seen here in america the introduction of French, Spanish OR Latin (sometimes German) isn't until 6th or 7th grade and isn't a mandatory subject until high school. Whereas, from what I've learned of eeuropean culture, children are taught foreign languages at a much earlier grade level.
Also, College is not mandatory. In France if you pass certain exams you go to college for free.
Yeah, I can't explain why americans think british say Cheerio all the time. I think one famous british chap said it a lot back in the day and now all americans think all british say "pip, pip. Cheerio!"
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