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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:30
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Coming in late to the discussion, but here's another spin:
I have to wonder who goes into teaching in these other countries. One thing about the US is there is a prejudice against teaching as a profession that is older than the country itself (see Richard Hofstadter's classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life for a discussion of this), and it is not thought of as a career for middle- or upper-middle class young people. The net result I suspect is that really bright, ambitious people rarely become teachers, especially in the public schools. Anecdotally: I'm a graduate of an Ivy League university, and I can tell you that not one single person I knew at that school aspired to teach (at non-university level); this was not about money, since people I knew aspired to do things that paid even less well (non-profit work; playing folk music professionally; teaching at universities [like myself]) but instead was about the fact that teaching public school was something people of our intelligence and education simply didn't do. I know of two who have subsequently become teachers "accidently" (one to support herself in grad school, the other to support himself while writing screenplays), and both are at toney private schools.
Culturally, if we could make teaching as desireable an occupation as, say, advertising, we might finally get schools as good as our ads.
So I have to wonder if other countries simple have better teachers because there's less shame in becoming a teacher to begin with.
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Traianvs
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Belgium, land of plenty (corruption)
Jan 2000
time: 06:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Q Cubed
quote:
Though we must be careful not to go to South Korean levels. I hear they beat their students for getting lower than a perfect (or near-perfect) score |
what, your parents didn't do that to you? 
more seriously, my youngest cousin goes to school at 7 in the morning, and comes home at 4. he then eats dinner, gets a bit of free time, and then goes back to another prep school from 7pm to about 10.
he's in the fourth grade.
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That's just horrible, I would simply slice a few teachers throats one day if I had to go through such horror. It is true that this kind of education makes sure your kids will do well in tests, but is the effort wirth it? On average S-Koreans will do slightly better than for example Belgian teenagers but not by that much. (I remember in maths Japan and S.Korea teenagers were #1 and #2, and Belgians were #3, but that survey is from a few years ago I think so not up-to-date). You need to give people breathing space, it's like when you learn for your exams, you really need to relax as often as possible,.. clear your mind; if you don't you'll get an overload, blackouts etc.. Same thing in life: if you keep maintaing that kind of education and way of living in general, people will burnout in their forties and will totally crash. Psychologically it's not healthy for people (remember that Japanese phenomenon, hishkomori or something? where young adults lock themselves up in their room for years mainly because of the extremely loaded education programme they need to follow if they want to be able to be successful)
In Belgium there are campaigns of the government to make sciences and maths more popular, you will want to have young people look at sciences as interesting, not make them associate it with boring shite. And it works, we're being pretty successful with it, our kids get good results in general, and many kids are interested
school still $ucks big time though if nearly all the teachers are picking on you 
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18-09-2003 21:21
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