The Strongest Matthew For Whenever Options

[Leyviur]

P.P.A. You are a fucking retard. Every other thing I see from you is how Americans are dumb, Americans are useless, et al. Stop your racist, bigoted bullshit or I will be forced to eject you from the boards.

[Enzd]

Note to self: some people are asleep at 12:30 AM.

[P.P.A.]

For example, my university requires me to go through electives, which I had chosen Classical Music, Astronomy, Sociology, and European History. Despite them not really related to my degree of interest, they do help expose me to several topics I've never had gone over or taken in high school. This diversity helps build character, and that's the point of electives. Even if they're crappy electives, by passing them you show your peers and supervisors that you can handle tasks that you don't particularly like as well.

 See, that's exactly what I mean—this all belongs into school (or, as per von Humboldt, the Gymnasium, but you don't have that), and not in universities.
 Character building, a variety of electives and a wide spread of subjects and topics to broaden one's horizon, to give development impulses, to give one a solid foundation of knowledge upon which to build, and to familiarise the student with different approaches to problem solution, different ways to think, and different ways to work is something that should—and in Germany do—take place in the higher grades of the Gymnasium/high school, while the universities are then to enable the students to pursuit their personal interests, to greatly deepen and to intensify their studies on certain fields, and to launch them into an academic career of their choosing, giving them the freedom to search and to find their passion, and only handing them the tools (say, requiring a Latin course if one wants to become a medical doctor) to pursue them.
 Perhaps my wording was faulty. U.S. American universities are not bad per se, but they are bad universities—if universities at all—because they take up the role and functions of an institution one step lower than them—the Gymnasium as defined by Wilhelm von Humboldt and as realised to an extent by Prussia and Germany—, and as a result fail to fulfil their own role properly.


 That said, the problems you described, especially regarding standardisation, are seeping into our education system as well, and I watch this in horror. Until just recently, the final exams of a school form were written within the students' school and corrected by their school's teachers. But, fearing too much personal bias, as of a few years ago these—now standardised—exams are instead written in random schools onto which the students are distributed, and their works are corrected by random teachers who are given no freedom in rating them, but instead are just to compare the exams to a tick list of certain words, phrases, contents, or ideas which must be reflected in the work, give points whenever they are, and ignore anything else.
 As a result, individuality and creativity are discouraged and punished, and you could write an exam worthy of being rewarded a doctorate and still receive no more than 2 or 3 points because no matter how brilliant, one of what you wrote matched the standardised expectations. A decade ago, this would have been unthinkable, and exams were judged solely by how good they are. If this is not reversed soon, it will lead to a death of innovation and the robbing of the point of subjects such as philosophy, which are not merely memorizing a pile of facts, but require having an open mind and the ability to apply one's knowledge, to ferment it, and to give rise to new insights from it.

 A parallel and equally worrying development is the lowering of the bar so the weakest can still get the highest degrees. Our school system had traditionally been split into three after the four years of Grundschule (elementary school—teaches reading, writing, simple calculations, and other basics):

• Hauptschule (grades 5–9), which teaches only (advanced) basics, a single foreign language, and minimum requirements in maths, history, geography, etc., and its graduates usually take up physical jobs like carpenters, craftsmen, electricians, bakers, and other occupations that need no academic degree but just an apprenticeship and a few years of experience.
• Realschule (grades 5–10), which provides a broader and more complex education, but can still largely be passed by just being good at memorisation and less at creative application, and which paves the way for a Fachhochschule (which can apprently be translated as “polytechnic”, “college”, or “University of Applied Sciences”) and a career as for example a technician, engineer, or other kinds of specialists.
• Gymnasium (grades 5–13 (or 12, starting with either this or the next year)), whose purpose is the aforementioned one: preparing people for an academic career by promiting free thinking, teaching them a broad range of subjects and sciences, and relying less on memorisation and more on inidivual intelligence and understanding. You are only accepted to a university if you have an Abitur, the degree you earn upon finishing Gymnasium.

 At least, that's how it's supposed to be, and how it's used to be. But, alas, this excellent system is collapsing. The Hauptschule is about to be dissolved entirely because of the bad reputation it has accumulated over the past years because of all the troublesome and bad students which inevitably end up there and to be merged with the Realschule, as nobody would still be willing to hire someone with just a Hauptschulabschluß anyway. A similar development is taking place on the other end of the scale: The Gymnasium is becoming more and more similar to the Realschule, as described above. An Abitur is becoming less and less of a privilege or display of excellency, and rather a staple without which finding a job becomes difficult. But since we are a liberal society, everything must be attainable to anyone, and if they fail to achieve something, the fault lies not with their inability, but with the system. Thus, the Gymnasium is dumbed down to the level where anyone can pass it if they just study and memorise enough, even if in earlier decades they would simply not have been suited for an academic career. Not even our universities are exempt from this, growing closer and closer to the more practically oriented Fachhochschulen and away from their original theoretical and academic purpose.
 I believe this all to be a grave mistake, and a path leading to darkness. Mashing these school forms together will slow down, bore, and underchallenge the gifted, and put too much pressure on the students who would normally visit the “lower” school forms; the mass of teachings increases by the year, and trying to force all of it into the minds of everyone in less time, with larger classes, and uniformly with little regard to the individual's abilities and needs is bound to end up in failure.

 Who is to blame for this? Everyone, I would say. The industry for not seeing the merits of having easily classifiable workers for every position in a company, especially schooled and trained to excel at what they do, and instead demanding everyone to be certified with the highest degrees; the state for just going along with this and destroying the fundament on which our future is built; and the parents who constantly overestimate their children and blame their failures not on their own disregard of their offspring's natures and talents but on the education system not forcing them through at any cost.
 I dearly hope someone will realise this slippery slope and act against it. There is resistance among the teachers, but it has yet to reach a notable scale; but even the students themselves are doubting, many of the Gymnasiasten who now only have 12 years as opposed to 13 for example voluntarily repeating a year before applying for the final exams because they complain they need more time and it's simply impossible to learn two years' material in one.


EDIT:

P.P.A. You are a fucking retard. Every other thing I see from you is how Americans are dumb, Americans are useless, et al. Stop your racist, bigoted bullshit or I will be forced to eject you from the boards.

I'm not saying that U.S. Americans as individuals are dumb (which would certainly run contrary to my own experience with many of my friends), but that countless aspects of your country's political, economic, educational, and social systems are are prime negative examples of their disciplines.

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 29 2011, 08:18 AM

[Leyviur]

That goes for many aspects of all countries. I've only ever seen you insult Americans.

[P.P.A.]

That's because most users of this board are U.S. American and can thus easily relate to it, and because a few of my U.S. American friends often tell me about, explain to me, or link me articles covering their country's various grievances, so I'm very familiar with them.
And because of the important political and cultural role the U.S.A. plays on the globe, and the influence it extends because of that. Which just so happens to be a negative one because other countries only see its economic success—footed largely on previous generations of U.S. Americans, raised under completely different circumstances—while overlooking that, at present, the States are robbing themselves of the foundation of their own future.

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 29 2011, 08:26 AM

[Leyviur]

Here's the thing. You're falling into that trap most weak minded people fall into by just looking at one side or one news story. I'm not a fan of American policies at the moment, but the things you're talking about are more a problem with those representing our country. It stinks of closed mindedness and a desire to just keep stewing in your biases, and is no different from North Korean anti-American propaganda.

If you want to be taken seriously, write less like someone who recites half-truths and do some actual research instead of using a few hyperlinks and others' complaints as de facto proof.

[P.P.A.]

I'm not a fan of American policies at the moment, but the things you're talking about are more a problem with those representing our country.

Well of course, who else's? It still affects the entire country, though.

If you want to be taken seriously, write less like someone who recites half-truths and do some actual research instead of using a few hyperlinks and others' complaints as de facto proof.

To be honest, I have little interest in the matter, thus did fairly little research on my own, and therefore do not claim to be well-informed and gladly welcome any corrections and objections so I don't continue running around with a wrong idea in mind. But I'd still like to reject some of your accusations—I always made sure to get different opinions on this, and based my own one not on shallow complaints of frustrated students, but on more in-depth inquiries about how your system works and is structured.

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 29 2011, 09:27 AM

[H. Tsukiyono]

I am a terrible excuse for a Japanese kid. I'm a legal adult in Japan and I have great difficulty reading single sentences without running to the dictionary in search of all the characters I don't recognize (read: most kanji).

On the bright side I now recognize "gods" and "angels" readily. On the flipside I have more or less absolutely no reason to ever need to use these characters outside of translating DHE stuff.

... I need to go buy food.

[Rhiannon]

On the bright side I now recognize "gods" and "angels" readily. On the flipside I have more or less absolutely no reason to ever need to use these characters outside of translating DHE stuff.

That's what depresses me when I think "oh I'm going to learn this kanji because I always see it in video games." And then I look it up and it's apparently considered obscure and is only used in words like "beheading" and when would anyone ever be talking about that in a normal situation? THAT'S RIGHT NEVER. I'm actually pretty sure angel and god are more likely to be seen than some of the kanji I've thought about memorizing. :(

And about schoolland, mass production is bad. And I'm pretty sure half the general requirements for me at my university are things people already dealt with in elementary/middle/high school. It's not about building character (and it doesn't do that anyway, especially when everyone and their mother is bitter about the fact that they have to take these classes in this first place), it's more about them trying to make you stay longer for more moneys, and for some of the requirements they just want everyone to know that stuff. Like math. Too bad that's going off the assumption that people are actually going to remember this stuff for more than a month after they learn it if it isn't something that they frequently/can apply to their life.

If they made those classes free for people who haven't already fulfilled that part of their requirement I'd think it's totally okay. But as long as they force me to both take and pay for it I'll never be able to get over the fact that they were jerks who made me take two classes that they forced the wrong people to take (I'm pretty sure the reasoning was "you're homeschooled, this guy has ADHD and you guys all got terrible grades in high school. Let me babysit you for four hours a week and give you constant homework that will do nothing to help you in life or this 'subject' beyond your grade"). In addition to all those generals I'll have to take one day whenever I stop failing them/dropping them, of course.

ASH YOU SHOULD KNOW MY GRADES ARE STILL BASICALLY A A A A F A A F. That standardized testing knows what it's talking about!

[P.P.A.]

On the bright side I now recognize "gods" and "angels" readily. On the flipside I have more or less absolutely no reason to ever need to use these characters outside of translating DHE stuff.

That's what depresses me when I think "oh I'm going to learn this kanji because I always see it in video games." And then I look it up and it's apparently considered obscure and is only used in words like "beheading" and when would anyone ever be talking about that in a normal situation? THAT'S RIGHT NEVER. I'm actually pretty sure angel and god are more likely to be seen than some of the kanji I've thought about memorizing. :(

Keep in mind that kanji are Chinese characters though, so you might be able to recognise them in a bit of Mandarin at some point and be overjoyed that you can actually piece together half of a sentence or guess the rough gist of a speech bubble without even having studied Chinese! This actually happened to a friend of me once:

[16:12:16] franz: so for some reason, hayate comes out first in traditional chinese on the torrent sites then in japanese
[16:12:38] franz: I get both, first to look at the pix, then to try my chance at japanese, then finally I read the english scans
[16:12:49] franz: http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/14/scre...100630at101.png trad chinese on the right
[16:13:02] franz: on the second pane, the left bubble
[16:13:12] franz: 螟也阜襍ｴ莉ｻ
[16:13:21] franz: er
[16:13:28] franz: 豬ｷ螟冶ｵｴ莉ｻ
[16:13:34] franz: that's like "overseas job"
[16:13:37] franz: kinda
[16:13:41] franz: not really but yeah
[16:14:04] franz: MY POINT IS THAT since the kanji are the same I kinda understood it when reading the trad chinese, and having the japanese kanji being the same confirmed it
[16:14:12] franz: zomg I "read" a line of traditional chinese! ! ! 1

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 29 2011, 04:10 PM

[Rhiannon]

So today I tried reading my Phonetics textbook before doing the workbook problems my teacher assigned.

"Foreign language teachers might use examples from phonetic transcription in an attempt to teach their students better pronunciation of the different sounds of that foreign language, i.e., those sounds that do not exist in American English but do in Spanish, for example."

"The balance between these two positions, user friendly, on the one hand, and having adequate detail, on the other hand, is not always an easy one."

"For example, as speech-language clinicians, we will need to document not only why we arrived at a clinical decision, norm versus disordered speech, but treatment results as well."

And then I couldn't handle it anymore and went to the workbook and the first sentence I see there is "How did the tiny goat eat all those flowers?"

Not reading my textbook was the best decision in the universe.

[Dr Strum]

I've heard no positives from linguistics majors/minors taking Phonetics. Phonology FTW.

[Shiokazu]

HELLO LCNITIES.

i finally stopped the league of legends spree, and i can waste time with other things.

i must ask, first: what do you guys think about A Song of Ice and Fire becoming a television series and...

i want magicka buddies :(

[Walrus]

So yeah, hurricane happened, we lost power Saturday night, and it's still out as far as I can tell. No power means no water too, and a bunch of food had to be packed into a cooler with ice to keep it alive.

Luckily I'm at my college dorm now, with power and water and it's a really wide/tall room. PLUS WE HAVE A STOVE FOR COOKING FOOD. CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW

Classes start Thor'sday.

[CATGUN]

Ok...what's with the massive password recovery message that I receive from this forum even though I never request for one.....

I wish I am good at drawing,I really wanna make a doujin or H-doujin (lol : P) of Riviera....I already have an idea on how to make a story out of it...

This post has been edited by CATGUN: Aug 31 2011, 12:14 AM