Oops, up there I wrote the school was "almost twice as fast". Actually, in the US we took one full semester to get to chapter 5 of the textbook. Here in Sweden we got to chapter 6 in HALF a semester, and we were learning extra things not taught in the book on the side, and the class and textbook isn't even in these people's native language (we were also expected to do things like write a mini essay at the end of the class, our homework wasn't just stuff like filling out worksheets).
Yeah, America suffers from 1. Capitalism (which by nature, is a system where you only think about yourself), 2. A good life is only for the elite or the lucky, 3. Political and informational isolationism. If you keep your people ignorant, if you don't teach them certain things, censor other things, don't show certain things on TV etc, they don't realize how bad they have it and they won't fight against you.
My wife says that "From what I know, American schools and parents don't teach. They babysit."
Do you know what Swedish kids learn in elementary school (or at least the school ensures that they know how to do it)? How to make campfires, carve wood, swim, bicycle, ski, on top of that they do stuff like take nature walks to identify plants. At some point, I think junior high, they learn basic woodworking, cooking and sewing. They sometimes do things like try out how to make yarn from sheep's wool. Stuff that started disappearing in the US in at least the 80's (I certainly did none of those activities in my school and I graduated high school in 2009). By the way, to the campfires the kids bring food that they've prepared at home (ex. hotdogs, or cinnamon-bun dough) that they then cook.
In high school you're required to take physics and chemistry (I took neither!) and you'll have studied at least two different foreign languages for many years. English words and phrases starting in your first years but English classes starting in earnest in about fifth grade, continuing on for all your years, and then you'll get five or seven or so years of a language like German, and then you can pick another - my wife chose Japanese.
In Iceland, English starts in low amounts in something like second grade, Danish in fourth or fifth, another language (French or German usually) in seventh or eighth, it's that kind of system. In English class they even end up reading things like Shakespeare. My Swedish wife's read more classic English novels than I have! So ex. when my wife hears about someone who can't swim, her immediate thought is always "What?! But that means they failed elementary school!".
My wife was doing woodcarvings in after-school daycare when she was like seven years old, and "they gave us normal knives". She didn't know safety scissors even existed, they don't use them in schools. Meanwhile in America we have kids who aren't allowed to use matches or the stove until they're sixteen.
It's not just the general education either. There's no school busses, the kids take the normal city bus or walk/bike to school. In Swedish gradeschools, food is free for all students, and you can go back for seconds as much as you want. They always have stuff like vegan options, and have things like a small vegetable "buffet". You get more than 40 minutes to eat lunch. At least in her elementary school, the food was mostly local (so local that sometimes there were pebbles in the potatoes). Because the food is free, no one brings lunches to school "unless they're really weird". There's no chocolate milk, soda or dessert, you get plain milk and it's never frozen. You don't get chips.
(She notes that when she was on exchange for a while in Germany for her German class, all the German mothers packed in candy and "shit food" for their kids' lunches, and the milk was "synthetic", and the Swedes were shocked. In Sweden, stuff like candy and chips is basically only for Fridays/Saturdays thanks to a very successful campaign some decades ago to reduce the amount of cavities in the population.)
She says "Our junior highs and high schools are just like your universities. You have a class schedule that varies, you can get hours in-between classes sometimes. Theoretically you can have days in junior high where you only have a single class."
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momijizukamori
extremely long again 1/2
Date: 2015-09-12 11:55 pm (UTC)Yeah, America suffers from 1. Capitalism (which by nature, is a system where you only think about yourself), 2. A good life is only for the elite or the lucky, 3. Political and informational isolationism. If you keep your people ignorant, if you don't teach them certain things, censor other things, don't show certain things on TV etc, they don't realize how bad they have it and they won't fight against you.
My wife says that "From what I know, American schools and parents don't teach. They babysit."
Do you know what Swedish kids learn in elementary school (or at least the school ensures that they know how to do it)? How to make campfires, carve wood, swim, bicycle, ski, on top of that they do stuff like take nature walks to identify plants. At some point, I think junior high, they learn basic woodworking, cooking and sewing. They sometimes do things like try out how to make yarn from sheep's wool. Stuff that started disappearing in the US in at least the 80's (I certainly did none of those activities in my school and I graduated high school in 2009). By the way, to the campfires the kids bring food that they've prepared at home (ex. hotdogs, or cinnamon-bun dough) that they then cook.
In high school you're required to take physics and chemistry (I took neither!) and you'll have studied at least two different foreign languages for many years. English words and phrases starting in your first years but English classes starting in earnest in about fifth grade, continuing on for all your years, and then you'll get five or seven or so years of a language like German, and then you can pick another - my wife chose Japanese.
In Iceland, English starts in low amounts in something like second grade, Danish in fourth or fifth, another language (French or German usually) in seventh or eighth, it's that kind of system. In English class they even end up reading things like Shakespeare. My Swedish wife's read more classic English novels than I have! So ex. when my wife hears about someone who can't swim, her immediate thought is always "What?! But that means they failed elementary school!".
My wife was doing woodcarvings in after-school daycare when she was like seven years old, and "they gave us normal knives". She didn't know safety scissors even existed, they don't use them in schools. Meanwhile in America we have kids who aren't allowed to use matches or the stove until they're sixteen.
It's not just the general education either. There's no school busses, the kids take the normal city bus or walk/bike to school. In Swedish gradeschools, food is free for all students, and you can go back for seconds as much as you want. They always have stuff like vegan options, and have things like a small vegetable "buffet". You get more than 40 minutes to eat lunch. At least in her elementary school, the food was mostly local (so local that sometimes there were pebbles in the potatoes). Because the food is free, no one brings lunches to school "unless they're really weird". There's no chocolate milk, soda or dessert, you get plain milk and it's never frozen. You don't get chips.
(She notes that when she was on exchange for a while in Germany for her German class, all the German mothers packed in candy and "shit food" for their kids' lunches, and the milk was "synthetic", and the Swedes were shocked. In Sweden, stuff like candy and chips is basically only for Fridays/Saturdays thanks to a very successful campaign some decades ago to reduce the amount of cavities in the population.)
She says "Our junior highs and high schools are just like your universities. You have a class schedule that varies, you can get hours in-between classes sometimes. Theoretically you can have days in junior high where you only have a single class."