#education systems

[uptoolateart]

Education Systems

I'm updating this because a French fan has now added to the conversation, for accuracy.

I think a lot of people have misunderstood the French education system, after watching Confrontation. I did a bunch of research into this for one of my fics - I have lived in the UK since I was 16 and have children in the British education system - and I originally grew up in the US. With all that in mind...

When you finish the first major stage of education:

France - Age 15

UK - Age 16

US - Age 18

Picking your focus / specialism(s):

France - Age 15, you can pick a stream, focusing on subjects relevant to what you want to do in life.

UK - Age 16, you can pick a stream, focusing on subjects relevant to what you want to do in life - there are also vocational courses, if you’re not remotely academic, and I bet there is something like this in France.

US - You are required to take all general mandatory subjects, even if you suck at them, until age 18, at which point you can finally specialise.

Speaking personally, when I lived in the US I was only given one elective in high school, and for my junior year (age 16) I realised I would have no time to fit that elective into my schedule because of all the science and maths requirements...subjects I was all but failing, because I knew I was artistic / literary-minded from a very young age. I was forced to suffer falling self-esteem, feeling like I was stupid and not good enough, simply because I didn’t have the ‘right’ brain type to fit with what the school wanted. There were other schools in the area that had slightly different requirements, but they all did some form of the same thing.

If you don’t know what you want to focus on yet:

France - There are generalist academic options where you do the usual variety of subjects, with the proviso that you get to choose if it’s more heavily weighted towards maths / science or towards liberal arts (see my personal anecdote above).

UK - Does something similar to France.

US - I was seriously considering dropping out of high school as soon as legally able (age 16) because I couldn’t cope with the pressures of the school system and my shattered confidence, despite previously being a straight-A student. However, if you drop out, you bear that stigma for life, no matter how much else you do - even though there are countries like France and the UK that legally release you from that education system at the same age or even younger. I’ve seen this happen to a lot of extremely intelligent American friends.

At university:

UK - You ONLY do classes directly related to your degree.

France - I'm told it's the same but that you don't get to choose unrelated electives for fun (you can do that in the UK - not lots, but a few over the years).

US - You are forced to take a lot of mandated subjects that have nothing to do with your course, e.g. local government or trigonometry even though you’re doing a writing degree, and you pay an absolute fortune for these / the required textbooks. (The most I ever spent on a book for my UK English degree course was £15, whereas textbooks in the US cost in the hundreds.)

What if you change your mind?

UK - Most jobs don’t care what degree you did, just that you did a degree. If you decide to do something that does need special qualifications, you can always go back and undertake them, at any age...with the proviso that you need to find the time and money.

France - I have been told it can be difficult, although in ways similar to the UK (and probably the US), where it depends on the job. Some jobs will always require retraining. It's always easier to do that training when you're younger and have fewer obligations

US - I can’t specifically comment, as I emigrated, but see above. Also, I have American friends who have gone through a LOT of hoops to try to change career paths in later life. This is probably an area where all countries could improve.

In conclusion:

The French (and UK) system is not necessarily forcing teenagers to lock into a fixed career path with no looking back, at the age of 15. Nothing is perfect, but in many ways, I think the French system actually offers options for greater flexibility by allowing greater choice at a younger age, instead of being forced to take all these other classes they may never use again in life, possibly at the detriment of their mental health.

Don’t get me wrong - there are a lot of things I prefer about the US vs the UK system in the lead up to high school (I can’t comment on the French system during those years, as I have no experience). But I’m a big believer that we need to allow kids greater choice at a younger age, with the option to stay in generalist education if that’s really what they want.

[lary-the-lizard]

“Americans are so self centered, they don’t know much about Europe.” “They just assume that everyone knows things about America.” “Their education system is awful and they only speak English.”

The United States is made up of 50 states, most of which are each the size of the average European country. The only countries connected to the US are 2 other countries which are also fucking huge compared the average European country. It takes 35 hours to drive from 1 side of the country to the other. The US has more that 344 million people while Russia, a country much larger than the US has 144 million and Spain has roughly 48 million and France 68 million. On top of that, our country is fucking powerful.

None of this is justification for being an asshole nationalist but does justify how very US centric our whole lives are. We love foreign cultures and learning about how the world outside of the US works but with how big the country is, we are constantly surrounded by ourselves. We made a lot our own ways of doing things because before the internet we were even more isolated from the world.

And let’s not forget how much the colonization and expansion of the US changed the whole world. We are not the best country by a long shot but we are a huge one in regards to everything. The sheer size and population makes what is easy for European countries much more complicated. We should have universal healthcare and much tighter gun regulations and we definitely can do that but it’s much more difficult to organize and reinforce.

The reasons that the US is this way goes beyond pride and corruption. The average US citizen is poor and overworked. We don’t have time to be well educated on things that don’t directly influence us

[ehj3]

GREED ABOVE CREED

I have no words.  I don’t know how it could have happened.  Of course I have words. And I think I know how it happened. Mass media is to be blamed. By mass media I mean collections of information, propaganda and fiction created for and created among a large audience. The audience doesn’t have to be diverse, nor does the means of circulation have to be “traditional” i.e. newspapers, radio or…

[afrotumble]

A Computer Scientist Who Tackles Inequality Through Algorithms | Quanta Magazine

[agoodflyting]

Fun Fact:

I got an angry email from a parent last year because I showed Coraline in class. (On the last day before a holiday! Not even during normal class!)

They said I was unfit to be a teacher and that I was a 'threat to the spiritual well-being of (student)' because I subjected their (13-year-old) kid to 'unholy things'. They also said I had single-handedly shaken their faith in the school system.

Because I had shown Coraline. To a 13-year-old.

The most ridiculous part is that the kid went home and was talking about how much they *enjoyed* the movie. I'm not sure if the parent was just looking for something to get mad about or if they honestly think Coraline is capable of destroying the souls of the innocent. 🤔

[neuroticboyfriend]

once again thinking about how fucked up it is that special ed used me and other disabled children as unpaid, coerced labor. i worked enough to be making $100 a week. i was "paid" in fake money redeemable only at the school cafeteria, which i worked at, and was forced to do things that distressed me. they gave us $1 a week, if they remembered to give it to us at all.

this was while i would sometimes go the entire day without eating because i didn't have the money to buy food and the free food was not sensory safe. we also worked outside the community - grocery stores, warehouses, shoe stores security tagging items. all under the guise of job skill development, we did $100 of labor a week without ever getting paid. and we were demeaned while we did it. and we were just teens.

so no, i don't want to hear about how special education is good. not with the way me and my peers were treated and taken advantage of. death to institutionalization, in all forms.

[becomingvecna]

reblog if you think these are all valid reasons for a student or an employee to take a day off from their school or their job without their grades or paycheck being affected in any way:

- period cramps

- exhaustion, be it mental or physical

- depression, anxiety, and other mental health related issues

[culturaldiversityday]

Holistic development : sustainable pathways for individual and societal well-being.

Culture and arts education nurture self-confidence and resilience, as a critical enabler to build competences and aptitudes for inclusive sustainable development. At the same time,  it lays the foundation for the social and emotional skills that are essential for the flourishing of peaceful and prosperous societies. There is a need for learners to think-outside-the-box, and to develop critical-thinking skills with the compass to navigate an increasingly volatile world and build a more interconnected and sustainable planet.

How are education systems supporting this development?

[reality-detective]

The powers that be are sweeping this 👆 under the rug. 🤔

[thebellekeys]

And a reminder that higher education cannot be considered truly democratised if students can still be doomed to poverty with multiple or advanced arts and Humanities degrees...

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

reblog if you believe people who graduated from high schools or colleges should still have free access to the schools’ / colleges’ libraries for the rest of their lives

[indizombie]

Children living in poverty are less likely to have access to school and drop out sooner, according to the report. They also are less represented in higher levels of education, which receive much higher public education spending per capita. These children are also more likely to live in remote and rural areas that are generally underserved. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, education systems across the world were largely failing children, UNICEF said, with hundreds of millions of students attending school but not grasping basic reading and mathematics skills.

‘Poorest learners benefit the least from public education: UNICEF’, UN News

[mxmorbidmidnight]

You know those teachers who would have posters in their classrooms like “weird is a superpower” and “in a world where you can be anything, be kind” then would proceed to scream at a neurodivergent child until they cried.

[distant-traces-of-beauty]

"Ballistic markings are the fingerprints of a gun" is to the Ace Attorney universe what "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of a cell" is to the American education system

[inkprilled]

Just before covid hit my brother and I at 15 and 19 found our selfs homeless. I had a choice, my brother would go into care or we could stay together, but only if I took responsibility for him and had somewhere to live. So I applyed for social housing, the guy that processed my case was sympathetic and at some points I was holding it together better than him, do you have any other family? No, Do you know where your mother is? I wish I did, how old is your brother? 15 are you in any fulltime education? Not anymore. He looked at me like I was something tragic and I suppose I was, there isn't a metaphor for what I looked like that works any better than just what his naked eyes saw; a girl abandoned by her mother, her life in a bag on her back completely thrown on how to deal with everything, and all he could do was fill out a form and send it and me off. it's going to be okay.

Somehow despite the odds we where given emergency accommodation and a year later a property to rent, I suspect we where pushed up the list because of my brothers age, we where lucky, some people wait years in hotels or streets all over the country, living out of suitcases and rucksacks.

As lucky as we where, luck didn't cover all the things I suddenly had to know. I had no idea how bills worked or paying my taxes, I didn't even really understand what "taxes" meant until the final notices where piling up in front of us. It's something they don't teach you in school or at least mine didn't. They never taught us how to survive in a world like this, they assume our parents would be there to explain or we'd be much older before it mattered. what's more useful in real life, how to formally address someone in an email or how to keep the lights on or how to find food when a tin of beans is too expensive.

Though I suppose the email ettique lesson was useful for something in the end,

To whomever it may concern, I'm writing to you regarding my payment plans and how I'm choosing to fork over alot of money and won't be buying enough food to live off this month. My regards.

[dosesofcommonsense]

I cannot understand how someone would vote for this, but I also know mental illness doesn’t make sense.