Sure I am, and grateful that my son went to school here, but let's not get too...

Post #442,598 by CRConrad 1/11/23 8:24:41 AM 1/11/23 8:24:41 AM Reply	Sure I am, and grateful that my son went to school here, but let's not get too... ...carried away: For one thing, we have nutjobs here too, and far too many who believe them. For another, all that isn't really unique to Finland, nor even all that new. We had media criticism -- not as a separate subject, nor all that many hours of it, but still enough for me to remember it now -- in Swedish "junior high" and "high school" (class 7-9 & 10-12) forty-five years ago. (It was part of Swedish / Literature, related to critical reading in general.) And I'm sure most other countries do too, and have been for quite a while; probably even the USA. But yeah, glad to see we're good at it. And satisfied with the school system here, now that the offspring is done with it for now. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #442,599 by boxley 1/11/23 8:32:41 AM 1/11/23 8:32:41 AM Reply	I am not sure if a class in media criticisim would fly here today unless FOX wrote the syllabus "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
Post #442,600 by crazy 1/11/23 9:22:32 AM 1/11/23 9:22:32 AM Reply	We rarely get that stuff until college I remember freshman college history of Western Civilization in 1982 and it was one horror after another. The teacher told us not to bother trying to get him kicked out, he had tenure, and it's finally time to tell us the truth. Half the people in that class walked out. They couldn't handle it and that was at age 19 and in a supposedly liberal East coast state. I doubt it's gotten better.
Post #442,602 by drook 1/11/23 9:30:53 AM 1/11/23 9:30:53 AM Reply	If that happens in the US, I've never seen nor heard of it before college -- Drew
Post #442,604 by a6l6e6x 1/11/23 11:28:54 AM 1/11/23 11:28:54 AM Reply	Rational thinking at some level should be taught in elementary school. Business people don’t want that to happen. Alex "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." -- Isaac Asimov
Post #442,620 by CRConrad 1/13/23 8:30:25 AM 1/15/23 6:54:23 AM Reply	Whoa, so sorry for all you Yanks! +: Peter, Sven (any other Euros left?), wanna chime in? If those kids had had even a hint of critical reading earlier, maybe they wouldn't have walked out of history class at 19, right, oh crazy one? Also, yeah, Alex, there might be a connection there... ;-) And Sven, I know you're a Yank nowadays, but back in the stoneage when we went to elementary school, you did so in Belgium or something, right? How was it there? And Peter, I suspect the Brit system -- otherwise often surprisingly transatlantic[] -- is more like the rest of Northern Europe on this? ___ []: Though perhaps more correctly the other way around, that the Yanks are still surprisingly old-fashioned-British in many ways. (More so than yourselves in some repsects, like weights and measures.) -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi Edited by CRConrad Jan. 15, 2023, 06:54:23 AM EST Expand All History
Post #442,621 by drook 1/13/23 10:53:02 AM 1/13/23 10:53:02 AM Reply	Rule of thumb for American education and healthcare No matter how bad you think it is, it's worse. -- Drew
Post #442,623 by crazy 1/13/23 2:23:03 PM 1/13/23 2:23:03 PM Reply	A hint critical thinking? Not a chance. Schools do not teach critical thinking here. They take teach repetition and recitation. Schools are controlled by local school boards. Local school boards are typically controlled by religious idiots, at least in the south of the US, and because they are so populous their textbooks invade the rest of the US. Don't think for a second until we have college that we had any truly conscious thought. And after that a significant portion of the population goes to isolated religious colleges which makes more highly educated morons. And because they have connections, they slide into positions of power in the political system.
Post #442,625 by scoenye 1/14/23 12:38:03 PM 1/14/23 12:38:03 PM Reply	Not that I recall As far as I can tell, it is still not part of the official curriculum. Having the Catholic Church control 2/3 of the basic education sector may have something to do with that. There are no US-style topic bans, however, and individual schools/teachers may make it part of the process, even in Catholic schools. But then this just popped up: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-family-sicily-letter-debate/index.html a couple in their 40s with four children aged 15, 14, 6 and 3, have decided to abandon their new life after deciding that the local schools and education system experienced by their offspring were not up to their Finnish standards. You may be further above the mean than you think ;-)
Post #442,630 by CRConrad 1/15/23 7:07:59 AM 1/15/23 7:15:43 AM Reply	Yeah, that one made the news here too a few days ago. Haven't even read your article (yet?), but as I recall from the reporting here they were actually quite satisfied with the teaching itself. It was just the organisation and circumstances around it that they found inappropriate -- too hard for little kids, sitting straight up on their chairs for multiple hours, no breaks, no playground to run off their pent-up energy in etc. AFAICR. Seems persuasive to me, and I must say I'm surprised as fuck at the Italians. WTF are they thinking, keeping kids cooped up for hours on end from pre-school? Gawd, they must get fidgety! Can't think it helps for learning much of anything. (Oh well, not that this family had to "abandon their new life" all that much: AIUI they just gave up on Sicily and moved to Spain in stead, where they'd spent the winter in a couple different places before. Seem to be semi-nomads, "snow birds".) I'll guess -- OK, hope -- that pretty many (probably most?) of those Belgian teachers and schools, Catholic or not, try to give their pupils at least a bit of common-sense critical thinking and general awareness, in some form or other... Right? ___ [EDIT:] Also, they're from Borgå, not "Borgä". [/EDIT] -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi Edited by CRConrad Jan. 15, 2023, 07:15:43 AM EST Expand All History
Post #442,638 by scoenye 1/16/23 12:31:49 PM 1/16/23 12:31:49 PM Reply	I'm not holding my breath Over 40% of the vote in Flanders now goes to separatist parties with roots in the WW II collaborative movements. That number has been growing steadily since the '70s. Their arguments follow the same old pattern, just with updated scapegoats. If any critical thinking is going on, it does not seem to have much effect. Education is now a regional responsibility. Wallonia does its own thing, the politics are the opposite of Flanders, but I can't find any official critical thinking curriculum at the elementary/secondary school level their either.
Post #442,646 by CRConrad 1/17/23 5:49:25 AM 1/17/23 5:49:25 AM Reply	Sad to hear.

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