Education System

If you want to compare it to the Romanian one just imagine the US system with these adjustments:

-drastically reduce funding

-modify the curriculum at least once per administration

-modify national evaluation methods and standards at least once per administration

-pay teachers 500$ a month MAX (for university teachers about 1000$)

-remove mess halls (replace with unofficial smoking areas near exits or entrances)

-reduce security to a minimum, remove where possible (most places)

-alternately add and remove mandatory uniforms but not for all at the same time

-ignore violent and/or obscene behaviors of both students and teachers as long as the press does not find out

-add a strong political faction that is slowly splitting the educational and administrative system on ethnic criteria (the separatist leaders of a demographic minority)

-reduce the flexibility of courses and the methodological freedom of teacher to the absolute minimum that does not imply outright elimination

-add a context that discourages teamwork and encourages cheating

-etc… (There are probably a few more things that elude the grasp of my memory at this moment)

-Bonus fact: I personally know an university teacher that teaches english and calls herself a dean but speaks the language like Yoda (if Yoda where high on weed )

This should give you some idea how this are here compared to the US

Note: this is based on my own experiences in the quieter parts of a small town, I do not have much information about how things are like in the rural areas or the ghetto areas of the bigger settlements (that are said to be worse) and virtually no information about the private (and super expensive) "elite" schools that exist in some areas (that are said to be better)

Lithuania.
Schools. Actually I m rather happy with these(yes there is some "flaws" in schools some are really terrible but it is not that terrible as person above me said), at least my cousin went to US and he was upped by two classes. We learn english from 5th class (at least I did) somehow I see this as big +. What I dont like that in informatics classes we used to work only with M$ products.

I m IT engineer(still studying). University is cheap you can learn if you want but not from university(mostly). There is some good lecturers(rare) but young ones are cool ones. In one course learned blender(was cool open source guy! he even didint allow students to send documents in .doc cool huh?) it was probably most interesting thing which I did.

To sum up it was disappointment to be honest. First two years was like 13, 14 grade (philosophy chemistry psychics, math, more math, even more math too much theory almost zero practice. Almost everything I learned it was not from university, but from my hobbies. I m in my last year(making robot with android not as interesting as it sounds) and I still dont know what I should do or what/where I should work :)

Too much microsoft things.

When i studied in Czech republic, all schools were free (including university)
You got very cheap food and housing at university and extra money from state for student.

I was generally happy with the way school things worked.

Recently schools appear to be dumbing down significantly and teachers are chronically underpaid.
For example they removed mandatory maths exams - now people can finish high school without even knowing how to integrate wtf..

Switzerland

Overall, I'm quite happy with how things are here... although it could always be better. For children/till 15, classes are small compared to surrounding countries. Results are ok. But as we have a federal state just like the US (and per state school system), its difficult to make general statements except for federal engineering schools. But to my knowledge, we don't teach creationism or ID anywhere... :)

I don't think you should rely on "feelings" to make an assessment. Better get some statistics/analysis, so go here: http://pisa.educa.ch (use google translate... english isn't one of our official languages). Go straight to: http://pisa.educa.ch/sites/default/files/20110111/pisa2009_fr.pdf
Or for the international PISA site: http://www.pisa.oecd.org/
Note that simply based on these stats, US and switzerland doesn't seem very different. How americans manage to pay back their student loans after they finish/fail school is another story.

In Switzerland, schools are free... and for university/engineering schools, it is very cheap. Here, everything is usually more expensive, except schools (yay!), even good ones: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2011. But cheap housing/food is something else...

Teachers are paid ok. (Not sure they are more happy than elsewhere, though!
If anyone has student or teacher satisfaction/country statistics... or suicide rate/country, I'd be interested to see it!)

I won't add more, it would look like an ad... :)

That was about public school. Now, if you want to send your kids to private schools, we also have some that cost an arm and both legs. I have no idea if they are good, but they tend to attract super-wealthy families and dictatorship regime members. It seems these schools fail as much as elsewhere to motivate students who dont really have to care about success...

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_in-school-kim-jong-un-couldn-t-speak-english-failed-exams_1629373

And for my account, I also studied software engineering (eng. school, some time ago)... but compared to wolas, we've never been exposed to microsoft software (well, we had PCs running DOS... but that's all, most work was on sun/sunos or vax/vms) and we were forced to use latex to make compsci papers. I never learned intel CPUs which were considered ugly compared to motorola/mips (shows teachers freedom to proselytize... for better or for worse). And I was never exposed to C which, being untyped, is "dirty and dangerous". You probably never heard about any of the languages I learned back then (and I'm not that old!)... except maybe ada. As wolas said, you better have some related hobbies! Mine was playing with that new linux thing. It fared better than ada... ;)

@saktoth: the reason it is being done this way is because nobody wants a tax raise because of those little punks who listen to deviant music!!

> I know the US education sucks (since I'm from it).

As am I. Went to a public school my entire life, got accepted on scholarship to a university, became an engineer, and now I work a very nice job as a process engineer in a manufacturing plant. I went to high school in a small farming town of 20,000 people. We had a single high school with about 900 students. Yes, it was a shitty school My freshman class had 450 people; we graduated just over 150. Those that dropped out did so because of the life they wanted: to work on their parent's or friend's farms, or at their dad's grocery store, or at the local hardware store. For the majority of jobs you work in a town like that freshman-level algebra and English will be the only education you ever need. The person working the counter at the hardware store doesn't need to know calculus and the person herding cattle doesn't need to be able to write a dissertation on the economic conditions leading to the 2008 economic collapse.

The kids with good parents pushing them to do well in school almost always succeed. The kids whose parents don't give a shit and blame the teachers when their children perform poorly don't do so hot. The parents have more to do with their child's education than the teachers do. There is a sharp correlation between dropout rates and certain factors such as poverty and race. For example, poor, black children are far more likely to fail out of school than middle-class white children. I don't like this racial and economic divide, but it definitely exists.

The U.S. education system is not fantastic but it's adequate. If the child and their parents have a desire to succeed, they will do well.

It's a mix. Being an active parent that is involved in your child's life does not mean that you have to push them beyond what they are capable of. I look at all the "successful" kids from my high school, and each of them had strong parents that were invested in their education.

lucky, you're totally right in your first paragraph. To me it sounds like Antelope emphasizes "push" more than "support" though when he says "active". The use of the word "successful" seems a bit odd here, or maybe it's just unclear and lacks definition. Do you mean phony, 'lope? Like those people my university's bootlicking to get some money? (or that's what it looks like, anyway) :)

To be honest Skasi, I needed some push. I'm very smart but also can be very lazy. For example, I'm typing this from work ;) I skipped a lot of homework because it was too easy - I only did homework that was interesting to me. (Geez - my head sounds big!)


My parents were there to keep me focused when my focus was lacking. One of the best things I've seen introduced to American's high school system is dual-enrollment. I stared taking college classes while still in high school. They were much more stimulating than my normal classes and allowed me to earn college credit. I had my first year of college finished when I graduated high school.

Wow I want Ratalin too!!

Edit: watch this movie (Limitless)

luckywaldo7 linked a vid that says US prescribe Ratalin to student to make them pay more attention.