Yet Another Rant...about the education system.

Yes, you read the title correctly. I'd lead with "I'm sorry", but that would be the American response. Actually, I take it back. The American response would be to not talk about it at all. By the end of this post, I hope you'll understand why. It's the main reason for me writing this, after all.

Firstly, in America, I get the feeling that problems are to be fought rather than fixed. Not just international or internal conflicts, but have you ever hit your DVD player in the hopes that it would stop skipping? I have enough material for a whole separate rant on violence in our language, but I think the reason "hit it" and "play that funky music" mean the same thing comes from a similar scenario. I have no links to back up that claim, but I also haven't found anything to say otherwise.

When I was here in Germany on exchange, I was in an eleventh grade class. I didn't understand hardly any German at first, but the first day was all explanations, introductions, and emergency procedures anyway. As the year went on, I realized that the students were actually expected to participate in the class. Not just by paying attention, but by speaking. And it's usually a class discussion: looking into the meaning of a political comic and what it says about that era in history, or describing and analyzing a graph and what it's trying to convey. They're usually very open-ended questions, with no one right answer. As it turns out, the questions asked as part of the lessons aren't rhetorical here. You're expected to respond aloud. A few times during the year, I think some of the teachers wanted to shake me like, "Say something, dammit!" But again, to expect such a reaction is an American thing, fighting the problem when it needs solved. Not that I've ever been shaken by an American teacher, either.

Once, our Government and Politics teacher was trying really hard to get me to talk, so he directed the question specifically at me. Spoke when spoken to, I guess. Problem solved. The answer that came out was unpolished, to say the least, but it was the truth to the best of my knowledge.

The question was about our college system and how it is here.

One reason I hesitated to answer the question is because I hadn't actually had a college experience and therefore didn't feel like I was a credible source. The other reason is that I didn't have anything nice to say about it. I had an outside perspective of college life, and it's similar to that song "I Love College"(NSFW), but my major problems with the whole thing are exactly what I answered with: "You pay a [heck] of a lot of money and *maybe* you get a job afterward." That's still somewhat of my perspective about the whole higher education deal, though I have more faith in the job prospects afterward. But alas, I'm going to finish college here anyway. That's not to say that it doesn't need fixed, but it's not something I'm personally concerned about at the moment.

The other thing I learned in school (in the States) is not only that the questions are either rhetorical or only have one right answer, but even worse, I learned not to listen as deeply as I did as a child. A question is asked, and you're not supposed to say anything, and the teacher moves on immediately. You don't even have time to think of a good answer. But that's ok, you don't have to have one. At some point, a question is just a statement with a different grammatical structure.

That brings up another topic: homework. In the States, I always saw homework as busywork. You do it, you turn it in, you get points. You don't do it, you don't get the points, but life goes on. Here, however, if the teacher assigns homework, it's going to have something to do with the following lesson. There's more reason to do it, because if you don't, you'll be out of the loop and probably have nothing to do the next day you have that class. You build on everything here. Things are more related, coordinated. There's a dependency between what you've done and what you're doing and what you're going to do. I don't see the same in the education system I went through, and the only reason I can think for it to be that way is laziness and lack of communication.

Looking back again at the difference in expectations as to whether you talk in class or not led me back to one of my fundamental bricks of language learning: Disney songs. (Click the links to see the videos I'm referencing).

In The Lion King, during the "Be Prepared" scene, Scar drops the line: "Just listen to teacher." At least, in the English version.

In the German version, there's no mention of a classroom setting. Ok, sure, the wording just didn't fit. Easy to write off.

The French version basically says, "Shut up and listen." Much more directly dismissive.

And, however comedic, the Google Translate version simply says, "The religious educator."

I'm not going to shove any conclusions down your throat. You already know how I feel about it.  But what are your experiences with any or all of this?

Like, comment, subscribe. Correct me if I'm wrong. Say what you need to say. Cliché if you need to cliché. You know what to do.