Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: TP Msg. #422 WHEN STUDENTS THINK WE ARE MEAN (fwd)



At 14:05 -0500 6/19/02, John Clement wrote:

We live in a society that devalues education and learning, and that has
always been this way. The Ivy League gentleman's C has been around ever
since the league was formed. Popular politicians have never been called to
task when they insult people by calling them eggheads (really it should be a
compliment). Europeans tend to value education, or perhaps the titles of
education more. For example the wife of a PhD (Dr. Schmidt) in Germany is
Frau Dr. Schmidt. Of course this attitude is schizophrenic or even
hypocritical as we expect MDs to be superb technicians and completely up to
date in medical knowledge.

I'm told by some acquaintances who have graduated from Tokyo
University, which is head and shoulders the most prestigious
university in Japan, that the struggle to get accepted to a
university in Japan is so great, the competition so stiff, that
people will do almost anything to get their toddlers into the right
pre-school, so they will be able to get to the right grammer school
and then the right high school to prepare them for the grueling
entrance exams to TU. But once they get in, the fight is over. They
are virtually guaranteed graduation and jobs for life after that, so
their time at TU becomes four years of non-stop partying, before they
go back to the non-stop grind for the rest of their lives.

This may have changed with the recent tanking of the Japanese
economy, but its the way it was a few years back.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
******************************************************