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Post by questa on Jan 3, 2019 8:45:01 GMT
I forgot to mention "long day care". Most primary schools have a centre where accredited child care assistants care for kiddies from kindy to year 7, starting 7am to 6pm. Drop the ankle-biters off, they have a good breakfast while parents go to work. Clean teeth, get their hair plaited, older kids have finished homework. Assistants escort kids to classrooms then prepare the centre for after school activities. After school kids wait in classrooms until collected by assistants. Snacks, play games, TV, do homework until collected by parents.
Mark, the difference is whether it is education focussed or childcare so parents can get back to work.We don't have Nursery school and until 5-6 years it is not compulsory to attend any. Usually it is also a time for Mums to get a break as well.
Kerouac, Child care is expensive but the various Govts have subsidised it generously. It depends on parents income but they have to be in the $200,000 group to lose eligibility. School is technically free but parents pay for excursions etc
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 3, 2019 12:23:24 GMT
All seems very complicated, but I suppose there is a method to it. My kids, in Germany, went to the kindergarten, then to Junior School and then the big school. They would finish early afternoon, just after lunch time. Later on afternoons were taken by the "Hort/Kinderhort" - the after school club where they did their homework, got something to eat, played etc.
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Post by bjd on Jan 3, 2019 16:24:12 GMT
When my kids went on language exchanges to Germany, they were impressed by the German system where in high school kids were off by 2 or even earlier and could do sports or arts activities. At that time, my son had a 36-hour school week, my daughter about the same and they rarely got out before 5. My daughter spent her entire school "career" (before university) going to school on Saturday mornings. It was changed the year she finished.
I remember going to parents meetings about school and being shocked that some parents wanted school for little kids on Saturdays so they could do their shopping in peace.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 3, 2019 16:47:58 GMT
In Mississippi, where I attended grades 1-7 and 9-10, school finished for the day at 15:15. When I moved to California for grades 11-12, school finished at 14:50 and I felt that it was a glorious advantage. (In case you're wondering, I did not attend school for grade 8 -- I was with my grandparents in France.)
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Post by questa on Jan 3, 2019 22:58:07 GMT
My sons' high school was situated in a light industrial area. From 2nd year on, school started at 7.15am instead of the usual 8.30am. This was to allow students to work as apprentices after school or get after school jobs.They left in the afternoon at 2pm instead of 3.15pm. The school was supported well by the business community around it who recognised the work ethic and training of the students.
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Post by rikita on Jan 4, 2019 0:21:26 GMT
in my area it is similar to what mark said ... though when i was little, it used to be "kinderkrippe" (creche or day care, i suppose), for kids under three, and then "kindergarten" for three and older. both mainly play based, though. now, most places are a "kindertagesstätte" (kita for short), which combines the two, and is usually from age one upwards, though some allow even smaller kids and some only start at age two (especially the smaller ones). there is also "kinderladen", which is similar in concept, but usually a lot smaller (just one group, with maybe 10 to 20 kids) and founded by a parent initiative, so the parents have to help out more ...
and yeah, "hort" is to cover those times that there is no school but the parents aren't home yet (or mornings, if parents start work early). i think the maximum age for that varies a bit, but by fifth or seventh grade the children are considered old enough to just go home by themselves.
the cost for the parents varies by region and income of the parents, in berlin they were already relatively low and since a few years ago, for "kita" you only have to pay the lunch money ... some private ones might have some additional cost i think ...
as for the ending time of school - i think most elementary schools finish classes something like 1 or 1:30 p.m., but there are also some that are "ganztagsschule", so they have classes until 4 p.m., but then have periods of free play and of more "entertaining" classes during the day (so some of the hobbies can be done in school). i am not yet sure what i prefer - i suppose i'll find out if i like the system a's school uses once she is in school ...
i'd like to think that even though (or because) kitas like the one a. goes to are play-based rather than education based, children are encouraged there to think for themselves and ask questions, btw. - numbers or letters might be mentioned in context or when a child asks about them, but there is no sitting down and learning them together (though there is a morning circle for learning a song together or talking about a topic) ... not sure if i should translate it as daycare or nursery school or what else, though ...
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Post by questa on Jan 4, 2019 2:00:09 GMT
Indonesia has an interesting system. Too many kids, not enough schools. [from here on I will use 'chn' as the usual abbreviation. I dislike using 'kids']
Only in the last few years has the law making education until 12 years old compulsory. Before that children worked in the farms and rice padi or helped in the markets and little cafes. They now had to attend school, but there were space issues.
The authorities decided to use the school facilities to run 2 separate school sessions a day.
Morning session was from 7am to 12.30pm with time out for breakfast when granny carried the fresh cooked rice and veg to the school...about 9.30. All the chn in Indonesia wear the dark and light brown uniforms in Junior school
Many parents have enrolled their chn as private students and these wear a separate uniform and had (I think) teachers of a more Western style. The afternoon session was 12 noon to 5.30pm with a snack break about 3pm. Playing sport or marching took care of the time lapse at noon, as did assembly. If there were too many chn in either group, these were evened out. The schools are not well endowed and to have sporting equipment, technology shared...makes sense.
The chn have other duties to perform which contribute to the welfare of the family. These are fitted into the school times now.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 4, 2019 5:03:21 GMT
When my twin girls were a certain age they could start school, but the following year, they had to start school. One wanted to start as soon as possible, the other one wanted to stay in the kindergarten one more year. This suited us because it split them up. It meant that at the end of their normal school life, one finished a year before the other. The problem we had was in Jordan where there was the opportunity of just an English or an American school - the English one, because of the system, wouldn't allow the girls to be in separate years and wouldn't allow one to repeat the year, thus if we'd sent them to the school one would have had to miss out a whole year of education to jump to where the other one was. The American school was a lot more accommodating.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 4, 2019 5:46:23 GMT
Up until 2019, school was obligatory starting at age 6. But as bjd pointed out, only 3% of children were not already in school, mostly from immigrant families, so it was important to bring them into the system. Home schooling is authorised. The government website says that hole-schooled children are tested once a year and that there is an official verification of the reason for home-schooling every two years. I would think that it is a mere formality in the case of severely handicapped children but that there is considerably more pressure if religious reasons are invoked.
There is also talk of raising the obligation to be in school until age 16 to age 18, but I really doubt that this is going to happen.
I myself didn't set foot in a school until just before my 6th birthday.
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Post by bjd on Jan 4, 2019 6:11:23 GMT
Given the lack of appreciation for trades and apprenticeships in France already, it would be foolish to extend obligatory schooling to 18. Not everyone is academically minded and may want to learn a trade or whatever, starting at 16.
I started school in England at 4 1/2. Partly because my birthday is in January, partly because I was dying to go to school like my sister, partly because it was a private school and they were accommodating. When we emigrated to Canada when I was 7, I was bored out of my mind in a Canadian grade 2 class where they were just learning to read easy stuff and doing "printscript" while I was already writing and reading.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 4, 2019 6:55:29 GMT
.......hole-schooled children That'd be the spelunking school then.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 4, 2019 7:16:01 GMT
School is overrated. I can't remember the last time I had to - f) solve a linear equation c) needed to know the exact date Henry VIII died g) recite the first twenty elements of the periodic table i) know the Latin name for a cockroach (Blattaria) e) reason why some author wrote a certain obscure paragraph a) spel proply and use apostrofie's rite b) puzzle over loaves and fishes j) run a cross country k) use the French word for a pigeon h) write a treble clef..........
And so on.
If I could have just done geography, it would have been enjoyable. Oh, sex education...... that was good. I needed that.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 4, 2019 7:21:48 GMT
The minute I started algebra, I knew that I would never use it, even if it was a little bit fun at first. I flat refused to take trigonometry or physics because by then I knew that I would never be in any sort of scientific or technical profession.
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Post by rikita on Jan 4, 2019 10:25:46 GMT
thing is, i learned various things after school (like about history) that i found really interesting, especially in fields like history, that i knew we had to have had in school, but i couldn't remember - because somehow, in school, they weren't interesting at all. or there are other things that i'd like to know now (like about physics), and i am pretty sure we had them in school, but once again, somehow they managed to make them seem boring ...
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Post by questa on Jan 4, 2019 11:37:20 GMT
It depends a lot upon the teachers. Each must have a passion for their subject and not get thrown into a class they have no feeling for. Remember "Dead Poets Society"? The teachers who are creative will remain in our memories along with the lessons. High school history. "Read up on battle of Hastings tonight" Next day, teacher turned out to be military historian and out in the grounds we foot soldiers re-enacted the battle as he directed. Lessons from him covered Crusades and problems of chastity belts, styles in armour and the necessity to pass urine and faeces into the armour. He was such a good story-teller we didn't know we were learning until we all passed those exams.
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Post by bjd on Jan 4, 2019 12:04:14 GMT
Of course it all depends on the teachers. Unfortunately, there just aren't enough of them who can make things interesting. Particularly in high school when most teenagers would rather be out fooling around with their friends. I think much of what I learned started at university, or developed out of my own reading on random subjects. I basically remember nothing of what I learned over 13 years in primary and high school (in those days Ontario and British Columbia had 13 grades).
I was happy never to have gone to high school in France -- I was hopeless at math and here there is so much emphasis placed on it.
In October in Toronto I talked to my nephew who teaches science in high school. He told me he made his chemistry class into a cooking lesson, making the kids learn to scramble eggs, for example. He figured many of them would be leaving home the following year and almost none of them had any idea about feeding themselves. It sounded more like home economics to me, but if that's what it takes to get them interested and learn something, then it's all to the good.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 4, 2019 12:42:36 GMT
bjd, couldn't learning trades be part of the regular school system in France, as it is here in Québec? There are several trades schools, and for more technical trades (which are often more high-earning than uni tracks nowadays) there are advanced technical courses at CÉGEP (The Québec colleges that draw upon the lycée, the old Collèges classiques and the Canadian "college" sytem (called junior college in the US - we don't call university "college", except for the longstanding colleges at University of Toronto and other places that draw upon the UK colleges within universities.
I agree that trades and apprenticeships don't get the appreciation they should in France, as compared with the Netherlands and Germany. But nowadays high-tech trades do require a greater degree of general knowledge and computer literacy than was the case decades ago.
I was bored to death at school as I could read when I was 3, including the newspaper. But I was also not very good at math.
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Post by bjd on Jan 4, 2019 14:59:31 GMT
Lagatta, there are indeed lycées techniques, often beside regular lycées, there are also schools for those wanting to learn something like cooking (besides the école hôtelière which is selective), but still in France kids who opt for those schools are seen as someone who can't make it into the regular academic stream. I agree that it's stupid and requires a change in mentality.
High-tech trades usually require the baccalauréat followed by several years in an Institut Universitaire de Technologie (IUT). Engineers have prestige in France,but their training is much different and longer.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 4, 2019 15:19:08 GMT
The problem with apprenticeships has been not so much with the schools but with the companies and artisans -- either they don't want new kids fumbling around or they want free slave labour. Lots of young people would love to learn a trade if they were not being totally exploited, and the schools would like to supply them. Unfortunately, what is really a truly available is sparse. Hairdressers are always willing to take in "shampoo girls" but this is a profession that no longer really appeals to girls who think they should be Beyoncé instead.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 4, 2019 18:16:06 GMT
You make some good points. Only one teacher ever tried to make history interesting, Mr. something-or-other in 7th grade (and didn't succeed). While I have had a tiny spark of interest about certain aspects of history since I left school, it is really quite insignificant and I can almost always quench my thirst for additional information by using Google for about 5 minutes.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 4, 2019 18:50:46 GMT
After home schooling two of my kids for a year each at different times I fully understand why it is difficult to make lessons interesting. At times I had to say, you just have to learn this. I can't remember any of my teachers at school who at all made the lessons interesting. I recognise now good teachers and bad teachers, but me looking forward to their class? Never. All we looked for is a way to not have to do too much. Just enough to pass. One teacher wrote in a report for me, "Produces good work with surprisingly little effort", a back handed compliment which summarised my attitude - do enough to make it look good but don't expend too much energy doing so.
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Post by mossie on Jan 4, 2019 19:28:56 GMT
I realise that I am a dinosaur, from age 7 to 13 the country was at war and we lived within 30 miles of the nearest enemy. At the village school the air raid shelter was a simple brick building hastily built in the playground where we had to sit in darkness during air raids, the entrances being closed by heavy canvas gas screens. The secondary school had been badly bombed the year before I started, so the girls section had been evacuated to the West Country and we boys had to make do with the patched up remains supplemented by wooden huts. We had a barrage balloon in the playground and the luxury of a damp concrete tunnel under the playground as a shelter from the Luftwaffe, where we occasionally sat out air raids. At least I learnt to read and write and add up. I was also taught, at age 11 in the village school, how to write a job application letter and how to conduct oneself at a job interview. At both schools everyone was expected to get and hold a job, not lark about pretending to be a popstar. Larking about could earn the cane, although I must say at both schools this was very sparingly applied. The period after the war was perhaps even tougher, rations were cut and many things were in short supply. the winter of 1947 was very harsh and we twice had to walk home several miles as the bus had become stuck in the snow. Our clothes were of poor quality so one got cold and wet. Heating was often pretty low as coal was rationed and power was often cut. Lessons were not made interesting, one was expected to do serious learning because work was not going to be made interesting, the purpose was to provide an income to live on. So, knuckle down or die. But most definitely one was expected to keep smiling and press on regardless, help the war effort and beat the Hun.
Definitely time for serious violin music, but we survived.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 4, 2019 20:09:33 GMT
That has not changed in many places and is even worse than what you experienced in much of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, Yemen and even certain places that are not at war but where poverty is so extreme that school is out of the question. Frankly, considering the circumstances, you were lucky, Mossie. Of course just about all of the rest of us were even luckier and never had to deal with such situations.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 4, 2019 21:43:34 GMT
Well, I'm sure that despite the Blitz and all the privations, people in the UK knew that there were places such as Poland where the situation was infinitely worse.
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Post by questa on Jan 5, 2019 0:05:59 GMT
It has been quoted around the child development circles that a child learns half of all his eventual knowledge by the time he is three. Most of all he learns his family's attitude to learning. Does Dad switch from a nature doco to football as soon as he watches TV? Does Mum let chn help measuring, mixing and cooking pancakes? Do the siblings display work from school?
The cultures of China and SE Asia hold education in high respect. In Australia the students from these cultures are always highest in the Uni entry exams. They work hard, get assignments done and respect their teachers. The Australian students are more interested in social life and sport. Like Mark they 'do enough to pass', but when it comes to the "First three years" I would bet that Mark and his friends had more general knowledge than those with "Book learning"
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Post by rikita on Jan 5, 2019 0:34:35 GMT
hm, i agree that the attitude at home is important - like with reading, how often a child is read to, how often it sees the parents read, whether it has access to books (even if it ends up breaking some of them, but making them his/hers) etc. ... and the attitude to learning and intelligence (like viewing "being smart" as something you just are/aren't vs. the result of work) and how to deal with failure and the attitude to questions ... which makes it kind of difficult, because so often you just do automatically what you are used to, like jumping in to help the child instead of letting them figure it out ...
i also think the first years of school are important, though, and i think what has been called "expecting them to be entertainment centres" here is an improvement over sitting them down at their desks and all having to study the same lessons at the same speed. the latter i think can stifle a child's curiosity very quickly and can make them feel like they aren't smart enough and just don't get it, when maybe they just need more time or a different approach. and yeah, people have different interests and i was never good at math or sciences, but i do sometimes wonder if it could have been different (and in fact, after almost failing math for a few years, i did improve at least somewhat once i got a different teacher - a more entertaining one, yes, but also one i felt had a more positive attitude towards me and towards their students in general). and true, the difficult thing is that there aren't enough teachers already - and i don't like it when people just blame everything on the teachers (and i suppose that adds to the problems if the children hear their parents speak badly about teachers in general) - i suppose they should be given a lot more support ...
and while i was mainly lazy at school, i did occasionally take classes i didn't need to take and that i wasn't good at, because i decided i want to learn more about the subject ...
anyway, i suppose next year i can say more about what i think about schools, these days ...
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Post by rikita on Jan 5, 2019 0:37:45 GMT
(btw, i once read that some study had shown that parents tend to mention more numbers when speaking to/reading with boys, like counting out things in pictures etc., than with girls, thus giving the boys a kind of head start into math ... sometimes i remembered this and tried to spend attention to it with agnes, but then at other times i forgot to spend attention ...)
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Post by questa on Jan 5, 2019 2:43:15 GMT
Rikita...very interesting about boys and numbers. I read a study re gender perception. A mother with a 3 month baby sat in a waiting room with her toddler playing at her feet. Baby had wispy hair and average looks. As patient entered and sat down, mother would ask then to hold baby while she took toddler to the toilet. All the patients did so and their reactions recorded. If the baby was in a blue jump suit, patients would tend to hold them standing on their laps, bounce them up and down, make funny faces and noises, stimulate them and used names like Tiger or Champ
Same baby, pink jump suit. Patients held baby lying in cuddle position on her back They tended talk tunefully and tell her how beautiful she was. Patients stroked her face and head in a calming manner and engaged eye contact, names were Princess or Beautiful.
Teaching and learning start early.
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Post by rikita on Jan 5, 2019 8:30:39 GMT
interesting experiment! and yeah, i agree it starts early, and often without realizing that you teach something - which is why when people tell me that they treated their boy and girl exactly the same yet they turned out "typical" boy and "typical" girl, i always wonder what early influences they might not even be aware of (and i am sure i am guilty of treating kids different without realizing it, too) ...
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 5, 2019 11:38:52 GMT
I did not officially learn to read before I started school, but I'm sure that if I had asked my mother, she would have happily done so. However, I spent many afternoons with her after my brother had started school sitting on the sofa as she read to me, and I would always look at the book at the same time (since of course most books for children have lots of illustrations, even when they are not picture books). Something must have sunk in, because even though my memory is rather hazy on the details, I was almost immediately the best reader in the 1st grade, even though several of the children claimed they already knew how to read when they arrived. Liars!
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