Dear Pro-Gun Folks

That signs like this are necessary outside schools is already ridiculous enough.

So you would like to see teachers walking around with assault weapons slung over their shoulders. Your focus is on the idea that those teachers would shoot the killer.

You’re overlooking several aspects of the issue.

The Horror, the Horror! Really, I’m Serious

Photo: paulcurtis.livejournal.com

Ah! Only seven days and one to go to Halloween, my ravenous readers, so I feel compelled to warn you. I move as though invisible through the streets and alleys and I observe the good citizens of my subdivision decorating their trees and lawns with whimsically carved calabashes and synthetic spiderwebs, comfortably convinced that ghouls are merely a myth, a myth upheld for no other reason that to have a costume party.

My American Dream

This is what I dreamed last night.

I was in a school gym, remembering how we would be made to run laps around a gym just like that in high school in the Netherlands. And I remembered that I could. I’d be tired, and I’d be protesting loudly like any self-respecting un-sporty teenage girl should, but that’s all. And I resented–in this dream–that I can’t run for two minutes now without having a gimpy knee for the next two weeks (this is real; I ran for two minutes last weekend, and now it hurts when I walk down steps).

American International Dissociation and the Melting Pot

Cartoon by O’Farrell

One of my readers asked me a while ago to give my take on the apparent ambiguity between the American “melting pot” diversity and America’s dissociation from the rest of the world.  Well, here it is.  My take. I’m fully aware that I’m generalizing the heck out of this, but the question itself is generalizing, so that makes it totally okay.

Latent Foe

And now for something completely different.

In the 1960′s, Australian public school was still very much based on the system for preparing future factory workers from the Industrial Revolution onward, churning out good little citizens who didn’t question authority, followed instructions and didn’t make waves.

American History in the Netherlands

Image: Wikipedia

Another question I got from my funk post was: What do European kids learn about American history. Well, I can only talk about what I learned, but feel free to add to it in the comments, Dutch readers.

I had History several times a week, from seventh through eleventh grade, and from Mesopotamia to the Vietnam War, more or less. I seem to remember that we started learning about America in tenth grade, and it would have continued through eleventh grade, whenever America came up in realtion to a certain period. This would have been around 1977-1978. I’ll just describe what I remember; trying to be systematic after all those years wouldn’t work.

The Kids on the Bus

It’s summer vacation again. Schools are closed for about three months. A quarter of the year. No, this is not a post about the ridiculous length of American school vacations.

The Netherlands in WWII : It’s Still Not Over

This is the thirteenth and last (for now) post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

Photo: historietilburg.nl

Any member of the resistance who was captured, was interrogated/tortured first to get names of more resistance members, and then shot. Sometimes in the dunes on the coast, sometimes in the street, as a deterrent.

Photo: Joh. van Bueren

The Netherlands in WWII : Lessons Learned

Photo: rijksoverheid.nl

This is the eleventh post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

Authority Before the war, the Dutch were a very law-abiding people, with great respect for authority. During the war, the majority of the Dutch police

The Netherlands in WWII : The End

Photo: sg7cz6o.edu.glogster.com

This is the tenth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

About a week before the end of the war, planes from Britain began food drops. They were a drop in the bucket, but they gave hope. And on May 5, 1945, after five years of German occupation, the Netherlands was liberated.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Hunger Winter

This is the ninth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

On June 6, 1944–D-Day–the allied troops landed in Normandy. The idea was to

The Netherlands in WWII : The Day Bed

My mother and my aunt on my aunt’s first birthday

This is the eighth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The following is another example I told the students of an almost-disaster story.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Gun

Photo: smith-wessonforum.com

This is the seventh post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

I told the students the following story as an example of how even ordinary people, who were not in the resistance, who were just trying to survive, were faced with decisions that affected lives.

The Netherlands in WWII : Forced Labor

This is the fifth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The Germans were fighting a war on two fronts, and they needed every able-bodied German man to join the military. So they needed workers from elsewhere for their war factories, where materials from uniforms to aircraft were

The Netherlands in WWII : The Occupation

This is the fourth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions of a presentation I gave on the Netherlands during World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Jews

Photo: http://www.members.home.nl

This is the third post about impressions of American high school students of a presentation I did on the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The Jews were by far the worst affected by the war. First they had to sew a star of David on their clothing, so

The Netherlands in WWII : Soldiers on Bikes

This is the second post in a series about American high school students’ impressions of a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

I started my presentation with a map of Europe, showing where the Netherlands is, and all the countries under German control.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Beginning

This is part one of a series about a presentation I gave to a high school class in Austin, Texas, about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

American Teens and WWII Netherlands

My son B.’s ninth-grade class is learning about World War Two right now, so I offered to give a presentation about the Netherlands during WWII. Not because, in itself, the Netherlands’ history is so important in the big picture, but because I suspected that otherwise the students probably wouldn’t learn too much about how it was for Europeans to be occupied by the Germans.

The demography and geography of the different countries in Europe may vary greatly, but the stories of German occupation, resistance, and living in constant fear and uncertainty have much in common.

And, of course, the occupation of countries, the killing of Jews and the constant intimidation and terror all over Europe is what American soldiers were fighting, even though they may often not have been aware of it, since they were mainly in battle situations against other soldiers. But when they were fighting for freedom, this is what it meant.

So I gave a Powerpoint presentation (my first ever) about WWII in the Netherlands, basically talking about the same things that I mentioned in this post. Only longer, and with photos.

Of Catalogs and Curry

Did I mention that my Dutch library degree isn’t recognized in America, and that that was pretty much the end of my pretty good career? Well, you can take the librarian out of the library, but can’t take the library out of the librarian.

I have always had the urge to arrange books systematically. This may be traced back to my very earliest youth, when rearranging books was strictly forbidden. I have been making up for that cruel

What a Novel Idea

I know I write a lot about American education. I freely admit it’s one of my pet peeves. It began when I worked at a high school in south Texas, because I was absolutely appalled at the level of education there, the ignorance of most the teachers, the self-serving politics of the administration which hampered the few good teachers in their work, and all the time spent on things other than education.

Fallen Gods

The other day I was talking with an elderly man while we were both waiting at the garage for our tires to be fixed. He told me his son is a football coach and a teacher—I don’t know what subject he teaches. He worked at a charter school for years until it went under recently. So a little while ago he worked as a substitute at a regular public school for a week. A public school here in Austin in what’s considered a good neighborhood, so it’s a reasonably well-rated school.

Is Our Children Learning?

Notes From a University Student  12

In order to be a teaching assistant, I had to take a course on how to teach writing. Other than that it was annoying that students in Mexico were taking the course long-distance and that the technical difficulties were interrupting the flow, I have no memory of learning how to teach writing. But I got an A and now I’m a teaching assistant. In the English department of this university being a teaching assistant doesn’t mean I assist anybody. I just teach. I teach two classes of university students Remedial English.

Watch Out For Inflation

Notes From a University Student 11

Pieter Breugel The Tower of Babel

Let me explain the meaning of the American word “course,” because that’s confusing. Not everything related to education here can be easily translated into Dutch. To American standards I’m studying at a university, but to Dutch standards that’s a rather big word.

Those Elusive Urals

Notes From a University Student 10

Sir Philip Sidney

Right now I’m doing a course about the development of the English novel, from the Renaissance to halfway the eighteenth century. The professor is a nice guy and a specialist in the eighteenth century. Every now and then it’s embarrassingly apparent that he doesn’t know much about the Renaissance, but once we had arrived in the eighteenth century it started to be fun.

Magner Come Lowdy

Notes From a University Student 7

I now have an American bachelor’s degree in English. Big whoop. I told them they could mail it to my house. The thing isn’t worth more than a ninth-grade report card. I’m so pissed off! My Dutch library degree was supposedly worthless,  so I had to get my American bachelor’s degree. It’s laughably easy, so I get the highest grades, and then they’re surprised!

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Notes From a University Student  6

Illustration Kate Greenaway

One of the first days on my job as librarian at that small high school, I was sitting behind my desk, sorting catalog cards – yes, cards in 1995!—and some students were sitting at a table near me, showing each other pictures. Then one girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen asked me if I wanted to see pictures of her son. I started to laugh, and then I remembered that America has a problem with teen pregnancies. I quickly turned it into a cough. She wasn’t joking.

Viva Mexico

Santa Anna

You would think that for a Dutch person living in South Texas, taking a History of Contemporary Mexico course would at least be useful, right? I was even looking forward to it. But it was a disappointment. The course was twice a week, for four and a half hours.  The professor would spend this time reading notes from yellowed paper – apparently he had been reading the same exact notes for years.

Around the World in Five Weeks

Notes From a University Student 4

The registrar, after telling me that the courses I took in middle and high school in Holland didn’t count, had then turned around and given me credit for a few, so in the second summer session I took two history courses, all the courses I needed to have a minor in history. I couldn’t be a librarian, but after these two five-week courses I could conceivably teach history in high school. 

Look at Me–I Can Read!

Notes From a University Student 3

The second summer course was Survey of English Literature from the Romantics to the Present. That was a great course. It was largely a survey of poets and poetry, but since I hadn’t had much poetry in high school, most of this was new to me. The professor was pretty good and also rather demanding to South Texas standards, and the course was fast-paced.

Huh?

Notes From a University Student 2

It still feels strange to be a student again. Four days after resigning from the high school, I started my first summer session. During a summer session, courses that are usually spread out over a semester are given in five weeks. I had two courses, both lasting 90 minutes, five times a week.

3=3, Or Does It?

Notes From a University Student 1

The registrar of the local university gets to determine what my degree is worth. And he has determined that he cannot recognize my degree because  my library school did not have “university” in the name; it has the word “academie” in the name, and he knows exactly what that means, because he’s watched Police Academy.

Big Deal

High School Report 11

(From a letter in 1996)

The students’ high school education ends with a graduation ceremony. They practice for it weeks in advance, so that’s more time not spent learning anything. The ceremony takes place in the gym. Now mind you, these American gyms are a lot bigger than European school gyms. They have a full-size basketball court, with bleachers on both sides that can easily hold a thousand spectators. At one end of the court a podium is built where the school board, the superintendent, the high school principal, and the business manager sit. Each year the school also invites an important person. Last year they invited their congressman, but he had something more important to do, so he sent an assistant.

Rings and Things

High School Report 10

(From a letter in 1996)

Although the students in our high school are poor, they still have some money. And how does the school get them to part with it? The math teacher sells candy in his classroom. One of the teachers (who left because he made waves) complained that his students kept leaving his room during class to go buy candy from the math teacher.

Follow the Money

High School Report 9

(From a letter in 1996)

So how does our little high school get the funds to operate? Well, every school receives a portion of the local property taxes, but since this hamlet is dirt poor, that’s not much. Therefore there are all sorts of compensations. Extra funds are available for schools with a certain percentage of students living below the poverty line. In this school, 98% of students apply.

Divide and Conquer

High School Report 8

Although there are no more than one hundred employees in the whole school district, which is made up of one little elementary school, one little middle school, and one little high school, all on the same grounds, the superintendent insists on everyone following the correct hierarchical lines. This leads to idiotic situations. Take my own example.

Special Ed.

High School Report 7

A special education teacher should be one of the most valuable teachers in a school. Not only does she have to know most of the curriculum, but she has to have a vast knowledge of and experience in teaching methods developed to help students with special needs. I have no opinion of the special ed teacher at my high school, because I never saw her in action. What I do know is that her teacher’s aide started rumors about her, and she left a few months into this year.

And the Rest

High School Report 6

So apart from Cougar Time and sports hysteria and the TAAS test spectacle, surely the rest of the time is spent on education? Not quite.

Oh No! A Test!

High School Report 5

 

The students can take the TAAS test twice a year. A week before the testing the principal begins to give nervous little talks during announcements about the importance of the test. And the day before the test there’s … yes, you guessed it: another pep rally. This time the chant isn’t “Fight! Win! Play!”  but “Pass! The ! TAAS!” Cookies and lemonade are provided for this special occasion, as well as a magician.

Friday All-Day Lights

High School Report 4

There is often a change in the daily planning at the school because of “activities”. During football season there’s a game against another school every Friday night. The South Texas schools are divided by size. Since our school is tiny, we play against other tiny schools. Sometimes these are very far away.

A Day in the Life

High School Report 3

The high school has the following courses:

Cougar Time

High School Report 2

The average school day supposedly looks like this:

A So-called Year

High School Report 1

For the students the school year begins on Wednesday (sic), August 16. It ends on Tuesday (sic again), May 28. The Christmas vacation began on Thursday, December 21 and ended on Monday, January 8. More than two and a half weeks. Instead of autumn break there’s Thanksgiving in November, which means three days off, and sometimes a whole week. At Easter only Good Friday is a holiday. Instead of Easter break there’s Spring Break in March. For the rest there’s a long weekend in September  for Labor Day.