>
> Although there were a few small details that he got wrong, I
> found the above an interesting read. I must say that I was
> shocked by the below statement about
> the educationaly system in Germany. As a high school
> student in a poor area of the United States (West Virginia),
> I had heard of the strength of the German gymnasium and the
> French lycee. I remember wishing that I could have attended
> such wonderful
> institutions:
>
> <<The German public (including me) generally assumed that the
> German school system is far superior to the US one -- until
> the devastating results of the PISA 2000 study came out. It
> showed that the knowledge and skills of German students were
> consistently below the performance of US students (which
> typically hovered around the international average). Since
> then, more German parents have begun to send their children
> to private schools, which had performed better than public
> schools in the study. >>
That does not surprise me at all. The US has an excellent educational system, especially higher education, far superior to what one typically finds anywhere in Europe. The difference lies not in the quality of education but in the attitudes of the population. The US is far more anti-intellectual than Europe. In US, looking uneducated and uncultured is generally a virtue, especially in lower echelons of society. In Europe it is generally unacceptable, and even lower classes aspire to education and high culture. It is quoite common in Europe to have a discussion on cultural, social or political issues with manual laboreers and people os seemingly 'low' social status. In the US, if you look to eductaed or cultured are generally dismissed as a "snob" or a "fag" and even educated people deliberately use vernacular to dumb themselves down.
Wojtek