Re: Rude Comments about Weight - Was: Expectations about weight OTLONG

On 2006-05-13, Marina penned:

I remember reading somewhere that Canada modelled its language
legislation on the Finnish one (our national languages are Finnish
and Swedish). Sounds like attitudes are pretty similar, too. Some
kids hate having to take Swedish in school, other kids' parents send
them to immersion classes. My home language is Swedish, so I
attended a Swedish school, and had to take Finnish. I didn't hate it
because it was too difficult, I hated it because I already spoke
fluent Finnish, but I had to sit through the classes from day one.
Same with English; I learned English before I started school, but it
was compulsory to read English as a third language in my school.
Argh! What a waste.

I grew up speaking both German and English, but chose French as my
foreign language in high school. I'm glad I did; it's a useful
language to know; also, because a lot of people around here speak
Spanish, it gives me a leg up on translating, especially if
something's written out. Eventually maybe I'll take a Spanish class,
but I still feel like pursuing Japanese, of which I took only one
semester in college (can you tell I love languages?).

Anyway, I decided I wanted to take the German AP test to get college
credit, and so I wanted to take the AP German class, but it
conflicted with something else. Instead I took German 3. What a
snoozefest! I think I would have been bored no matter what, but the
German teacher just didn't seem to be real interested in actually
teaching kids German. If a test was on verbs, she wouldn't make us
remember nouns -- they'd be provided in the test. Etc. There was no
expectation that you remembered the previous lesson, or the previous
year, at all.

It helped me a bit with articles (I know I get them wrong all the
time, anyway), but otherwise, what a waste.

The French classes were very different. My French teacher expected us
to actually learn French, and kids who were used to getting As would
get Cs if they weren't paying attention. Then they'd go whine to the
principal about how it had damaged their GPA, and often as not, the
principal would "fix" it. *sigh*

Of course, some of us actually liked French and got As the
old-fashioned way.

--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca
.

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