Post-election British Politics Megathread

[Tamas]

Figures

[Valmy]

Well that would certainly explain East Euro students pwning the natives, as I have read several accounts of elementary/high school students from Hungary switching to British high schools and finding the complexity of the subjects much dumbed down.

This is what I could never get. Eastern European and Russian exchange students to the US always comment on how much easier it is over here yet their countries are so stupid. Why hasn't this academic brilliance prevented them from supporting people like Orban and Putin?

[Valmy]

Ok can somebody give me the short version on who this guy is and why he is so destructive? Just some insignificant MP getting hype because he says outrageous populist things?

[Monoriu]

Well that would certainly explain East Euro students pwning the natives, as I have read several accounts of elementary/high school students from Hungary switching to British high schools and finding the complexity of the subjects much dumbed down.

This is what I could never get. Eastern European and Russian exchange students to the US always comment on how much easier it is over here yet their countries are so stupid. Why hasn't this academic brilliance prevented them from supporting people like Orban and Putin?

Huh?  Academic excellence and politics are two totally different things.  I went to university in Canada, and I also found the Canadian curriculum easier and less stressful than HK's (as in, failing a subject does not mean automatic expulsion from the university? Wow).  Politics has nothing to do with it.  I keep my head down and make a living regardless of who is in power.   

[Tamas]

Ok can somebody give me the short version on who this guy is and why he is so destructive? Just some insignificant MP getting hype because he says outrageous populist things?

That is my understanding yes. He wants to turn Labour into Syriza.

[Valmy]

Huh?  Academic excellence and politics are two totally different things.  I went to university in Canada, and I also found the Canadian curriculum easier and less stressful than HK's (as in, failing a subject does not mean automatic expulsion from the university? Wow).  Politics has nothing to do with it.  I keep my head down and make a living regardless of who is in power.   

Disagree. Education is a civic value as well as an economic one.

[Tamas]

Huh?  Academic excellence and politics are two totally different things.  I went to university in Canada, and I also found the Canadian curriculum easier and less stressful than HK's (as in, failing a subject does not mean automatic expulsion from the university? Wow).  Politics has nothing to do with it.  I keep my head down and make a living regardless of who is in power.   

Disagree. Education is a civic value as well as an economic one.

Well just because there are high demands in the education system, it doesn't mean that a) everyone lives up to them and b) it serves to create critical-thinking citizens geared toward valuing individual freedom and democracy.

[Monoriu]

Huh?  Academic excellence and politics are two totally different things.  I went to university in Canada, and I also found the Canadian curriculum easier and less stressful than HK's (as in, failing a subject does not mean automatic expulsion from the university? Wow).  Politics has nothing to do with it.  I keep my head down and make a living regardless of who is in power.   

Disagree. Education is a civic value as well as an economic one.

Then the answer to your question may well be, different places have very different ideas about what education encompasses. 

[Savonarola]

Well that would certainly explain East Euro students pwning the natives, as I have read several accounts of elementary/high school students from Hungary switching to British high schools and finding the complexity of the subjects much dumbed down.

When I was in my 20s I took some courses at the local community college.  They had a large number of immigrants, mostly from the Balkans and Easter Europe.  They would comment on how much better their secondary education was than that of the United States.  My Italian prof (an immigrant from Croatia) said that she deliberately prodded students like that; otherwise they wouldn't study and by the time they got to regular college they'd bomb out.  She said she had met a lot of immigrants who had done that and ended up managing a K-mart or something similar; but would still boast about how much better their education was than the Americans.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Well there it is, the more educated a European country is the poorer it is and the more inclined to fascism or communism.

Fortunately, centuries of gormless stupidity have led to our sceptred isle remaining pretty well-off and free of dictatorship 

[Syt]

Well there it is, the more educated a European country is the poorer it is and the more inclined to fascism or communism.

That's because they focus on STEM instead of liberal arts education.

[Monoriu]

I hear a lot of people in HK say that the western curriculum is crap and that Chinese education is a lot tougher.  I think tougher does not necessarily mean better.  The bottom line is, tons of HKers and Chinese send their children to receive a western education.  Graduates of western universities are sought after by Chinese employers.  The reverse however is not true.  Westerners almost never send their children to China to receive an education.  Maybe they go for short-term exchanges or language courses but they don't go to China to get 4-year degrees.  Why?  Because everybody knows that a western education is better.  In boosting confidence, nurturing critical thinking and problem solving skills.  These are the things that matter, not memorising more stuff than the next person.

[Tamas]

In boosting confidence, nurturing critical thinking and problem solving skills.  These are the things that matter, not memorising more stuff than the next person.

Exactly

[Martinus]

Well that would certainly explain East Euro students pwning the natives, as I have read several accounts of elementary/high school students from Hungary switching to British high schools and finding the complexity of the subjects much dumbed down.

This is what I could never get. Eastern European and Russian exchange students to the US always comment on how much easier it is over here yet their countries are so stupid. Why hasn't this academic brilliance prevented them from supporting people like Orban and Putin?

Eastern Europeans (like Asians) tend to value encyclopedic/technical knowledge over ability to think critically. We produce good engineers and poor citizens.

[Martinus]

Well there it is, the more educated a European country is the poorer it is and the more inclined to fascism or communism.

That's because they focus on STEM instead of liberal arts education.

Yup.