I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

lewi: Sep 3, 2006; King

billion dollar bitch posted:

Is the word "expat" pronounced with an A like in "crate" or "cat"? I've gotten different things from different sources.

Also, is it "There are a lot of people there" or "There is a lot of people"?

(For the record, I go with the former in both cases, but the people i'm talking with choose the latter.)

expat rhymes with cat.
There are a lot of people.

I'm English if it makes any difference.

# ¿ May 8, 2009 14:47

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:58

lewi: Sep 3, 2006; King

Brainworm posted:

Gen Ed rant

What do you think of the British higher education system where Gen. Ed. courses don't exist, and students apply to uni for a particular subject and study it and only it for the next 3 or 4 years?

# ¿ May 13, 2009 17:02

lewi: Sep 3, 2006; King

Brainworm posted:

I go back and forth on this.

As someone who chose a field relatively late in life (I was 22 when I decided to go with English over Physics or Philosophy for a PhD), I'm wary of systems that commit students to a course of study (and a de facto set of careers) while they're still in their teens.

This is one of those situations where what's good for the hive isn't necessarily good for the bee; the earlier you can get trained professionals into the workforce, the less you need to invest in them and the longer their working lives are. But as an individual, it's to my benefit to wait until I'm developmentally competent to make satisfying lifelong decisions. I'm not sure when that happens, but I'd bet at least one semivital organ it excludes most teenagers.

This is interesting, because I think as a whole there is a bigger expectation from society in the UK that people push through their degrees and go the whole way - dropping out is not nearly as common as I believe it is in the US, even if people decide after a year and a half that they don't like what they are doing. I guess you could say that there's a stigma associated with being a dropout. This, along with the fact that people specialise early, creates an odd situation where once you pick your subject, you will bloody stick with it.

quote:

That's one big issue. The second big one is how a culture expects college experiences to articulate with earlier education.

Simply put, you can have a college system built on early specialization as long as you've got relatively consistent and relatively high quality primary and secondary education. I can't say much about Britain on this one, but I'll bet another semivital organ that it beats the US on both counts, even if we only consider the systems that generally produce college-bound students.

Just for instance, British education's built around a national curriculum, while the US doesn't have consistent curricula even at the state level. It also begins at somewhat an earlier age -- most students in the US start school at age five or six, while British children start at age three.* The chief implication here is that British colleges have a relatively consistent applicant pool.

In contrast, US colleges need to accommodate an appalling range of experiences. There are US districts that don't offer calculus, trigonometry, pre-calculus style algebra, or statistics (that is, high school math for college-bound students ends with algebra and geometry), while others matriculate to college with grounding in all of these (as they probably should).

This is a tangible example, but the same diversity of standards is at work in pretty much every field, which in turn makes Gen Ed. in US colleges terribly necessary; I don't like that this is true, but much Gen Ed (especially at open admissions colleges) covers necessary matter wrongly omitted from high-school curricula (calc/stats, intro psychology, basic writing, and so on).

* I'm talking publicly-funded education here. Some US parents elect to private nursery schools, but the majority do not.

This is to do with early specialisation again, as well as nationwide exams.
I assume you know this already, but for the benefit of anyone who doesn't, schoolchildren start specialising to a certain level when they are 14 - at this point you pick a number of subjects to study for the GCSE exams taken at age 16. This number can be anywhere between 5 and 15ish, but for most good students this is somewhere between 9 and 11. Inner city state schools will offer fewer, academically-orientated public/private schools will offer and encourage students to do more. These nearly always include Maths, English, often a foreign language, the three sciences, and some arts subjects.
Then, at 17, most students take between 3 and 5 subjects for their AS exams, and then 3 or 4 A levels at age 18.

This does mean that, in fact, the last time a lot of students will have had a maths lesson will have been for GCSEs when they were 16, and will have possibly reached the level of basic trigonometry.

The way that universities cope with this is to only admit people who are taking related A Levels to the degree - i.e. if you wish to study a science, they will look for science and maths A Levels. If you aren't taking those exams, then they simply don't give you a place.
In essence, you start aiming towards your degree from halfway through your teens, even if you don't know specifically what you want to study until you go ahead and apply. For example, I always knew that I was going to do something maths or science-related and so all my subject choices were made for me - I ended up doing Bio, Chem, Physics, Maths and Further Maths for A Level which left me with the option of studying any science I wanted at university. However, for you, this would have been less then ideal because I assume you would have gone for English, Physics, Maths with a possible additional subject, and then forced to pick at the age of 17/18 which degree to go into.

I don't really know where I'm going with this as I'm far too tired to start formulating something interesting to say, but it does provide food for thought as to how differently two of the leading nations go about the education system. I'll try to say something intelligent tomorrow.

# ¿ May 13, 2009 20:39

lewi: Sep 3, 2006; King

Just to join in with the punctuation chat...
I use far too many dashes - how should I replace them with other punctuation? (Yes, I know, I did this on purpose as an example.)
I use them whenever a phrase links with another phrase - so they are too linked to use a full stop, but they aren't linked enough that a comma seems appropriate. Also, I don't know how to use semicolons properly.

# ¿ May 27, 2009 17:02

lewi: Sep 3, 2006; King

I noticed that you didn't include Much Ado in your list of preferred comedies - could you describe why? It's one of my favourites...

# ¿ May 28, 2009 17:30

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