Guvment Diet

[Forty Two]

They now have "remedial math" classes at Florida universities that teach fractions. No fucking shit. Fucking fractions at fucking University. Jesus God were fucking doomed.

First semester, I took Calculus, Physics (and Physics Lab), Chemistry (and Chemistry Lab), Engineering Graphics, other classes to get to 18 credits required. My Calc teacher said we were pussies because when he went to school they had to take 21 credits per semester. I just looked at their website and they've reduced it to 16 credits now, so they eliminated a class to make it easier.

[Alan B]

Yeah. Saw a program recently about 1 in 5 in the US couldn't read. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The US education system is fucked. There was this middle-aged guy, nice bloke with a family, going to classes to learn to read so that he could 'get on' and get a better job.

[JimC]

No such thing as a free lunch in our school...

[Brian Peacock]

In the UK the state school sector has become bogged down by systems designed to positively audit government education policy; educationalists and research have been sidelined, low-paid biddable youngsters forsake post-graduate university teaching qualifications for on-the-job training in the operation of the auditing system, and wholesale reforms are implemented centrally by ministers for political reasons without being trialled and without paying any attention to the consequences - the effects of which are squarely laid at the feet of those who are obliged to operate the system when they fall short, and claimed as a resounding policy success when they make next to no difference. The whole sector needs to be de-politicised and someone needs to ask the basic question - what is education for? - and then proceed in an orderly fashion from there.

/rant

[Woodbutcher]

When I was going to a country public school in Finland, we got a free hot lunch. A lady would show up about 10 o'clock and she'd chop up veggies and meat and make a pot of soup, or sometimes porridge or pancakes right in the classroom with grades 1-3. You brought your own bread and butter, hardly anybody had lunch meat then. My mother would bake a month's supply of bread at a time, sometimes the bread got a bit moldy after three weeks on the shelf, but you just cut the moldy bits off. Nobody died. We were vaccinated right in the classroom by a travelling school nurse, nobody became autistic. Once a year a bus would take us to the nearest city to a dentist, free of charge. We had Christmas pageants where everybody participated, the parents sat right in the classroom because we had no gym, it was a two room schoolhouse. Grades 1-3 in one room, grades 4-7 in the other. You walked to school, about 2 miles for me, because nobody had cars, rich kids had bikes. And in the winter everybody skied to school. There were three kids that everybody envied; they lived on a farm on an island, and every fall and spring they'd miss a week of school because of ice conditions. To some those conditions now would seem horrendous. I loved it.

[Svartalf]

No such thing as a free lunch in our school...

Then again you work for private industry and it can be surmised that your boys come from backgrounds wealthy enough that free lunches are not the order of the day in their families.

[JimC]

No such thing as a free lunch in our school...

Then again you work for private industry and it can be surmised that your boys come from backgrounds wealthy enough that free lunches are not the order of the day in their families.

No free lunches in Victorian state schools, either, although there may be some special programs extemporised in particularly poor areas.

Actually, our fees are about the lowest of any non-government school, and our demographic is pretty modest in terms of parental income. However, no grinding poverty either, and as far as I'm aware, kids without lunch is not an issue here...

[pErvinalia]

No such thing as a free lunch in our school...

Then again you work for private industry and it can be surmised that your boys come from backgrounds wealthy enough that free lunches are not the order of the day in their families.

The school lunch thing is a bit of an anomaly to us here in Australia. As far as I am aware, we don't have any school lunch system. We often have what's called a 'Tuckshop' where you can buy lunch and random junk if you want. At my highschool in Victoria we had a Pie Van show up every lunchtime. Pies and pasties and soup, and iceblocks in summer. But you had to pay for it, of course.

[rainbow]

In Africa, school children consider themselves lucky if they get a peanut butter sandwich, and a glass of milk.

[JimC]

In Africa, school children consider themselves lucky if they get a peanut butter sandwich, and a glass of milk.

And a missionary burger on special occasions...

[Forty Two]

Pies and pasties and soup, and iceblocks in summer. But you had to pay for it, of course.

My god... the madness... children of wealthy parents could buy more and better pies, pasties and ice blocks than those of less means! How vulgar... how barbaric...

[Scot Dutchy]

During my primary and junior secondary schools the food was terrible. You paid 1/- a day for the pleasure of getting guts ache. It was cooked in a central kitchen and delivered in steam boxes. My senior secondary school had a in house kitchen which produced really good food but the price was 1/3d a day.

[laklak]

When I were lad school hot lunch cost 50 cents. That, coincidently, was the cost of a pack of Marlboros in a vending machine. Guess where my lunch money went. Or you could get 2 gallons of gas.

[Woodbutcher]

When I were lad school hot lunch cost 50 cents. That, coincidently, was the cost of a pack of Marlboros in a vending machine. Guess where my lunch money went. Or you could get 2 gallons of gas.

Or you could get the 50 cent lunch and end up with 2 gallons of gas.

[pErvinalia]