Current time: 04-26-2024, 01:31 PMHello There, Guest! (Login — Register)
RIP School Survival Forums
August 2001 - June 2017
The School Survival Forums are permanently retired. If you need help with quitting school, unsupportive parents or anything else, there is a list of resources on the Help Page.
If you want to write about your experiences in school, you can write on our blog.
To everyone who joined these forums at some point, and got discouraged by the negativity and left after a while (or even got literally scared off): I'm sorry.
I wasn't good enough at encouraging people to be kinder, and removing people who refuse to be kind. Encouraging people is hard, and removing people creates conflict, and I hate conflict... so that's why I wasn't better at it.
I was a very, very sensitive teen. The atmosphere of this forum as it is now, if it had existed in 1996, would probably have upset me far more than it would have helped.
I can handle quite a lot of negativity and even abuse now, but that isn't the point. I want to help people. I want to help the people who need it the most, and I want to help people like the 1996 version of me.
I'm still figuring out the best way to do that, but as it is now, these forums are doing more harm than good, and I can't keep running them.
Thank you to the few people who have tried to understand my point of view so far. I really, really appreciate you guys. You are beautiful people.
Everyone else: If after everything I've said so far, you still don't understand my motivations, I think it's unlikely that you will. We're just too different. Maybe someday in the future it might make sense, but until then, there's no point in arguing about it. I don't have the time or the energy for arguing anymore. I will focus my time and energy on people who support me, and those who need help.
-SoulRiser
The forums are mostly read-only and are in a maintenance/testing phase, before being permanently archived. Please use this time to get the contact details of people you'd like to keep in touch with. My contact details are here.
Please do not make a mirror copy of the forums in their current state - things will still change, and some people have requested to be able to edit or delete some of their personal info.
Education in former socialist countries (East Germany, Albania)
Quote:`School in East Germany was not just a place for educational in the narrow sense of the word. Beside regular classes, schools also organised pioneer afternoons with different themes. On some, kids could bring their pets, on others we would be talking about holidays and we also spent a lot of pioneer`s afternoons playing outside in the forest.`
`The pioneer movement was the first preparation for children to become `good socialists`. We learnt how to behave properly. On special occasions like the first of May, we were wearing scouting-like uniforms that were different for each age group. I remember wearing a white shirt and a blue tie, which belonged to the youngest pioneers. The next higher group, `Th?lmann-pioneers` had white shirt and red ties.
The highest stage allowed pioneers to wear blue shirts and to become a member of the FDJ: Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth). The FDJ-ers sometimes organised events for us younger kids or they took care of us during the afternoon breaks. We greatly admired them. They were older and wiser than we were, which is quite something to look up to when you are 8 years old against their 12 years. I still find it a pity that I never became one. The regime collapsed before it was our turn.`
`Beside the pioneer movement, each class in school also had a `class council`, each of which had a president and a vice-president. Everybody was involved in the domestic tasks that had to be organised in school and everybody was made feel like they were a vital part of the system.
Quote:“In the schools and in the University teachers and professors had to adopt new methods and learn to accept the criticism of students as part of their own socialist rehabilitation. A few found the extension of democratic centralism to the educational system, with students taking an active role in organizing school life, too much of a break with the old academic traditions they had hoped to see re-established. They were released to go into production work, perhaps, to return to teaching when they have learned from workers the socialist ideology of the working class. And students, too, had to learn more thoroughly that socialist education has nothing to do with getting a degree in order to become ‘a man of authority’ or to ‘secure a comfortable post with a fat salary’” (227).
“A student is judged not on the marks he gets in competition with his fellows but on the help he gives others in mastering subjects. So successful has the approach proved that in such places as the Tirana Secondary school of Culture students through mutual aid in lessons have realized a hundred percent promotion rate and earned commendation for the exemplary tidiness and protection of socialist property” (227).
RE: Education in former socialist countries (East Germany, Albania)
I wonder if there has been an indepth study done in the educational systems of Soviet-ers republics and satellites through various periods up till the collapse of the USSR. It actualy seems like a decent study and Id probably enjoy reading it. A lot of time is spent on the government and politics. Perhaps like...a study inti the microsociety(actual local administration and institution) rather than macrosociety (le central government functions and party politics)
Education in former socialist countries (East Germany, Albania)
yeah most of what I've seen has been about how the government regulated education
I'm sure there's more stuff about the educational system in Albania in Pickaxe and Rifle but I haven't bothered to look for it
RIP GORE GOROTH
RIP SAINTVICIOUS
(03-20-2013 05:08 PM)brainiac3397 Wrote: Stand up with pride and say "No! I will not be a McDonalds employee. I WILL BE A GARBAGE MAN!"
This video's pretty interesting. While the educational system in China now is really fucking bad, I've had a lot of trouble finding information on it before Deng came to power; especially during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (which isn't too surprising haha).
I've read about how great the education in Cuba is (not really a former socialist state, but still), but I can't really find specifics about how it works. From what I've seen though, it seems like it's similar to education here.
RIP GORE GOROTH
RIP SAINTVICIOUS
(03-20-2013 05:08 PM)brainiac3397 Wrote: Stand up with pride and say "No! I will not be a McDonalds employee. I WILL BE A GARBAGE MAN!"
Quote:In the present system of education, the children study basic cultures, from 2 to 3 hours a day in the classroom with new kind of handbooks. But most particularly, in the remaining hours, they participate in the factories of making agricultural tools and spare parts, of repairing machinery and engines of different vehicles (cars, motorcycles, tractors, ...). In the cooperatives of agricultural production, they participate in all works: growing rice and vegetables, collecting and making natural fertilizers and insecticides, building dams, canals, reservoirs and different systems of irrigation, breeding oxen, and buffalos, raising pigs and poultry, ... They perfectly know the early rice, intermediary rice, late rice, the duration of their vegetative cycle. They know when, where and how to carry out the sowing and the planting out. They can tell the difference between low paddy-fields and high paddy-fields. They know how to master oxen and buffalos, being master of the nature in which they live. Briefly, they perfectly know the natural sciences of their country and are fond of production works, oxen, buffalos, fields and rice-fields, rice and other cultures, systems of irrigation, canals and other hydraulic achievements.
https://archive.org/details/DemocraticKa...ingForward
(remember that at the time of this being written, Cambodia was almost entirely agriculture, and recovering from a famine, so this type of education was useful)
RIP GORE GOROTH
RIP SAINTVICIOUS
(03-20-2013 05:08 PM)brainiac3397 Wrote: Stand up with pride and say "No! I will not be a McDonalds employee. I WILL BE A GARBAGE MAN!"
RE: Education in former socialist countries (East Germany, Albania)
(12-01-2015 02:47 PM)Alistoriv Wrote:
Quote:`School in East Germany was not just a place for educational in the narrow sense of the word. Beside regular classes, schools also organised pioneer afternoons with different themes. On some, kids could bring their pets, on others we would be talking about holidays and we also spent a lot of pioneer`s afternoons playing outside in the forest.`
`The pioneer movement was the first preparation for children to become `good socialists`. We learnt how to behave properly. On special occasions like the first of May, we were wearing scouting-like uniforms that were different for each age group. I remember wearing a white shirt and a blue tie, which belonged to the youngest pioneers. The next higher group, `Th?lmann-pioneers` had white shirt and red ties.
The highest stage allowed pioneers to wear blue shirts and to become a member of the FDJ: Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth). The FDJ-ers sometimes organised events for us younger kids or they took care of us during the afternoon breaks. We greatly admired them. They were older and wiser than we were, which is quite something to look up to when you are 8 years old against their 12 years. I still find it a pity that I never became one. The regime collapsed before it was our turn.`
`Beside the pioneer movement, each class in school also had a `class council`, each of which had a president and a vice-president. Everybody was involved in the domestic tasks that had to be organised in school and everybody was made feel like they were a vital part of the system.
Quote:“In the schools and in the University teachers and professors had to adopt new methods and learn to accept the criticism of students as part of their own socialist rehabilitation. A few found the extension of democratic centralism to the educational system, with students taking an active role in organizing school life, too much of a break with the old academic traditions they had hoped to see re-established. They were released to go into production work, perhaps, to return to teaching when they have learned from workers the socialist ideology of the working class. And students, too, had to learn more thoroughly that socialist education has nothing to do with getting a degree in order to become ‘a man of authority’ or to ‘secure a comfortable post with a fat salary’” (227).
“A student is judged not on the marks he gets in competition with his fellows but on the help he gives others in mastering subjects. So successful has the approach proved that in such places as the Tirana Secondary school of Culture students through mutual aid in lessons have realized a hundred percent promotion rate and earned commendation for the exemplary tidiness and protection of socialist property” (227).
Education in former socialist countries (East Germany, Albania)
Breaking With Old Ideas gives some interesting insights about education during the Cultural Revolution, as well as the values and conditions that gave rise to it. It's a pretty good movie too (cheesy as all hell though.)