Is there an independent school that exposes children to non-European cultures and religions?

[Anonymous]

9:21 again: i'll make it easy to understand my position. My personality quirk is that I'm offended by bad behavior. I'm not, BTW, at all offended by criticism of the US - if OP had merely said she was looking for a school with good foreign language and foreign literature -- without throwing in the entirely spurious stuff about how ignorant we are, how badly we're educating our kids, and how useless is is to study US history - I wouldhave agreed that we have a problem, esp. in languages. But OP has demonstrated bad behavior, in spades.

Unfortunately I've learned that being "nice" to people like OP has zero effect. Zero. Calling them out on their bad behavior - identifying it, calling it bad - is much more effective. The next time she starts a thread on why Americans can't cook or something, more people will recognize her and not play into her hands.

[Anonymous]

Out of curiosity, how do you know OP started all of those other threads?

And, actually, generosity of interpretation in a context like this one -- where all that's at stake is the quality of the conversation -- isn't naive or stupid. It's strategic. You can have a stupid conversation in which people call each other names, or you can have an interesting conversation in which people talk about how other cultures are taught at various local schools. Why not go for the interesting conversation? Especially when you can't know what's motivating the OP and it doesn't really matter -- you don't have to deal with her IRL.

I don't know what the pumpkin thread says because a title like that wouldn't have struck me as interesting or promising, but, seriously, what do you lose by responding to a potentially interesting question as if it were asked in good faith?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:9:21 again: i'll make it easy to understand my position. My personality quirk is that I'm offended by bad behavior..

No, the quirk is that you're blind to your own.

[Anonymous]

OP,
If you study how developed nations educate children, you'd see the same nation-state-centric approach almost universally with same variations but not global approaches as you envision. Think about language. How many people speak Esperanto? Also, where is the fire? Schools give the base about your own country and culture, and student, family, universities, broaden it as children get older.

[Anonymous]

some variations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:9:21 again: i'll make it easy to understand my position. My personality quirk is that I'm offended by bad behavior..

No, the quirk is that you're blind to your own.

Oooooh, a snarky insult (bad behavior) from somebody who didn't read the entire post on why being nice to trolls was a pointless exercise. The permutations and combinations are mind-boggling!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Out of curiosity, how do you know OP started all of those other threads?

And, actually, generosity of interpretation in a context like this one -- where all that's at stake is the quality of the conversation -- isn't naive or stupid. It's strategic. You can have a stupid conversation in which people call each other names, or you can have an interesting conversation in which people talk about how other cultures are taught at various local schools. Why not go for the interesting conversation? Especially when you can't know what's motivating the OP and it doesn't really matter -- you don't have to deal with her IRL.

I don't know what the pumpkin thread says because a title like that wouldn't have struck me as interesting or promising, but, seriously, what do you lose by responding to a potentially interesting question as if it were asked in good faith?

Or a third possibility: we can have a conversation where OP insults us and we're nice back. That's the conversation we're having, not some idealized conversation where we're all being civilized to each other. Look, at the outset of the thread people were nice to OP, but the only result was that she got her claws out and started inserting her little digs. I'm just not interested in letting OP abuse me - and I gather others here feel the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP,
If you study how developed nations educate children, you'd see the same nation-state-centric approach almost universally with same variations but not global approaches as you envision. Think about language. How many people speak Esperanto? Also, where is the fire? Schools give the base about your own country and culture, and student, family, universities, broaden it as children get older.

I agree that state-provided educations will reflect each state's understanding of where it fits in the world (which is a point OP made long ago). But that can lead to a variety of approaches to the rest of the world -- national chauvinism, globalism, post-/neo-colonialism. etc. And these are political decisions that governments make (and can unmake). Or, in places like the US where education is relatively decentralized (state vs. national standards, local school boards, charter, private, and parochial schools), that individual schools can make.

http://www.ylioppilastutkinto.fi/en/ provides info about what Finnish students need to know to graduate from HS. It's an interesting contrast to the US in a number of ways (although, obviously, not what OP was looking for).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP,
If you study how developed nations educate children, you'd see the same nation-state-centric approach almost universally with same variations but not global approaches as you envision. Think about language. How many people speak Esperanto? Also, where is the fire? Schools give the base about your own country and culture, and student, family, universities, broaden it as children get older.

I agree that state-provided educations will reflect each state's understanding of where it fits in the world (which is a point OP made long ago). But that can lead to a variety of approaches to the rest of the world -- national chauvinism, globalism, post-/neo-colonialism. etc. And these are political decisions that governments make (and can unmake). Or, in places like the US where education is relatively decentralized (state vs. national standards, local school boards, charter, private, and parochial schools), that individual schools can make.

http://www.ylioppilastutkinto.fi/en/ provides info about what Finnish students need to know to graduate from HS. It's an interesting contrast to the US in a number of ways (although, obviously, not what OP was looking for).

Finnish? Their schools would have a "European feel" no? And we know OP doesn't want that since even WIS fails to cut the mustard on that particular score.
I'm pretty sure there are no schools around here that would satisfy her and she knew that when she made the post and was just gettng a dig in at the American school system.
OP - were there any suggestions here you found helpful? (because several posters did try).

[Anonymous]

I'm still confused about what OP is looking for. She said in her original post that she is touring GDS, Sidwell, Beauvoir and Maret. So I think we can conclude that she wants an elite (no second tier schools on this list) for an elementary kid (Beauvoir).

So she wants an elite school that DOESN'T prepare kids to work in the US or Europe. Merely teaching Chinese, which at least Sidwell and NCS do in the upper schools, isn't enough.

Why on earth would she think such a school exists? What school intentionally doesn't prepare its kids to participate in the world's largest economies? Unless she can explain what she wants, this conundrum lends credence to the troll theory.

[Anonymous]

Actually, most of the "elite" schools in places like India, Pakistan and Africa are very western-oriented indeed. They were set up by the British colonizers and kids still vie to get into them. If OP is looking at the DC elites, then these are the schools (with a few exceptions) she'd be looking at in her own country.

As OP, the troll, well knows.

[Anonymous]

Right they're former colonies. Same point holds. What she is looking for is pretty pie-in-the-sky.

[Anonymous]

Ah, the pumpkin and laundry threads. You can find these in the "off topic" forum. In the pumpkin thread the poster (probably OP, are there really 3 US-haters among the small number of posters here?) complains that a US kid was dropped off for a playdate at her house with 4 pumpkins, but at the end of the playmate the visiting kid took 2 (not all four, mind you) pumpkins home. In the laundry thread, she complains about the quality of the clothes she finds in thrift shops and says it's because Americans don't know how to do laundry. Seriously, I'm not making any of this up - read the threads for yourself.

[Anonymous]

11:46 again. She blamed the horrific pumpkin incident on the fact that "Americans give you stuff and then take it back".

[Anonymous]

This is the OP.

Some of you have convinced yourselves of untrue things such as I have started other threads on pumpkins and laundry. My only comment is that you should stop reading such nonsense.

Some of you don't use logic. I don't think you can go to any of my posts and find anything about not wanting my kids to learn about U.S. or European literature and history. Perhaps I didn't say it clearly enough. Those regions will be covered in much detail anyway. I was starting a conversation about which school does the best job about the REST of the world.

Some of you have decided that I don't like WIS because its more European in approach and has a great Latin American focus. I am not European or from Latin America, so yes, I am looking ideally for a place that will teach about the parts of the world that our family hails from. In its absence, a Latin American focus is better for my kids than a purely American focus.

Some of you are convinced that I don't like public schools. We cannot move again. Our local public doesn't offer any of the things that some of you have mentioned, and we're in DC so have no access to magnets. The local public has no social studies at all in the early grades. Diversity in the school isn't bad, but I was asking a different question.

Some of you have decided that I didn't find any posts helpful. On the contrary. Before the racism and name-calling started, quite a few posters were fantastic with information. I learned a lot especially from the GDS and Sidwell posters but there were others.

Some of you are angry about the U.S. history comments. It makes sense that American schools will do more U.S. history than others. Its easy to get caught up with 1 year ot not, and exactly how much is the right amount. The realities of the AP requirements stand. But a broader and wider scope is what I am hoping to find.

And like Barack Obama, I am left with an interesting problem. Do I protest that I am not Muslim? Because I am not. But then I don't want to propagate the idea that something is fundamentally wrong with Islam and that all Muslims are evil. Religion has been used to do and to justify terrible harm in the world, and Islam isn't the only one. It is the most recent perhaps. Now please don't read this and come up with a series of pages saying that "OP supports Osama Bin Laden".