Culture Beat

Nein, nicht die, die 1993 "Mr. Vain" rausgebracht haben.
Sondern unser Mosaic-Projekt "Culture Beat" - die Planung hat begonnen. Worum gehts? Verschiedene Kulturen in einer Stadt, deren Hintergründe, Reibungspunkte, Gemeinsamkeiten, und natürlich um eine gehörige Portion ASK, experiental learning, CISV, etc...

Let's make money

This is an order:
Watch "Let's make money".
Change your way of thinking.

The fawlty tower of Pisa

Discuss all you want about methods, questions and interpretations - the current PISA test shows that Austria (and its school system) suffers from several diseases; a lack of integration (how else would migrants of the 2nd generation be even worse in their results than ones from the 1st generation?), a lack of equality between "upper" and "lower" class, a lack of supporting courses for both highly intelligent and struggling pupils.

The challenge is to take this as an opportunity for change - change of the system, but also change of mind and attitude, not only in the "concerned" groups and parties, but within the Austrians as a whole, to realize that education is not only something the state has to provide, but also something every single parent has to care about for the sake of their own children.

Complaining is not a solution, but part of the problem.

German ITol

Yet another "we are running out of qualified IT personnel" lamentation of DIHK (Germany's Chamber of Industry and Commerce). Let me break the news to you: Invest in qualified personnel. Invest in education, schools, life-long learning, universities. Pay your IT people what they deserve, and not what your business economist thinks he's worth... The working people are the ones producing your revenue, not marketing and management! And don't expect a 25 year old to have a master diploma, 4 years of experience, two fluent second languages, and happy to work for 30K a year...

And no, I won't work 60 hours a week without adequate compensation....

Austrian children only "average" in reading

Well, it seems like good news don't stop these days - we scored #20 out of 45 nations when it comes to reading comprehension in primary school.

No surprise, upper-class parents do a better job in teaching their children what school obviously doesn't (maybe because it's busy teaching basic manners - this leaving no time for more complicated thing, like basic calculus or reading, leave alone grammatically correct writing...), proving my point that it's parents who have to educate, or at least start to educate.

But with your "jamba sparabo", I am sure you don't need to actually understand what you are signing anyways....

Teach your children - by being a role model to them

As if picking up the topic of my last post, (people party's) vice-chancellor Wilhelm Molterer said in an interview that parents should take more responsibility in educating their brood. Though hardly ever agreeing on anything that comes from the conservative-rightsided part of the Austrian political spectrum, this one I can only totally agree with.

Leaving "education" to schools only is irresponsible, stupid, lazy, and harms both the child and society. What you learn in school is formal education - knowledge - but what school cannot teach you is manners, respect, attitude, communication, interacting with other people, and socialization. Non-formal education (a thing I strongly believe in) is not something your teachers may give you. In schools, classes are too big, pupils too diverse in their personal development, and the knowledge part takes too much of precious school time to leave anything for something else.

This goes out to you, parents all over the world: laissez-faire has failed to educate your children, so has TV, Nintendo, the movies, and so will school if you give up all your responsibilities. Don't do this to your children - they will not thank you for ruining their social future, and neither will I, for they will ruin our society with their ignorance.

Lazy, fat and bored

Our kids are too fat... Well, we can blame anyone we want, but by doing so we neglect that after all, it is our responsibility. And with ours, I mean every single one of us. Responsibility of the individual to be aware of his nutrition, responsibility of the parents to watch for their children, teach them that good things aren't necessarily the things TV promotes, and that joy can result from other sources than TV and computer games, responsibility of society to get more "actively" involved in sports and recreation.

A general fault of our society (you may hear me talking more about this) is laziness. Maybe it's its biggest, maybe just one of many. Laziness is what causes "society diseases", depression, obesity, anorexia. Noone(*) is interested in anything but pursuit of laziness... and we take it with any price tag that comes attached.

(*) sorry for the generalization. should read: "the statistical majority of western countries citizen"