Great essay. I’ve been meaning to read this book for a very long time, as I live in New York City and have seen the same dynamic play out with regard to the college status jockeying game, where parents will put in a lot of effort to get their kids into a brand name college, just so they won’t lose status in front of their peers. It’s what led to the “Varsity Blues scandal” here in America a few years back. The college name is more important than the education.
This is so horrifying. Seriously I find it really awful to contemplate that a bunch of people living in safety and plenty could end up like this. For hundreds of thousands of generations people lived in ignorance and illiteracy, on the edge of starvation, perpetually fearing disease and attack, grinding grain, carrying water, repairing their clothes by hand, and carving out amulets to wear in the hopes that they'd survive their appendicitis. And then, after the technological revolution brings wealth undreamed of, and all problems are solved... the Age of the Fashionable Handbag arises.
Wait a minute, 6-3-3...In Sweden that's not an experiment, but the way it is, always (?) was and always will be. (And, predictably, I actually participated in a physical fight as a 15-year-old, in 1999, not because I wanted to but because someone bigger and meaner wanted to). My two oldest children attended the same school until very recently and things really seems a lot better. I used to explain that with an increase in resources: They more or less doubled the number of teachers/ape-minders per student and it somehow seems to work.
How old are you, plus-minus? I always held the prejudice that Poles are studious compared to Swedes, probably because of a high pace of economic development: People were rather poor but hopeful, I thought. Meanwhile in Sweden, people could afford to live here and now, because grown-up life was so far away, and there was always a bunch of second chances. Higher education was not a certain road to success in Sweden in the early 2000s and most of the bullies seem to have gotten perfectly decent lower middle-class lives. Would you say those things were different in Poland?
Interesting! As for the teenage mental health thing...
Poland had a short-lived experiment with a 6-3-3 year split between primary, middle and high school, in which I had the misfortune to participate. After some years it was rolled back into an 8-4 primary+high school system.
The consensus seems to be that the primary school, whether 6 or 8 years long, is rough but okay, high school is almost entirely okay, and the middle school was an absolutely horrifying cesspool of toxicity. This certainly matches my experience. Seems 14-15 years is the hotspot of being a complete fuckwad and not having an entire school full of them helps.
I'm also kind of stumped why psychological warfare in Polish high schools seems muted, while in the US it's the worst. Obviously there were cliques but people kept to others with a similar vibe and weren't bothered. I didn't even _fight_ in high school, and not for a lack of will - there just wasn't really a reason to clock anyone in the face, we felt like we should behave as adults.
I really liked that last line :)
Great essay. I’ve been meaning to read this book for a very long time, as I live in New York City and have seen the same dynamic play out with regard to the college status jockeying game, where parents will put in a lot of effort to get their kids into a brand name college, just so they won’t lose status in front of their peers. It’s what led to the “Varsity Blues scandal” here in America a few years back. The college name is more important than the education.
This is so horrifying. Seriously I find it really awful to contemplate that a bunch of people living in safety and plenty could end up like this. For hundreds of thousands of generations people lived in ignorance and illiteracy, on the edge of starvation, perpetually fearing disease and attack, grinding grain, carrying water, repairing their clothes by hand, and carving out amulets to wear in the hopes that they'd survive their appendicitis. And then, after the technological revolution brings wealth undreamed of, and all problems are solved... the Age of the Fashionable Handbag arises.
Wait a minute, 6-3-3...In Sweden that's not an experiment, but the way it is, always (?) was and always will be. (And, predictably, I actually participated in a physical fight as a 15-year-old, in 1999, not because I wanted to but because someone bigger and meaner wanted to). My two oldest children attended the same school until very recently and things really seems a lot better. I used to explain that with an increase in resources: They more or less doubled the number of teachers/ape-minders per student and it somehow seems to work.
How old are you, plus-minus? I always held the prejudice that Poles are studious compared to Swedes, probably because of a high pace of economic development: People were rather poor but hopeful, I thought. Meanwhile in Sweden, people could afford to live here and now, because grown-up life was so far away, and there was always a bunch of second chances. Higher education was not a certain road to success in Sweden in the early 2000s and most of the bullies seem to have gotten perfectly decent lower middle-class lives. Would you say those things were different in Poland?
Interesting! As for the teenage mental health thing...
Poland had a short-lived experiment with a 6-3-3 year split between primary, middle and high school, in which I had the misfortune to participate. After some years it was rolled back into an 8-4 primary+high school system.
The consensus seems to be that the primary school, whether 6 or 8 years long, is rough but okay, high school is almost entirely okay, and the middle school was an absolutely horrifying cesspool of toxicity. This certainly matches my experience. Seems 14-15 years is the hotspot of being a complete fuckwad and not having an entire school full of them helps.
I'm also kind of stumped why psychological warfare in Polish high schools seems muted, while in the US it's the worst. Obviously there were cliques but people kept to others with a similar vibe and weren't bothered. I didn't even _fight_ in high school, and not for a lack of will - there just wasn't really a reason to clock anyone in the face, we felt like we should behave as adults.