Something Erik and I have to be proud of (1 Viewer)

Slagathor

Bedpan racing champion
Jul 25, 2001
22,708
#45
Ze, we don't need anymore proof that Scandinavia rules, it's been proven beyond any shadow of doubt over and over, you can stop saying it now. :D
Sweet username :D

Let me ask you something on that note btw: my boss likes to tell his clients Holland is nothing like Belgium (despite the language being the same in Flanders). He always says "the Dutch are the Scandinavians of the Continent" which of course I always took as a great compliment :D But would you agree with that?
 

Martin

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2000
56,913
#46
Sweet username :D

Let me ask you something on that note btw: my boss likes to tell his clients Holland is nothing like Belgium (despite the language being the same in Flanders). He always says "the Dutch are the Scandinavians of the Continent" which of course I always took as a great compliment :D But would you agree with that?
Hell yes. :D As Maximus says "I have seen much of the rest of the world, it is murky and dark, Rome is the light.".

It's true though, Holland is like Scandinavia in all the good ways, but none of the bad ones. It's like Scandinavia moved to the continent - a lot more pragmatic and much less uptight.
 

mikhail

Senior Member
Jan 24, 2003
9,576
#52
I don't need to argue anything with you on this. We have living proof of several dutch posters in here and I myself, who grew up in Sweden. I have tons of cousins who've grown up in the UK, Canada, United States...and I know how they are. I can honestly say that my brother and I, and my cousins in Norway are the most balanced children in my family. That is mainly due to our upbringing in Scandinavia.
Spoilt brats: I have yet to visit a Western society that doesn't suffer that particular phenomenon.

I should probably back up my argument with some information about the Dutch education system:

Dutch highschool (starting at age 12) is divided into several levels. More info at Wikipedia for lack of a better source I could find in under three minutes. The 'lowest' level is VMBO which is very practical and the highest would be Atheneum (part of VWO) which is very theoretical. I think about 45-50% of kids go to VMBO, which is the largest group. It might even be slightly more than that. VMBO allows you to choose your subjects (to a certain extent) which allows you to steer your way towards the career you envision. It's very practical meaning that if you show a great deal of interest in mechanical engineering or things along those lines, you will be taking cars apart in the classroom. I suppose this is indeed less demanding than a theoretical education but VMBO has produced a steady stream of qualified personell for the job market and has allowed a great number of kids to study what they enjoy and find a job they love to do. If that's a 'low standard', than so be it.

But when compared, Japanese society pushes people to hurl themselves off of buildings by the dozens every day and countries like Bahrain are home to people like Menace. When it goes down to the wire, there is only one type of advice you can give to a country like Holland and that's "Keep right on going, you're doing great"
Okay gents, decent points, though, Zé, seriously man, anecdotal evidence is worth nada.

I'm sorry if I've been a bit aggressive over this. I've been reading the actual report, and it's a piece of unscientific bullshit.

Take their overall results: they've ranked everyone in each of six categories, then added their scores to give an overall total. It's nonsense - it measures nothing, averages everything out. The categories overlap, and the scoring system is almost entirely useless.

Now, on to a specific category. I picked on education before, so let's stick with that. What did they measure? Firstly, they tested a lot of school kids for literacy, numeracy and understanding of science. Great! I hope it was a good test, though I'd have to see it myself to know for sure - maybe it tested the wrong things, like a kid's ability to parrot knowledge, which is overemphasised in most education systems. We don't know. Let's assume that it was a good test however. The Netherlands scores well in this (as does Ireland! :)) but Finland is miles ahead of everyone else. Just ranking them number 1 here is a real disservice to them, but that's just my criticism of the scoring system. Greece, by the way, seems to suck at this test.

Next measure: %age of kids who go beyond compulsory education. This is an awful measure, neglecting entirely the varied compulsory education ages in the countries involved. It also awards the same merit to a kid who goes to uni as to a kid who went a year beyond school leaving age (which is, I think, 14 and younger in some countries in Europe). For example, in Italy, it's 14. In the UK, it's 16, and they're talking about making it 18. The report does not mention this at all.

Next up, we have the %age of kids aged 15-19 who aren't in education or work. I have no criticism of this measure.

Next, we have the %age of kids who expect to be working in a job that requires little or no skill at age thirty. This is strongly a function of the economy of the country, and is a highly biased measure.

Finally, the report mentions that early childcare is important, but it has no data on this.

Overall, we have a collection of dubious measurements combined in a systematically moronic way. I think this report sucks like an industrial vacuum cleaner.

BTW, I apologise fulsomely for the remarks about the Netherlands. They were based on an entirely ignorant summary of the report. There was at no point a measure of the "teachers expecting less" of the Dutch students. In fact, quite the opposite. The people worth castigating here are the BBC, whose standards of reporting on this report were pathetic - I'd chew out a student newspaper editor for printing this tripe.

Refs
BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6360517.stm
UNICEF report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/13_02_07_nn_unicef.pdf
Article on school leaving ages: http://www.right-to-education.org/content/age/index.html
 

mikhail

Senior Member
Jan 24, 2003
9,576
#55
Haven't seen you so riled up before, mik :)
I hate shoddy journalism. I hate when people hide a subjective or incoherent argument with a veneer of scientific language. This has both.

It's junk science, a really poor report which will nevertheless by used to inform national and maybe even EU policy, and it's being reported in the media uncritically as a careful study with rankings which mean something. Worse, the public won't read it critically - hell, politicians won't read it critically, and so the cycle of moronic decisions driven by the kind of hand-waving bureaucratic imbeciles who wrote that and the misinformed public will continue. It's a depressing indication of how important critical reading skills and understanding of the scientific method are, and how rare they are in society.
 

Slagathor

Bedpan racing champion
Jul 25, 2001
22,708
#56
Okay gents, decent points, though, Zé, seriously man, anecdotal evidence is worth nada.

I'm sorry if I've been a bit aggressive over this. I've been reading the actual report, and it's a piece of unscientific bullshit.

Take their overall results: they've ranked everyone in each of six categories, then added their scores to give an overall total. It's nonsense - it measures nothing, averages everything out. The categories overlap, and the scoring system is almost entirely useless.

Now, on to a specific category. I picked on education before, so let's stick with that. What did they measure? Firstly, they tested a lot of school kids for literacy, numeracy and understanding of science. Great! I hope it was a good test, though I'd have to see it myself to know for sure - maybe it tested the wrong things, like a kid's ability to parrot knowledge, which is overemphasised in most education systems. We don't know. Let's assume that it was a good test however. The Netherlands scores well in this (as does Ireland! :)) but Finland is miles ahead of everyone else. Just ranking them number 1 here is a real disservice to them, but that's just my criticism of the scoring system. Greece, by the way, seems to suck at this test.

Next measure: %age of kids who go beyond compulsory education. This is an awful measure, neglecting entirely the varied compulsory education ages in the countries involved. It also awards the same merit to a kid who goes to uni as to a kid who went a year beyond school leaving age (which is, I think, 14 and younger in some countries in Europe). For example, in Italy, it's 14. In the UK, it's 16, and they're talking about making it 18. The report does not mention this at all.

Next up, we have the %age of kids aged 15-19 who aren't in education or work. I have no criticism of this measure.

Next, we have the %age of kids who expect to be working in a job that requires little or no skill at age thirty. This is strongly a function of the economy of the country, and is a highly biased measure.

Finally, the report mentions that early childcare is important, but it has no data on this.

Overall, we have a collection of dubious measurements combined in a systematically moronic way. I think this report sucks like an industrial vacuum cleaner.

BTW, I apologise fulsomely for the remarks about the Netherlands. They were based on an entirely ignorant summary of the report. There was at no point a measure of the "teachers expecting less" of the Dutch students. In fact, quite the opposite. The people worth castigating here are the BBC, whose standards of reporting on this report were pathetic - I'd chew out a student newspaper editor for printing this tripe.

Refs
BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6360517.stm
UNICEF report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/13_02_07_nn_unicef.pdf
Article on school leaving ages: http://www.right-to-education.org/content/age/index.html
I absolutely agree on the report. I did read through it yesterday morning when I first saw it and it's very random and subjective. The data they gathered seems to span over a short decade, taking educational results from, say, the Czech Republic from 1996, comparing them to the educational results from Germany from 2001 which leaves so many black holes I can't even be bothered to really go through all of them.

As much as the report can easily be dissected, the article by the BBC is even worse. There is no serious, reasonable, objective conclusion you can draw from interviewing an odd half dozen of Dutch children in order to support the claim the Netherlands is a good environment for young people.

The one "expert" they interviewed seems to be rather random in his choice of words and doesn't appear to offer any thorough argumentation at all. His claim that "parents pay a lot of attention to their children" can be interpreted in various ways and I would also like to point out Dutch culture is not by definition a monoculture meaning I would strongly argue I had a very different childhood than people my age who grew up in the North, which would of course completely undermine this "expert"'s view on Dutch youth (which he seems to rather easily generalise).

I could go on, but I don't think I have to. We agree the report should not form any basis for any governmental policy regarding youth, be that European or national.

To that extent I'm thrilled the new government that was formed in Holland about one week ago has decided to appoint a scientist as Minister of Education and Science. It's not use handing that post to a politician.
 

mikhail

Senior Member
Jan 24, 2003
9,576
#57
...I could go on, but I don't think I have to.
Nice points.

We agree the report should not form any basis for any governmental policy regarding youth, be that European or national.
Two down, ~350,000,000 to go!

To that extent I'm thrilled the new government that was formed in Holland about one week ago has decided to appoint a scientist as Minister of Education and Science. It's not use handing that post to a politician.
Now there's an argument for the Netherlands being an enlightened place to live. :pint:
 

Martin

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2000
56,913
#59
I hate shoddy journalism. I hate when people hide a subjective or incoherent argument with a veneer of scientific language. This has both.

It's junk science, a really poor report which will nevertheless by used to inform national and maybe even EU policy, and it's being reported in the media uncritically as a careful study with rankings which mean something. Worse, the public won't read it critically - hell, politicians won't read it critically, and so the cycle of moronic decisions driven by the kind of hand-waving bureaucratic imbeciles who wrote that and the misinformed public will continue. It's a depressing indication of how important critical reading skills and understanding of the scientific method are, and how rare they are in society.
I was going to write a whole point on this, but it just boils down to shoddy journalism, just like you said. That's all it is.

Two down, ~350,000,000 to go!
You're very pessimistic :)
 

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