Showing posts with label educatie. Show all posts

Recently, a new candidate for Romanian presidency, Alexandru Cumpanasu, has finally undergone more media scrutiny after having had to make some candidacy-related disclosures. We look into some of the claims made by this individual (whom we strongly dislike) and track down the most likely “university” he is attending, linked below in sources.

This blog has a Romanian Diaspora focus, so it’s only natural to go through the diaspora news. But our diaspora is everywhere (much like protochronist Dacians), and some have even returned, while some feel “exiled” in their own country, so we’re not going to discriminate. Especially since we keep hearing bad things about Dinamo, one of the 3 major “national” soccer teams while I was growing up.

One of my long-term fantasies has been to write the Romanian baccalaureate (aka “bac” / “bacul” / “bacalaureat”, a comprehensive exam you write before the high-school diploma). I haven’t had the time, but I’d like to.

Another article (after Sevil) that does not give me any particular pleasure but must be, nonetheless, written is on Kovesi and the ethics of her thesis. More specifically, how things we said about Ponta’s should apply to Kovesi’s as well, yet few of us have the courage to maintain that kind of consistency in our own convictions, let alone demanding that Kovesi does in hers.

Based on my mistaken belief that there may be people reading this, I go ahead with my recommendations, after the intro and Asia. PISA is not just a set of tests, it comes with suggestions and recommendations.

After briefly going through the just-published PISA 2015 results, here we expand on our knowledge of the top-performing Asian countries, which share some important characteristics.

The results of the latest PISA testing have come out. Will I manage to write about the educational styles in Canada (which is 4th, tied with Finland, after Singapore, Japan and Estonia) and Romania (48th out of 70)?

About two months ago, Maftei, my math teacher in high school, has passed away (fb-maftei). I felt sorry, and that’s why the expression he used to invite us to the blackboard (“iesi pe straße” or “come out on the straße/street”) found its way in the title of this article, which is about the high-school physics teacher Sever Iosif Georgescu and his (or his kids’?) attempts to erase the negative events of his past. This is the third installment in the Georgescu, Iosif SEVER saga:

I have meant to write at length on this individual and, as expected, not only that reality caught up with me, but it left me far behind. I never expected for things to go this far, which is why I am revisiting it now.

The current culture clash about some Norwegian child welfare agency having seized a Romanian couple’s children over physical discipline and the ensuing protests coming mostly from religious groups has a recognizable background: it’s a rehashing of the century-old conservative vs liberal quarrel. I have respect and admiration for Norway and their altruistic, enlightened and generous foreign policy and foreign aid, but this case may be more than just that.

It’s been a while since we haven’t talked about poverty in Romania and solutions. A recent “debate” caused by an over-the-top article on not giving money to the poor gives us a chance to look at it again and also address our reticence with BDSM practices.

Finland, the country who is light years ahead of Romania in education, is moving away from structured learning and a Romanian Senator opines that it's BS, which, in our view, makes him a 'zambaccian' or a person who is incapable to understand his mistakes, nevermind assume them, a person whose mindset prevents them from accepting new, revolutionary ideas.

There are two subjects that seem to dominate the Romanian public sphere (I would say blogo.ro-oaie, but that's defunct): the religion choice in schools and the New York Times Op-Ed on corruption in Romania. I’m very tempted to make a nice hot stew out of both, but I’ll try to keep each to its own article.

I have in the past participated in 'Romanians against others' contests (such as Brancusi @ Saatchi, cum 2 Ro) and never really liked the idea. So I organized quite a few of my own on this blog (guess the relevant category) and again participated in home-grown ones (selgros, roz cu bunici, leustean, verona, economy), and that was better. This time, I have in front of me a list of Romanian inventions (docx) and I get to vote which one deserves a prize from 3M. You can and should vote as well – see the link below.

I knew yesterday, when I started to write about Simona Halep, that I won't be able to get into the gist of the matter. I shall finish my expose of Simona Halep's performance by taking a closer look at her breasts, or lack thereof.

As I’ve been getting closer to a long-planned trip to Europe, I had to face the prospect of more hostility and less-than-enlightened assumptions related to my ancestry. I am quite tired of going through that and have been preparing to start answering the question “where are you from” with “Dacia” – and will be doing so starting tomorrow. With this article, I will answer the follow-up “isn’t Dacia a car?” or “what is that?” or “where is that?” with “look it up!”

I sporadically come across Dan Alexe's writings. He's a smart dude, he's courageous, and he seems to constantly be bullying "protocronists / dacologists" whom he calls "dacopaths" ("dacopati" cf Romanian original, a term most likely inspired by the derisive and pejorative “psychopaths”). I thought I deconstruct / smite him a bit.

While writing about Jihadi Jay Abdo, I had started writing about foreigners who study in Romania and half-way through I realized that this deserves a separate article. I had previously assumed (nature) that the Romanian prime-minister’s (Ponta) many scandals, some centered around his plagiarizing of his doctoral thesis will taint Romanian education and significantly decrease its appeal. Further investigation revealed that many are still interested, although it is hard to determine to what extent the scandals have caused the Romanian tuition fees to be the lowest in Europe, or that is due to other market forces. As usual, the links are listed at the end.

@JihadAbdo is an L.A.-based actor with more than 43 films, tons of TV series and lots of plays in four languages. One of those languages is Romanian.

It recently occurred to me that in my article about the school uniform, I forgot to mention perhaps its best known and most hated feature: the number every student was supposed to wear on their uniform. It’s much like what students wear these days of their own accord: Abercrombie, Adidas, Parasuco, Lululemon, Joe Fresh, Smythe, Guess, but it also had a supposedly unique number and it was compulsory.