Ooooh! My turn on confusing everyone about US schools!
Grade levels:
Preschool-usually this includes 4-year-olds but some schools start as early as 18 months. This is offerred in many private schools and is not mandatory.
Elementary-starts in kindergarten (which is mandatory in TX) and ends in 5th grade
Middle (officially;some people refer to this as junior high)-6th to 8th grade
High (high schools often are known as ______ Senior High, but no one calls it senior high)-9th to 12th grade.
Thanks to Houston ISD (which strives to educate and confuse, with more emphasis on the latter), there is one school that is K-8 and a few schools that are just 9th grade (why I’m not sure, probably for special cases)
This is the district’s schedule for the year (off my planner):
Aug 14-16?-teacher prep days
Aug 19-first day of school
Sept 2-no school
Sept 16-Yom Kippor-no school (so people can observe it)
Oct 14-no school (think it was teacher inservice)
Nov 27-29-Thanksgiving Break
Dec 20-Jan 5-Winter Break (the 20th was teacher inservice)
Jan 20-no school
Jan 31-teacher inservice
Feb 17-another teacher inservice (my mom’s a teacher in the district, I don’t know how she handles all these inservices)
Mar 14-23-Spring Break (yay!) (the 14th was an inservice day)
April 18-21-Easter Break (there is some politically correct name but I don’t remember it)
May 26-I think it’s another inservice
May 30-summer break starts for students (teachers have another day or two)
Summer break is 2 1/2 months
I am not sad.
Biscuit comes from the French and means ‘twice baked’ (or cooked). It is hard to imagine that any kind of bread that was twice baked would not be something more akin to what the British know, correctly, as a biscuit. BTW a biscuit can be either sweet or savoury. A cracker is a whole other thing. American biscuits are a strange affair indeed. Bit some of your cookies are reminiscent of British biscuit baking at its finest!
I am in 8th grade. I am in junior high. Next year, I will be a freshman in high school. Just thought I should mention that.
Questions for British people: what are fish and chips? Fish and chips sounds good, but an odd combination. When I hear chips I think of greasy, salty, crunchy, American junk food that I absolutely love.
Is it true that a lot of British kids wear school uniforms, or is it just that there are a lot of private schools there? Or neither? Am I full of crap? It’s just strange, because where I live (IA) no one would even attempt to convince the school board to approve uniforms. We would all launch an uprising! Maybe if I lived in a more affluent, metropolitan city (like I used to, and I do miss it) it wouldn’t seem so ridiculous.
What is a torch? Besides a stick that’s on fire, I mean?
We have both M&M’s and Smarties. They’re not quite the same - Smarties are flatter and have proportionately less chocolate in comparison to the candy coating, giving them a slightly different taste.
Fries with gravy and cheese curd = poutine. This started in Quebec, but has become widespread.
I dislike ketchup chips, myself. Didn’t realize they weren’t available in other places.
IIRC, it’s a flashlight. I’m not sure why the Brits have a different name. ( dogchow thinks and realizes it might be similar to Davebear’s Coke question)
Gorsnak: I think I saw them (or another odd potato chip flavor) in a shop that sold British and Irish imports, particually food and anyhting involving tea. I wanted to know if it was just Canada that had the ketchup potato chips.
Potato chips in the UK are known as crisps, and we have more flavours than you’d care to try (seriously; I’ve never travelled to any other country with as many). The most popular are ready salted, cheese and onion – which tastes delicious, but neither cheesy nor oniony – and salt and vinegar.
IThinkNot: fish and chips generally involves a piece of fish (most commonly cod, haddock or plaice) deep-fried until coated in a lethally unhealthy batter. Served wrapped in paper with a portion of chips (fat chips, not skinny, also horribly unhealthy) with salt and vinegar. Some people like it accompanied with mushy peas, but I can’t stand that green sludge.
You can get very good fish and chips, generally from small takeaway shops in proper fishing ports, and very bad fish and chips, generally from “multipurpose” shops selling kebabs, Chinese food and bad versions of anything else that the ravenous post-pub crowd will consume. You’ll even find posh restaurants occasionally offering it (I can recommend Zili Fish Too in Holborn, London).
I dunno though. I used to think that, but when everyone else is wearing uniforms too there’s much less pressure. Spending money on dressing to impress is hard for many parents and makes it easier to build up vicious cliques at school. I always hated uniforms, but in hindsight I can see they do have some uses.
Although, that said; if your uniform doesn’t have to come from a school outfitters, it’s easy to see whose navy blue skirt comes from the Gap and whose comes from Asda.
Tansu: Yeah, that’s true. And I can see uniforms having their uses— stopping separation into cliques, popularity girls, et cetera. However, Consider the Following.
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School may do away completely with winners and losers. You may be able to take the test how ever many times you need to pass. You may never fail a class even though you deserve it, because of the grading system. You may not have popular kids. You, believe it or not, may not even have Homecoming King and Queen at your school. Be that as it may, this bears no resemblance to anything in real life. Because the real world has little or no tolerance for that kind of thing, doing away completely with individuality does not appeal to me in the least.
Sorry about the hijack, O Ye Lurking Moderator!
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School in general bears little or no resemblance to anything in real life. My individuality doesn’t get much of an outlet at work; dress requirements in many jobs are only a step or two away from being a uniform.
Sorry, I’m hijacking too. I do see why uniforms are stifling and unpopular, since I felt that too. I just see things slightly differently now; not necessarily better or more correctly, just differently.
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I went to private school for up until high school and had to wear a uniform. The school had a rule that all of the clothes came from the same outlet and gave detentions to anyone wearing Gap or Old Navy or whatever. There were also rules prohibiting jackets or socks that weren’t a certain color (though these rules were only enforced by a few teachers because they were pretty silly) The school I go to now has an incredibly simple dress code:no tank tops or muscle shirts, no short shorts or short skirts-everything else is okay. Needless to say, the idea of establishing a much stricter dress code or gasp a uniform is very unpopular.
The point of my rambling is, I don’t see the point in uniforms as something to keep everyone equal. Uniform or not, cliques and popular groups still will form. Students will find ways to express their individuality (and cash flow) by jewelry, stuff to bring to school, bragging, etc. It makes very little difference whether or not a uniform was present.
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I suppose I should have been more clear when I spoke of Northern Inland California. Although by convention No-Cal is anything nrth of Hearst Castle, I was refferring to ‘border-with-Oregon’ type north California. I have met a women (I am almost certain she was from a town literally right on the border) who claimed to have been involved in around 200-300 pageants a year for that area and larger. These were pageants for little girls, like 6, and getting higher, to teens. Highly disturbing.
In regards to English Public Schools, the explanation given to me by a friend of my father, a Scot (who is now quite old) went something like this. It seems back when these schools were not yet founded, the only schools that existed were clergy schools. Members of Royalty were taught by tutors. Now according to him, in Britian, “public” reffered to those who were not noble, ie, there were the royals, and then there was the Third Estate, or the public, with the clergy off somewhere to the side.
As the effects of the plague disapated, new agricultural techniques were discovered, economies flourished, and urbanization boomed, the members of the public, who had until now spent all their lives working without time for anything else except religion, suddenly developed a subset, a middle class, that could devote time and energy towards studying. This led to the establishemnt of schools where members of this new class could go and get an education. However, to the nobility, it was still very clear that this new class was still “the public,” and so, to keep their kind apart from commoners, and more importantly, because they could afford to have private tutors, the royalty did not participate in these schools. Thus, because it was the “public” only who attended these schools, these schools for the public became known as public schools.
I think that’s right. I’ll go and check.
> Questions for British people: what are fish and chips?
I’m surprised that you haven’t seen fish and chips on menus in the U.S. It’s a very common dish in U.S. cafeterias (ones in schools, but also ones in workplaces), and it also appears on menus of restaurants in the U.S. (and not just fast food ones). It’s always called that, and not fish and fries, even though the chips are what’s called fries when they’re by themselves. The chips tend to be somewhat thicker than most fries.
Tonic is, as far as I know, a uniquely New England thing. It dates back to when carbonated beverages, including but not limited to Coke, were marketed as “health tonics”. I guess it made the descendants of the Puritans feel better about themselves if they could pretend they were doing something healthy, rather than just enjoying a beverage, so it remained in use. Its use appears to be fading, though, and soda is becoming the dominant term.
OK, one last stupid question about the US: do all kids go to summer camp? Is it really as big a thing as it seems in the movies? How long do you go for? Was it the coolest thing ever, a fate worse than death or somewhere in between? What is the straight dope on summer camp?
And as far as uniforms go, in NSW all school students have to wear them. I hated it at first, but got over it when I realised that my uniforms wasn’t stiflingly uncomfortable (white, buttoned shirt, blue pants), fairly versatile, not strictly upheld and had the added bonus of the girls having to wear it to. Mmmm…
And when girls want to express their individuality while wearing a uniform, most of them just make things like skirts shorter. Mmmm…
When I was a kid waaaaay back in the 70s, I would say most kids didn’t go to camp, most years. I went to a day camp when I was 5 or 6 and we lived in New York City. I hated it. It was supposed to get me out of the city for the summer, I guess, but it was just the pits. I think I was just too young. We went again to a different day camp when I was older (9-10) and we already LIVED in the country. That was more tolerable, but still not great. We seemed to spend most of our time sitting around in lines waiting…waiting for everyone else to show up, waiting for the lake to open so we could go swimming, waiting for another group so we could go to lunch, waiting, waiting, waiting. Neither of these camps had any particular goal or affiliation to them, they weren’t music camps or anything like that. I think the sessions in both cases were at least 6 weeks long, and must have been every day.
When I was older I went to Boy Scout Camp, which was “stayover”, as they said, meaning you slept there in tents. At that time the minimum stay was two weeks, although they later shortened it to one week, and some kids stayed all summer. That was fun, and I went back several years. We did swimming, hiking, canoeing, rowing, sailing, horseback riding, shooting, archery. I think it was of high quality because it was run by an organization that had quality standards as far as programs and who they would hire. I never went to just an unaffiliated overnight summer camp like is in all the movies (Addams Family Values, and such.)
My impression is that kids these days are much more likely to go to camp, and that practically all American kids spend at least part of their summer at some kind of camp. The camps now also seem much more likely to have some kind of theme: music camp, tennis camp, weight-loss camp. There are camps affiliated with particular churches, and some for summer learning. Like I said, my impression is it is far more common these days, possibly because more women are working than when I was a kid.
Maybe if I lived in a more affluent, metropolitan city (like I used to, and I do miss it) it wouldn’t seem so ridiculous.
( dogchow thinks and realizes it might be similar to Davebear’s Coke question)