I’m not sure where you reside—I’m in the US. AIUI other countries approach this differently. For example, Germany:
Compared to the United States, the German primary and secondary school system is a rather complicated one in which there are sometimes as many as five different kinds of secondary schools (usually starting at grade 5) and various paths leading to academic higher education, advanced technical training or a trade.
I gather these other countries look at whether the student has the ability and desire to go to college—or whether some trade, like being a mechanic or hairdresser is more up their alley, so to speak. I think American schools have changed some, adding “magnet schools” or other alternatives, but we’re behind.
Like you, I’m in the US: I spent years studying French at a US high school, and then kept on studying French at a US college, and also spent time learning things that were useful.
As long as we’re taking math questions: what about all the equations one can graph that technically aren’t functions because there isn’t a unique y-value for a given x-value? ETA: should we have a dedicated math thread somewhere?
Wait, do you mean to say he’s white? it’s common knowledge that He was not Caucasian but a person of color. You must be thinking of how he appeared in someone’s post resurrection vision.
No, he is saying that ‘wooly hair’ isn’t necessarily an ethnic/racial-defining characteristic. He used his own (white) example to highlight how his younger self thought through this question.
In grade 9 English we had a section on satire and we had, as an assignment, to write a satire. For some reason, that was shortly after I had become skeptical about a lot of things, whereas a couple of years ago I used to believe all that stuff. Anyway, for my assignment I wrote a satire of “Chariots” and got 100% on it.
Not exactly useless, but a bit misguided - high school French in Ottawa, which is right next door to Quebec. They taught us “le francais international” and not Quebecois French.
When all that ended I joined the military and had gov’t-provided French classes, had Francophone room-mates and colleagues and learned all sorts of things that they never taught in high school.
This is sort of a “meta” topic. But I detested teachers who lied to us about how essential their subject was. My brother had a 10th grade biology teacher who claimed that he would be required to take several years of biology in college no matter what he majored in. (He was considering majoring in journalism or music, eventually choosing the latter). I assume this was meant to motivate him to do well in 10th grade biology, which would make her look marginally better. What astounds me is that a teacher would lie about something so easy to disprove by simply asking a guidance counselor, or pretty much anyone who’d gone to college.
The actual Biblical passage is describing Jesus as he appears transfigured: He doesn’t look human, but is instead all glowy and glorious. So it’s not really a good guide to his mundane appearance, anyway. But if one does insist on using it for a guide to how he normally looked, surely a passage describing how white he was is a terrible argument for saying that he was black.
Of course, in all probability, he wasn’t what Americans would call “white” or “black”, since he was Middle Eastern. But details like that don’t matter to self-important activists with an axe to grind.
Yes, in those pre-electric lighting days the brightest that the author of Mark could describe Jesus’s robes was “And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them”.
I had a similar experience. While I do not think it wrong to focus on international French, they could have mentioned variations in French around the world, or that these existed. They should have taught a little Quebecois or Acadian French. They could have explained about different registers of French and joual and compared these to English slang.
I took ten years of French before college, got nearly perfect marks. They emphasized grammar so much, and spontaneous talking so little! Still had to take a couple years of university French to understand life in Montreal and how spoken French skips half the letters. Not made it to Lac St. Jean, but doubt I could glean much. I hope they have improved things rather than appealing to class, education and occasional snobbery. Yet I know many Quebec academics who feel the same way as my French teachers did - why would you even teach that?
I had an English teacher tell me I should major in English and be a literary critic. We studied a few plays and I leaned heavily on some Harold Bloom or similar person I had read. My own natural understanding was okay, nothing special.
It was nicely meant. But although I enjoyed English it would have been pretty bad advice. Every teacher wants you to follow in their footsteps.
About, above, across, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beside, between, beyond, but, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, into, like, near, of, off, on, over, since, through, till, to, toward, under, until, up, upon, with. To test whether a word is a preposition, insert it into the sentence “The mouse ran ___ the hole.” Half a century later, and I still remember that stuff even though I’m starting to have those “senior moments” such as the one yesterday when I got up from the table to get some napkins, then opened the pantry door only to forget why I was there.
