“Poles can pay less” is the cheering headline in April 4th’s Gazeta Wyborcza. This storyette, tucked away in the boring old business section, is about how a Polish building company operating in Germany has won the right to pay its workers less than the existing, collectively bargained industry rate in Germany. The European Court decided […]
The purpose of the mock exams taken last week by school leavers around Poland is to create the conditions of the real thing as closely as possible so the little darlings will be ready for the big day. Well, they certainly succeeded in keeping it real, in preparing children for the tough, hard future – […]
A week or two ago Tygodnik Powszechny described how Polish school leaving exams are marked. The example was given of a pupil who wrote that Adam Mickiewicz in one of his plays described the fate of Poles sent to Siberia during World War Two. Rather than scoring zero (Mickiewicz was a nineteenth century writer), the […]
A week or two ago a bunch of sociologists published the shocking (to Poles) results of a survey they took among Polish academics. They cautioned that the study was biased because mostly those who were frustrated responded. Gazeta Wyborcza ran with it all week and judging by the latest cover, Wprost is taking it up […]
In the late 1960s, in a bold and unorthodox move, the government of Ireland introduced the free milk scheme for primary school children. Under the terms of the scheme, pushed through an unwilling Dail by the socialist minister for education, every child aged from 4 to 7 and in full time education would be supplied […]
I don’t know. Actually, I do: administration and marketing with some broken English in case a multi-national corporation should become aware of your existence and deign to give you a job. How different things were in 1918, when I was a boy, taking my school leaving exam with Aleksander Wat. I won’t divulge my own […]
It’s the time of year when Polish schoolchildren don suits and take school leaving exams, wrestling with the incompetence of Poland’s Ministry for Education bureaucrats. The reason they dress up like Little Lord Fauntleroys is that until very recently their own teachers examined them and pronounced them fit or unfit for further education, imprisonment, poverty […]
Pay attention class. Up till now the primary degree in Poland was not a BA but an MA. This takes five years of study and is awarded on submission of an MA thesis. After the MA you can go on to do a PhD – also by research – and then a “habilitacja.” The consequences […]
