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It's mathematics, not mathematic! We had a class called PSE which is like... I never really knew what it was for, tbh. You got taught about acne and sex and jobs and stuff. I can't think of anything else that's different just now.
On Jordan~'s topic of timetable terminology, and straying into other UK/US differences ...
As well as Maths (of course), my school (near London, England) had other informal abbreviations but these were all pretty obvious ones ('Phys', 'Chem', 'Geog', 'Hist', 'Bio', 'Eng Lang', 'Eng Lit', 'Lat', etc., and 'Reg', for registration, which happened once a day, though not necessarily at the beginning. Oh, and 'Ass', which was a bit scary when you saw it timetabled on your very first day, but was in reality just 'Assembly').
The more official ones mostly seemed to be a bit variable between schools: - What I called PE (Physical Education) was also PT (Physical Training, which I believe is what the military call it). This was "exercises" and clambering about on apparatus, as opposed to Games (which was football, cross-country running , or occasionally rugby [union] for 2 terms [Autumn = US Fall, and Spring], and athletics or cricket for the other [Summer term]; or table tennis or rowing all year round if you were so inclined; or golf if you could get away with it). To translate some of these sports into Americanese: 'soccer' [ugh, a word I find almost as repellent as 'movie'!], rugger [do Americans use 'soccer''s sister term as well, if they ever refer to gridiron's elder cousin?], track & field ['athletics' seems to have a wider usage to mean all sports in the US, whereas in England it's usually restricted just to what Americans generally call 'track & field' - a rarer terminology here], ping-pong. And as for cricket, well, there are several amusing stories about the American perception of cricket, but we should not forget that it was Canada and the US who contested the first ever international match. I've added a footnote, though, in case anyone's interested, which I doubt. - We also had to have, by law, at least one (or was it 2) periods a week of what our school called RK (Religious Knowledge), but was elsewhere called RE (Religious Education) or RI (Religious Instruction). I must've been educated at a stage when this was undergoing some change, because in our earlier years at senior school, this was akin to bible study or at least Christian teachings (with our one Jewish classmate granted exemptions from certain bits, I think). But in later years, this became more like Jordan~'s PSE [what's that? Personal & Social Education, maybe] where we learned about respect for others, relationships, sex (never really got the hang of that bit), a little bit of what would these days be called 'citizenship' - that sort of thing. Basically making paper aeroplanes, then. There were no lessons in acne, however ... unless I was off sick that week ... spots perhaps. (The UK/US difference in usage of 'sick' and 'ill' could be another topic entirely, but I will restrict my comment on it to the 2nd footnote below). - There was TD (Technical Drawing), which we did at the start of each term, alternating with DT, which was Design & Technology, and was studied after each Half-Term Holiday (a concept which I believe does not exist in the US). DT was basically woodwork, from what I recall. - We had periods devoted to PS (Private Study, otherwise known as 'going home early' if it fell at the end of the day, or going out and buying a doughnut if it didn't), but this was not to be confused with DPS (Directed Private Study) which had to be taken in silence in the school library. What you actually did in DPS was fairly unregulated: reading was the preferred activity; gambling with cards was rather frowned upon, and likely to lead to something similar but taken AFTER the school day had ended, and known as Det (Detention). I tried to avoid this, as it made me miss my train home. - In my later years while studying 'A' levels, there was one period a week designated as GS, which turned out to be General Studies. We were encouraged to choose one topic from a wide range available. I think the idea was that it would mix up people with different academic interests, so that, for instance, my regular classmates in the maths & physics set might join a group studying, say, botany or music appreciation, which might include people whose formal studies were in, say, English or textiles or languages. I chose 'Games Of Chance' as my GS topic, and this turned out to be lessons and competitions in Backgammon! It was good fun, but after a few weeks, my maths teachers said I had to withdraw from it and instead join Computer Studies, which was not a proper subject back then, but a GS option. So once again, I was mixing with the maths/physics set. - Classics, though the term wasn't used at my school, is a generalised word for the Latin and Greek languages, and studies of these ancient civilizations. We did have Classical Studies, but this was just a gentle 1-term introduction to Latin.
FOOTNOTE 1 - CRICKET We English often take wry amusement in the Americans' perceived inability to 'get' cricket. As one of the Monkees once said - "All I know about cricket is that it goes on for five days, and it STILL usually ends in a draw". But I recently heard of an Englishman who was trying to explain the sport to his American girlfriend's family. And after a long description and some revealing questions and answers, he was finally beginning to think that they had understood. Until, that is, Aunt Jeanie shook her head and said "Gee, and they do all that on horseback?" FOOTNOTE 2 - ILL -v- SICK: don't read if squeamish Apart from the phrase 'off sick', the word 'sick' is usually used here to mean 'vomit' [noun]; 'to be sick' means 'to vomit', whereas in America it is, I believe, a more general 'to be unwell'. We would be more likely to say 'to be ill' or 'to be unwell' for this. I once heard of a notice pinned displayed in a church, which read: "Our parishioners are reminded that the bowl at the back of the church marked is for coins only". Sorry.
This should've been in the off topic chattery really, shouldn't it.
Of course, Scotland has its own curriculum, so there are further differences up here. We never had English Literature and English Language, just English. We never abbreviated many subjects; our fifteen minutes of registration at the start of the day we called Regi, Classical Studies was invariably shortened to Classics. PE was physical education, and the school owns grounds, so we also had Games, which was basically PE done outside. In my fifth year, the school built a new sports complex on its grounds to meet the inspector's requirements, so thenceforth all PE and Games occurred on grounds and the distinction was solely that PE was inside and lasted one period and Games was outside and lasted two. We got to drop them in 6th year; I jumped at the chance and used the two periods of "private study" we were given in the place of Games to go to the pub with my friends, which made a nice conclusion to Tuesday afternoons. All such private study periods were supposed to be supervised, but no one bothered turning up to the classrooms and management gave up trying to make us, eventually. Most of 6th year consisted of free periods, which was when you were allowed to do whatever you liked. We had RE (i.e. Religious Education) in my first few years of secondary (for the sake of the English, that's ages 12/13 - 13/14). In primary we used to be taught the Bible as if it were factual, but that stopped in my fourth year. After F2 (Form 2, or the second year of secondary school - in most places it's S2, but our school used the old-fashioned term) we got a new head of department who just called it whatever he wanted - RMPS first (Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies), and then P&R (Philosophy and Religion). I don't know if either of these are official Scottish Qualifications Authority terms. It was always about the study of religion on the whole rather than about Christianity specifically. We usually never got around to Christianity because it came at the end of the year and by then no one could be bothered with it, including the teachers. We'd get about as far as Judaism, usually. Classics at my school had little to do with Latin except that they shared the same teachers and the same department. There was no Latin or Greek in Classics, all texts were read in English. It was more like classical history. I took Classics and Latin from 1st year to 6th year, and took up Classical Greek in 6th year, too. There was no such thing as General Studies; it doesn't exist in Scotland. We had subjects that were variously called IT (Information Technology), IS (Information Systems) and Computing - IS and Computing were different exams. I remain clueless as to the distinction. PSE was basically what they call Citizenship down south, as far as I know. What you called Technical Drawing was called Graphic Design; Design and Technology was called Technology, shortened to Techie. Woodwork had long since been abolished after a few limbs were lost to saws.
This is all massively OT and it's not in The Fray, so I'm gonna try to split it and make a new thread there.
I am one of the few Americans that uses British English. I call it 'maths' too. We had a class similar to your 'PSE'. It was awful and called 'Teen Challenges'. It was the most absurd class I have ever had to take. We discussed suicide prevention, abstinence, abusive relationships. The teacher was also the Home Ec teacher, so we baked. And the worst part was, that I was in a class with lots of 'high-risk' students (read: ghetto), so it was hell./ Biggest waste of my time ever.
Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.
Thank you for the split, Jordan~, and it was interesting to read about the different terminology in Scotland.
I forgot to mention another area where I get very confused is all this "Year x" or "nth Grade" that was once the preserve of our Borth American friends, but which is now common here too. "Wen 'ah wurra lud", you were in Infants' School (1st, 2nd & 3rd Year), Junior School (1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th Year), and Senior School (which could be Comprehensive or Grammar) (1st - 5th Year) followed by Lower 6th and Upper 6th at School or 6th Form College.
And yes, now you mention it, the distinction between Games and PE could get blurred, especially if the weather was nice. Games was always a double period and outside (I think there may have been an exception for basketball people); PE was always a single period and meant to be indoors, but occasionally we did get let out into the sunlight for extra athletics!
But Games was ALWAYS on a Wednesday, not a Tuesday down here. Even now that's adhered to across the educational spectrum: universities, colleges, and schools invariably arrange their sporting fixtures on Wednesday afternoons.
Weird, our Games day varied year to year. Each year would go on different days, usually on the last two periods. The Scottish system's always been different to the English one - seven years in primary (P1-7, or at my school L1-7), then 6 years in secondary (S1-6, or at my school F1-6). I went to the same school for 13 years because the primary school was joined on to the secondary school. The English system seems too complicated! Moving around that much would suck. Though I suppose it prepares you better for the eventual transition to university.
I'm too lazy to read all of this, but here are some salient points for Jordan:
-Americans also call it PE, but that's typically the older generation. Everyone else calls it "gym" and we will do units on every sport (including frisbee, believe it or not). In some states, if you participate in a sport, you are exempt from gym, but that is not the case in New York State. -Private Study is called Study Hall. If you leave early, it's Early Dismissal. -I'm not sure what registration is, but some schools have "homeroom," where you go for the first 20 minutes or so of the day before heading to regular classes. It's where they do attendance. -All the other subjects are pretty much the same, though not abbreviated to such a degree. Bio, chem, physics, history, econ (economics), PIG (participation in government)... etc. We also had Health, which covered sex ed and nutrition and all of those things one would consider to be part of "health." If you did stuff like woodworking or stuff with metal, which used to be called "shop," it's now called "commercial arts" (though when I was in school they called it "technology").
I'm sure there are a million other things I could think of, but I am tired. SO THIS SHALL SUFFICE.
We also have various A.P. courses that allow both college and high school credit (one needs 24 credits to graduate). I never had study hall. But i never went to any classes anyway. We have various 'liberal arts' classes, too. Drama, art, blah blah blah. I took musical theatre, but it was the last period and I usually skipped and hung out in the parking lot.
Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.
Registration is the British word for "attendance". It's when our presence was registered in the morning. We were divided up into houses, then into forms (years), then further into registration classes - eg, I was in 6AI1 in my last year of school, or Form 6, Airlie 1 - Airlie was my house, and I was in the 1st subdivision of Airlie. The others were Aystree, Lindores and Wallace. Airlie and Aystree are families that gave generously to the school at some point in its history; Lindores is after the minks of Lindores Abbey who took over the school in 1554 (it was founded after a Papal Bull was issued in 1239); Wallace is after William Wallace (Braveheart), who attended one of the schools which were combined to create the modern school. We had Drama, Art and Music, too. Economics was available as a crash course Higher in 6th year and I think maybe as an Intermediate 2 in 5th year... Which merits some explanation in itself, below. The only subject I can think of that we had that you might not have is Modern Studies, or Mod Studs, which is like a mix of politics and recent history - how political systems, especially the British one, work, and the political history of the 20th century. There were also a few languages available, mostly whatever ones we had teachers qualified to teach - always French, German, Spanish, Latin and Greek, but since Mr Meehan took head of the Latin and Classics department 300 years ago, he's been teaching Russian on the side, and for a year we had a teacher who could teach Japanese, so the lucky sixth years got to do that. It's a shame Godurei Sensei left.
The qualification system in Scotland always seems to confuse English people, but it's really quite simple, I think! We go through our seven years of primary school, which qualifies us to go into secondary, then the following happens: S1 + S2: No studying for exams; compulsory introduction to most subjects for everyone. S3: First year of studying for Standard Grades and Intermediates. S4: Sitting Standard Grades and Intermediates. Most people sit eight in total. Standard Grades are graded 1-8, with 1 being the highest and 8 being the lowest. Each Standard Grade exam is subdivided further: Credit: To score a 1 or 2, you have to sit the Credit paper, which is most difficult. Supposedly. General: Sitting the General paper can score you a 3 or 4. Foundation: Gets you a 5 or 6; substantially easier than General. Completing the course but not doing an exam gets you a 7, not completing the course gets you an 8. Intermediates are divided up into Intermediate 1s and Intermediate 2s. And Intermediate 1 is supposed to be just a little harder than Standard Grade General, Intermediate 2 a little harder than Credit. They're two different papers. Intermediates are graded A-D and Fail, where A is usually above 70% and Fail is usually below 45%, though it varies - if everyone in the country does abysmally in one Intermediate, the A threshold could be a lot lower. S5: Highers; slower students catch up by resitting or doing a few more Intermediates and Standard Grades. Most students do 5 courses in total; students taking no Highers may do 8 Standard Grades or Intermediates instead. Highers are graded A-D and No Award, with the same cut offs as Intermediates. They're further divided into Bands - the only time this really matters is if you have all Band 1 As, which are As above 85%, which is considered an achievement. Guess who got all Band 1 As? Highers alone are sufficient for university entrance. I could have gone to university at the end of 5th year, since I had 5 As at Higher, which is sufficient to get an unconditional offer for almost any Scottish university. S6: Advanced Highers; most students just do more Highers and maybe a single Advanced Higher. How many courses you take is very flexible: I did Latin, Classics and English at Advanced Higher along with Classical Greek at Intermediate 2.
PIG (participation in government) is the equivalent to Mod Studies. We also call English literature "English." The houses thing explains why they have them in Harry Potter... we don't get that complicated. Everyone has to complete certain courses in order to get a diploma from the state, and towards the last few years of school you have a bit more flexibility. I loaded up on music courses in my last year, but also took advanced placement bio because I thought I might be a bio major. Other people can actually leave the school grounds and go to an off-site trade school sort of place and do things like mechanic stuff or cosmetology.
I've never understood the forms thing or the A-level thing. It's really confusing! We just name grades for how long you've been in school - pre-school when you're 3 and 4 (if your parents want to send you), then kindergarten, then grades 1-12 (grade is usually when you're 6, turning 6, or about to turn 7; grade 12 is usually the year you turn 17 or 18). I don't know about other states, but in New York they have "Regents exams" that you take at the end of the each school year in all your core subjects (science, language, math, history, foreign language) and it determines... something or other. Then when you get into advanced placement courses, if you choose to (and if they allow you), you take OTHER tests at the end of the year which can count as credits for college (like, I took bio, English lit, and American history AP courses, so in college I never had to take them).
OH also the word "college" is the same as "university." Apparently "college" is not a good thing in the UK, or so I've been told? The word is interchangeable here, and in fact more often than not people say college over university.
Yeah, there's a semantic difference between "college" in American English and "college" in British English. The distinction comes from the fact that America's first universities were clones of Cambridge and Oxford, both collegiate universities. People at Cambridge and Oxford in this country do talk about going back to college, say they look forward to seeing their friends at college, etc., referring to their college within the university. It's also common practice to use the name of the college - I might say I can't wait to get back to Sidney if I was talking to someone else at Cambridge; if I was talking to someone else at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, I'd be more likely to say I can't wait to get back to college. Thus the first people in the US to go to university would have most commonly used the word "college" when talking about it, and the term entered mainstream use to mean university in general, since the majority of the people who heard it wouldn't know about the collegiate structure of universities like Harvard. In the UK, conversely, though our two oldest universities - Oxford and Cambridge - are collegiate, there are equally ancient ones that weren't. The Universities of St. Andrews and Glasgow founded in 1413 and 1451 respectively, were never collegiate in structure after their amalgamation into universities from the collection of pedagogies and seminaries of which they originally consisted. The only other collegiate university in the UK, in fact, is Durham. So the vast majority of people who went to university in the UK after the period when the various church-sponsored institutions of higher learning started to conglomerate would never have talked about going to college, because their university wouldn't have had colleges; the word "college", however, survives in the names of buildings at many older universities - King's College at Aberdeen University, for instance, isn't a college for structural purposes, just the name of the buildings that formerly housed the independent King's College. Thus, college is an institution of further learning, but not higher learning - rather than taking university courses, you take additional school courses, usually so that you can meet the entrance requirements of a university, or simply to be better qualified for work. It's basically an extension of high school.
Most schools in the UK have houses. It's a tradition that dates back to when the only schools were boarding schools, and students were literally arranged into houses - their different accommodation blocks. As they expanded, rather than adding more houses to the system, they kept the ones they had and the geographical associations were lost, so that eventually it just came to mean a grouping of students that transcends year. New schools opening up aped the grand old English public schools by having houses, too, often named after benefactors or famous alumni.
I don't understand A-levels, either. That's the English system, I have only a loose grasp on it.
I've also noticed a far more general use of the word 'school' in the US, which seems to mean any educational establishment, from what we would call school (compulsory from 5-16, but about to rise to, I believe, 17), up to college and/or university. Some kids get to start 'proper' school at 4, it just depends on the places available and how many 5 year-olds there are at any given point. Before that, there is optional pre-school, also called nursery school, or kindergarten, or play school. After leaving that, parents are apt to say that their children are about to start 'big school'. Play school used to be an entirely paid-for thing, but I believe that now the government pays for places.
When I was at school (in England), we'd study a range of things without formal exams through until we were 11. In the final year of Junior School, everyone had to take an exam called the 11+, which was quite similar to an IQ test from what I recall of the two. Those who passed were eligible for grammar school, those who didn't went to a comp. Two other possibilities existed - faith schools (in my day, it was more likely to be Roman Catholic, but nowadays there are also schools promoting other religions) or paid-for schools, of which more later.
In senior school, work was aimed at passing exams at the age of 16 (or sometimes one or more could be brought forward a year). After 2 or 3 years, you'd get the option to drop certain subjects, though Maths and English Language remained compulsory exam subjects, and PE and RK had to be studied though not necessarily for exams. At grammar schools, we'd take 'O' Levels in the chosen subjects (typically 8-10 of them); at comprehensives they offered either 'O' Levels or a slightly easier option called a CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education), or a combination - some 'O's and some CSEs. Some time after I left school, 'O' Levels and CSEs were combined into a single exam, called a GCSE (General Cert of Ed).
After sitting these exams, students who wished to stay on for a further 2 years could study for 'A' Levels, typically 3, but sometimes 4. Some schools offered an 'A' Level in General Studies different to the GS I mentioned in an earlier post), but this tended to be disregarded by universities. Gifted students could also apply to take an 'S' Level (though these were quite rare), and there were also Oxbridge exams for those intending to try for Oxford or Cambridge University.
'O', 'A', and 'S' Levels stood for Ordinary, Advanced, and Special.
I believe 'A' Levels continue more or less unchanged. I am unsure if 'S' levels still exist, but there is also something called an 'A/S' Level which, contrary to intuition, sits between the old 'O' and 'A' levels. In addition, there are now a whole range of vocational and non-vocational qualifications that one can take.
Universities were, and to some extent still are, regarded as the pinnacle of Higher Education (HE); colleges were a little lower in stature, and catered for Further Education (FE), which offered non-degree qualifications.
As for fee-paying schools mentioned above, it seems anomolous that the elite ones are called Public Schools (Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, and the like), and the others (still quite exclusive) are called Private Schools. The remainder (non-fee paying) are State Schools. In the US, I believe paid-for schooling would be termed Private School, and everything else is Public - somewhat more logical.
Bedtime ... but I did laugh at Doublewuzzy's "PIG". Is that for real? Reminds me of the term used for the financially unstable nations of Europe: the PIGS - Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain.
I believe "public school" is used as a term for fee-paying schools like Eton and Harrow because they were originally free, charitable institutions to educate the destitute before they started charging fees, as opposed to the existing system of education for those who could afford it, which largely involved paying individual scholars as tutors. I was privately educated in Scotland, where the term "private school" is used, but we still say "state school" rather than "public school" to avoid ambiguity when referring to government-funded schools. The exclusivity of private schools varies quite a lot - at my school, about half the year was there on means-tested bursaries (I paid 40% of the standard fee). It's a very large private school and one of the more inclusive ones. At schools which are considered more prestigious - for their exclusivity and priciness, I might add, rather than based on their academic merits - I think it's less common to have so many paying reduced fees. Glenalmond comes to mind, which although its academic results are consistently poorer than my school's is considered by some (read: toffs) a 'better school' out of snobbery.
You are right, in the US public schools are open to anyone and private schools are tuition-based institutions. There are also charter schools, which operate under their own particular curriculum and are only accessed through lottery (they do a drawing for a limited number of spots). They are pretty hit-or-miss - some charter schools are fantastic and others are horrible, mainly because they are not regulated by any governing body (not that public education is that much better).
There are also three types of schools that I find very interesting and wish I could have attended - Montessori, Waldorff, and Sudbury. Joanna actually went to a Waldorff school, which I'm fairly confident had a MAJOR influence on who she is today. All three are much more free-form and more about students' exploring their interests on their own rather than being fed a prescribed series of "things you should know." Sudbury schools are the extreme end of this, where students can literally do whatever they want all day with no structure - you want to climb a tree all day? Go right ahead!
I'm not particularly into this conversation but when people in Britain say 'college' they tend to mean the free-standing education centre where you can go after completing your GCSEs and study for A-levels age 16-18. The teaching format is much freer and you can study more of what you want when you're at college.
It's not just 16-18; a few of my friends went to college after leaving school at 18 to get better qualifications so they could go to university and my mum's done a course at Dundee College for her job.
Melora Creager's (of Rasputina) eldest daughter goes to a Waldorf School. I am not all that familiar with American secondary schools because I only actually attended a high school for six months.
Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.