UltraRant

That would be something... Anyway, it's easy to check.

Do you have any kids, is you wife active on FT and if so, is she member of SK EB, LH M&M, UA MP, TK M&S, Marriott, A-club, PC, HHonors, and CC? If so, there's a big chance we have an awkward family reunion here.

SK2751

LOL

nacho

That's bad - sounds like Rosengarden in Malmo.


In a way I think it's great that some parents chose to do something to get their children better education.

We live in a small town with 10000 people. The kids originally go to a local school and I felt so bad already from the beginning - there is nothing about obedience, respect the teacher....... when my son started there, a kid in his class has some behavioural issues that he bunches other kids during class. I saw it with my own eyes during their English mother tongue class. The teacher said this year we have 2 teachers and 1 can control that kid, but next term there will only be 1 and that kids is not going anywhere. We got the message then in November 2012 we did our school hunt. We found out that we could go to an International school for free so we went for it.

It's in Lund, 35km away from our home and 45 mins drive (traffic going into Lund is hopeless). We thought about moving but then the house prices in Lund is insane, and we don't want to move in the suburbs because it's 20 minutes drive, you still have to get in and out of the car, and a house there will cost us more and it's more vulnerable for price drop.

So this is our choice - yes it involve a higher cost but if my kids can get better education then it's worth it.

I asked Mr. about his childhood and schooling, he said, 'everyone goes to the local school, it's unthinkable by anyone to cross school district just to go to a better school.' Fortunately he was better than his parents in this respect.


Partially agree - I think children should learn respect, obedience in a school. They need to learn how to follow order - and be punctual. Learning could be fun and that's the part where the IB curriculum is great because the kids can learn through real research and experiments.

Learning a language could be fun but you still have to get the basics right. My kids hate writing Chinese but there is no other way to learn it then keep writing.

This is another hidden gem in Sweden: Free choice of schools - the Swedish schools are run by either a kommun or privately. Each kommun has a allowance for how much they spend on a kid on school per year. Most private school (except Bladins International School in Malmo) has very low cost including the school that my kids go to, so the school money can be transferred without any problem.

There are more and more Swedish students at the kid's school because they believe that they trust IB system better than the Swedish system.

nacho

Glad that your wife made a great choice for your kids!

I guess he has, and his wife could have the same elite status as I have. However I'm not sure if his wife drives a car that has a retarded griffin label both at the front and back and on the steering wheel

fassy

You're driving a Gumpert?

livious

In the spirit of this thread, I just had an interesting discussion with my children's teachers about missing school for travel. Apparently Täby komun (outside of Stockolm) has offcially switched to a no tolerance policy without communicating this to the parents. The teachers did not seem to think missing a few days would ve a problem for them, but we were told that the rektor would deny any requests and would be best to approach them directly.

I asked if they felt that this would limit parents taking the kids out of school, they both felt that thinvs would likely get worse insfead of improve. Under the old rule (5 allowed days), apparently most kids missed the days before/after a holiday, such that most absences occurred during the same period. Under the new rules, they suspected that parents would just book whatever was cheapest or most convenient and the absences will be more spread out. It will be interesting to talk to them in spring and see what the initial results are.

As for school class trips, I encouraged them to send the class somewhere for a week. While it could lead to more EB members, I am sure my wife and I could suffer 1 week without kids at home (or book our own trip). Perhaps SAS should actively market these sorts of trips to schools?

GUWonder

In my schools in the US, it was very rare for kids to be pulled out of school for vacations; and the few that were pulled out for vacation with less regard for the official school calendar were almost always the children of the financially better off even relative to the other students of the same or nearly same socio-economic backgrounds. Can't say it did anything great for their academic and professional performance. But such kids did seem to fly further away from their parents when they got older, and their parents did fly more when they got older too.

Airlines don't seem to be as invested in the notion of fostering long term loyalty like they used to do. I remember when some US airlines used to hand out many thousands of miles for graduating from college or grad programs because they wanted to catch their customers early on while they were young; and I remember hotel programs doing much the same for some grad school students. But investing in customers and customer loyalty is sort of passé nowadays where consumers are increasingly treated as if just their fare/rate this trip. Has SK ever had such a student focused program for new/young EB customers coming out of the better schools in Europe?

A place with a reported bark that is worse than its bite, IME. That said, the place even has ice skating and ice hockey practice there for little kids, so maybe a few teeth end up knocked out like in some of the more expensive zip codes in the U.S.

nacho

What's the consequence if parents just take their kids out say during a week in November?

In Denmark the school are facing the same problem too - a lot of students are gone because of the +1/2 days before/after holiday absences.

At the kids school there are very few left the last week before summer holiday starts - people use the chance to grab the last cheap tickets before the peak season starts.

I thought they do that in Sweden. Mr. went to Budapest and the East Coast with his school. I prefer taking the kids myself because of potential drinking or evt. drug problem, and the trip is way more expensive than if I book it myself. Should your kids guest their teacher or BFF to the lounge?

Why would they care? Students here have $ (at least in DK where the SU is like almost 6k DKK/month), if you don't have $, get a student job. Mr. is hiring one now and the rate is 150 DKK/hour. When I was studying at CBS, most of classmates(female) have LV, Prada etc. If they want to fly, they can fly (without thinking about discounts) and they have parents who pay for their expenses.

I don't like Rosengard so much - I go there to shop at the City Gross (like their indoor carpark) and we fit right in as my kids and I are not white

That City Gross is the only one that I have been to without 'self-scanning' (I have been to quite a few) - that shop doesn't trust people and even back then when they did the children train programme (you get a "ticket" before you shop and chop at some "station" in the shop and then you get a chop, 20 chop = 200kr. voucher). Usually we asked for the ticket at information counter and then return it to get the chops, but at Rosengard - you need to show them your receipt in order to get a chop.

nacho

I'm driving this:


This logo has the body so at least you know that is not a lion.



I thought it was a lion, my son thought it was a lion - apparently it was a griffin and it looks somewhat retarded (I read it from Ultrarant's TR and I couldn't stop laughing when I think about it).

Not sure I can fit 3 kids into a Grumpert - don't think Mr. will allow me He chooses to close his eyes when I'm driving in Germany with him.

fassy

Rosengard, yes... a bit. My hometown was a small city (about 20.000) in mid-west Germany. Actually when you drive through it you would think it is a nice small German village. Anyway in the mid 70s a huge number of (mostly) Turkish workers moved in to work in the steelfactories around and were housed in a large housing project at the edge of the town - and since their kids needed education they also build the school there.

Immigration wasn't a big problem at that time like it is seen today but most Germans avoided any contact with those families and they created their own sub-culture there. The large families with often 5 or more kids outnumbered the German families with one or two kids and the balance in the area tipped over soon. As a result most German families moved out of the district and the downward spiraling increased.

Same story over and over again, huh?

About the Saab griffin: Of course it is a griffin, never saw a lion with a beak

nacho

Wouldn't you avoid those families? If they are not doing well academically, it dragged down the learning progress for everyone. That's why in Sweden you have school ranking too - Tunaskolan in Lund ranks very high in Skane because it's located in the university district. A lot of the parents work at the university, and the house prices around there is insane. I'm sure the school in Rosengard doesn't have as high rating.

The immigration thing is like a world-wide problem. 25 years ago one of my parent's friend migrated to Daly City, CA. They bought the last white guy's house (he died) and the whole city is full of immigrants. The only white people in those kids' school are teachers and the principal.

I think the big problem with immigration is that Europe attracts the low-end immigrants - they are several step behind the US, Australia and Canada regarding immigration policy. The politicians completely messed up immigration/refugee/asylum seekers, they put them into a group.

Then some stupid governments in the 60s letting boat load of low skill workers in, and then let them stay afterwards. They could have introduced time-limited work visa for these people and after they earned their $ they can go home to continue with their lives. They didn't, and these people bring in their wives and children and then keep bringing in wives from their home country - so forget about integration (they do that even now - one of Mr. ex-colleague from Turkey imported a wife from there to DK).

Bilingual student is a negative term in DK - how can that be possible?! What about all those normal students with a parent from Germany and one from Denmark?

I don't really care who they mingle with (I met some new friends here and most of them are Chinese), the other day I asked Mr., 'How come all my new friends are Chinese? Am I getting myself into a ghetto situation?' He said, 'it's natural, they approached you (I'm an introvert) because they think you belong to that group.' It's true, the only Swedish people who are friendly and tried to talk to me are either Jehova's witnesses, sales people or old people think that I'm from Thailand (I'm not that dark).

Once we are in DK with our kids (we had 2 at that time), a lady went up and ask Mr., 'are they both yours?' (they both had white skin - one of them look more Asian than the other.

When one of my friend's husband (Danish - Taiwan marriage) was playing with his son in the playground, someone came up to him and commented, 'you don't need to adopt, you are still young'.

This is another problem - ignorant people without no knowledge about anything darker than white. All dark people fled from their countries to Europe because they can have better lives here. If you have a foreign surname then you are immigrant, if you have a Danish surname, then you must be adopted - this is what I have experienced (got better treatment after I took Mr. surname).

Somehow there is not a group called - I'm here because of my OH, not because I don't like my life back home.

I guess those big families never do a budget on their children's education/ or think about how to develop them. I don't think we can afford to send 5 to universities (although it's free in DK/SE, they still need to live. Getting 3 kids to do homework is hell and I can't imagine how I can give my attention to them if I have 5.

They need to learn the difference between quantity and quality.

The retarded griffin: I never really pay attention to the logo, I have seen it from a distance many times. Even though it's on the steering wheel I never really look at it (just assume that it's some sort of lion). After I saw the 'retarded griffin' post from Ultrarant, I looked at it carefully for the very first time. I thought it's some kind of monster (my school system doesn't teach us mythology), I thought it's a phoenix but then there is a ear on it (that's how my son came up with lion too). The eyes of it looks a bit like Angry Bird's eyes.

It does look a bit "retarded" - both Mr. and I agreed after looked at it a bit more.

I guess the beak doesn't stand out when they use the same colour as the rest of the body.

fassy

Sure, but enough Germans are also "working class". Integration of immigrants in Germany was a huge fail since the Government assumed they would move back sooner or later. They didn't. Funny enough I think it is more a culture clash than anything else. We have absolutely zero problems in Germany with Italien and Spanish immigrants of that time. Actually a lot of those moved back to Spain or Italy or they seamlessly integrated themselves into the German society.

More difficult for Easter Europeans (eps. Russians) and anything Muslim-ish, Indian, Asian etc. The rules of the German society are strange to them and sometimes make no sense (for me by the way as well, but I have learned to accept them from very early on). As you said, the people who came where not the most educated and they did stick to what they know and where used to alienating themselves even more as the Germans couldn't understand their culture and habits.

I had a discussion with a Turkish born friend after he had a terrible fight with his dad. He told me he was fighting with him since the dad on a family event was bragging about Germany how decadent and rotten the western culture is, praise the wrong god or if it is the same one just the wrong way, bla bla bla. My friend got mad and told him that all he has (the obligatory Mercedes, enough money for decent living, one of the best free medical care in all of the world...) is because he is living here and profiting from Germany's prosperous economy and social system. But that actually shows it is not always easy to "integrate".

Part of German (European?) heritage is learning to differentiate between griffins, eagles, lions, bears and other critters as they have been part of the European heraldry for a long long time (probably somewhere in the 12th century). Actually I loved the stories about knights, dragons, princesses, heroes etc. and read every book about German, English or Scandinavian folklore (actually even the Roman and Greek ones.) without school forcing me to do what they did for at least some of the more famous ones like Ring des Nibelungen

GUWonder

As an American, even before I was familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, I had known most of the major mythical creatures of various European, Asian and American folklore traditions and knew a bunch of the old mythologies and related pantheons of gods. I would find these books/stories/images in things I was reading in Asia, Europe and the Americas, at public libraries and schools. People find what they want to find, just like we found Flyertalk.

In the US, the wealthiest demographic group are Asians of sort (South Asians more so), and they tend to be far wealthier than the demographic plurality/majority. And Turkish-Americans are also near or slightly above the median income and wealth levels in the US (more so if they are a product of post-WW2 immigration flows). The best universities in America have a higher proportion of ethnic Asians (of various sorts), Turks and Arabs with one or two foreign-born parents than they represent in the general population. Different patterns of immigration, and completely different wealth levels. You can pretty much bet that the wealthiest neighborhoods with the best schools in America are going to have more "brown" people than the average American neighborhood or even schools in those neighborhoods where people are making even double the national median income level. You can also bet that the wealthiest US neighborhoods have more people with bigger airline program account balances, as those Asian, Arab and Turkish-American populations have to fly a longer distance to get around.

fassy

Yeah... but the US did not in the 50s to 70s were so desperate for cheap male labor for the shi**y jobs in the coal mines, steelworks and other heavy industry to invite hundred thousands of the poorest, most desperate and uneducated immigrants. There was a small hiccup in history which made us Germans run quite short on 'man'-power (literally ) while in addition during those years more and more Germans due to the prospering economy, new wealth and good education moved up from blue-collar up to white-collar jobs creating even more shortage for the uneducated willing and desperate enough to take those jobs.

GUWonder

Winning wars -- or at least not losing them -- has consequences. Thus those old German-speaking great-grandmother types who came into Sweden as the 1950s' version of mail-order brides and ended up on multiple SAS mailing lists.