Europe the wonderful vs. America the [fill in the blank]
While thinking about my PJ post on Obama’s comparison of mass murders and gun control in the US to the same phenomena in Europe, it occurred to me that part of what Obama has done during his presidency is to capitalize on an already-existent attitude among liberals that everything European is better than everything American.
That’s one of the reasons he can get away with talking about how mass murder by gun is nonexistent in Europe because of gun control. Not too many liberals in this country are going to question that, because of the pre-existing idea that Europe has gotten its act together in so many respects while we falter far behind, alone among developed (or, as Obama said, “advanced”) countries in bitterly clinging to our troglodyte ways, our guns and our religion.
Other things we cling to, and which Obama would dearly like to free us of, include our American exceptionalism, our nationalism rather than internationalism, our rugged individualism, our income inequality, and our idea that “we built that.” Things he’s already greatly improved about America (i.e. Europeanized, at least to the extent we have allowed him, which is not to the extent he would like) are health insurance and our relations with the Muslim world and with Israel.
Not so many years ago the word “liberal” was the political kiss of death; people were running away from that designation as though from the plague. But now it’s back in vogue, according to Dana Milbank of the WaPo (and a number of polls). This is probably thanks in part to the wonders of the Obama years, as well as the maceration of the newer generations in the “progressive” ideology of our school system and MSM. But some of it comes from the notion that Europe is better than we are and we should emulate it in every way—rail system, small apartments and tiny washing machines, long vacations and all. So any change in this country that makes us more like Europe is considered to be a good thing by the growing number of Europhiles among us.
This ignores the profound economic and social troubles that Europe is having. It ignores the fact that Europe has been protected by our weapons and our military, which cost money. It ignores the fact that the demography of Europe is tremendously different from ours, as well as its geography. It ignores the fact that people from all over the world still flock to this country, or wish to.
When a was a schoolchild, our teachers used to make us memorize poetry, almost all of it doggerel and the best of it merely passable verse. But I had an ear for doggerel and verse, and much of what I memorized back then has stuck with me to this day. It is interesting and instructive to remember the sort of patriotic paean that was considered appropriate for an American child back then (even one like me, who went to school in New York City, and a public school at that), such as this poem by the Presbyterian minister Henry Van Dyke:
“AMERICA FOR ME”
‘TIS fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,””
But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things.So it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home…Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the bléssed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars
Antiquated, no doubt. But it meant something to me then, and it meant something to me when I traveled to Europe as a teenager and later, and it means something to me now. I think America still means a great deal to people, as I discovered from a curious video I came across the other day. Unfortunately, I can’t find it right now, despite close to an hour of searching and watching. But it featured short interviews with people all over the world who were asked to describe Americans and what distinguishes them from other people.
Their answers were quite consistent, and perhaps not exactly what you’d expect. I had imagined there would be more negative comments, but the remarks ran about 80% or more positive, and there was a certain unanimity of opinion. Americans were confident, and many people specifically mentioned that they could tell who was an American on the street because of the way they walked—with confident strides, head high, energetic and enthusiastic. You knew they were used to being free and speaking their minds. Many people also mentioned openness and friendliness, as well as kindness. They also sometimes said loud—as in loud voices—but they didn’t say it all that critically.
This video which features interviews in England is somewhat similar, and it’s the closest I could find:
Obama is most likely the first president who did not like America. I find it strange that so few Americans have figured that out.
Oh! Don’t forget Bernie Sanders’ lament that we don’t use the metric system.
KRB
European Social Democracy//Equality-Fairness vs. American Exceptionalism-Liberty: 2-wolves and a sheep sit down for supper in Social Democracy; The sheep comes fully armed and prepared to contest the meal in American Liberty.
Me and mine? We chose the latter. O’Bammy Hilly? They’ll take the FAIRNESS of the former.
Ooops…Thank you, Ben F. for my eeerrrrrr ‘borrowing’.
America has always had a bizarre sense of being inferior to Europe, the Continent of bad Ideas. Always, or at least since about 1875. Doing the Grand Tour and all that. One got “finished” in Europe.
Today it is institutionalized in the collegiate Year Abroad programs, wherein one pays one’s usual tuition, but “gets” to study at the Freie Universitat Berlin or other “Free” Euro universities. Private high schools, including those in the redneck South that my kids attended, do a Senior Class Trip to Europe.
Not me. Went over to see grandmothers, never gone back.
Euros, grandmas excepted, always have their hands out, one way or another.
Frog:
I like visiting Europe—haven’t done it often enough—but I don’t see why anyone would revere it or its people.
I was there in 1978 with my husband when we were rather young, and I remember becoming a bit friendly with a couple from Belgium when we were in France. We had dinner with them, and they were vociferous (and seemed to have no idea how rude they were being) at saying what rude and uncouth, stupid and racist people Americans were. Present company excepted, of course.
Neo: Central Switzerland. They love Americans and loath France and the French. Murren: Heaven of a Village in the Clouds looking at The Eiger, The Jungfrau and The Munch.
Good heavens, I remember memorizing that poem as well. My sixth-grade teacher had us memorizing poems, and we would recite them in chorus every morning.
Yes, you could usually pick out Americans in a crowd of Europeans – and I noted that we usually had rather better teeth; another easy tell, along with a freer stride.
The REAL story of Europe: provincialism run riot.
They can’t give it up.
To be an American is to walk away from provincialism.
When you’re hearing Europeans insulting Americans — keep in the back of your head that that’s their opinion of EVERYONE not from their neck of the woods.
Venice still hates Florence; Berlin still disses Frankfurt, and as for Londoners…
I ran into a German American 1st generation immigrant the other month. While not admitting where in Germany she’d migrated from — she did put forth that Bavaria was not in Germany… and rather emphatically, too!
{ I’d say that her roots wing off to the east — as in East Prussia. As war refugees, her family never ‘clicked’ in West Germany — provincialism strikes again — so they were off to America — as soon as practicable. It’s a pretty good bet that one of her uncles had surrendered to the West and been transformed by his exposure to America.
{ We laugh through Hogan’s Heroes — but did you know it was customary for German PWs to be given leave to work in the nearby towns? (In the American South)
The other head spinner is that Europeans live in tiny worlds. For them an automobile really is a luxury. Most old towns are as congested as Manhattan island, though not built up quite so much.
Danes hardly need freeways to get to work. They ride their bikes, and I don’t mean motorcycles.
The reason gasoline is so heavily taxed in Europe is because the general public uses so little per capita — and the biggest users are high on the economic scale. So it’s a consumption tax on the wealthier.
Whereas, in America, EVERYONE has to purchase gasoline — and plenty of it. The Federal excise tax on gas and tires are flat taxes on consumption.
But, at bottom, the ONE unifying theme of Europeans is that they have been overtaken — culturally — by America. No better example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NteVmdoo1yI
For Germans, the American rocket to the Moon bites especially deep.
Somebody made the observation that Americans go to Europe for three reasons: New five-star resorts. Nothing built after 1899. Except cemeteries for US solldiers.
My tales of European travel are quite extensive.
Here are a few of my impressions.
The people are still distinctively different in various areas. Northern Italy quite different from southern Italy. Switzerland divided up into three (German, French, and Italian) areas. Germany is, in general more uniform culturally. Spain and Portugal are different and various areas of Spain are different. Greece differs by regions within the country. You cannot look at Europe as an homogenous place – just as you can’t look at the U.S as homogenous.
Private property laws are quite different than here. For instance, in the Val Gardena area of the Dolomites you must obtain the permission of the government to sell property that has been in a family. We spent a week at an inn in the Val Gardena, which was owned and operated by two sisters. They told us they would like to sell and go to Milan or someplace urban, but the property had been in their family for many years and the government would not let them sell. We were the first Americans who had ever stayed there. Their clientele were mostly Germans, Austrians, Brits, and the occasional Italian. Their rental included full board. Each evening during dinner we were aware of being closely observed by the other guests. The Europeans who seldom see Americans don’t quite know what to make of us. Most Americans travel with tour companies and hit the usual tourist spots. We liked being off the beaten tourist track, even if it meant being looked at as curiosities. We’re not loud, not demanding, and not big spenders so we may not have fit the stereotype of the Ugly American.
Business in Europe is much slower and less competitive. We spent a week in Denia, Spain where we found two restaurants that were side by side. Both were quite good, but they alternated days when they were open during the week. We got to know both managers and found them to be more interested in La Dolce Vita than in making their fortune. People in many places in Europe seem almost embarrassed to act ambitious.
In Germany, Switzerland, and Italy the buildings are mostly quite old. We saw many buildings that were 300 years old, but had been continuously renovated and maintained almost as if it was a sin to tear something down and start from scratch.
There is so much history everywhere in Europe that you almost feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose no matter where you go.
I love their laid back approach to things, but I was always acutely aware that economically (other than Germany) they are not very dynamic. Lots of unemployment and underemployment most places. And some embittered people pushing Communism. The Communists are out in the open in the countries around the Med. They have won in Greece. We’ll see how that goes. I predict not well.
I would not trade my travel experiences in Europe for anything. For, if nothing else, they have convinced me that socialism is not the way to go. The laid back, easy going La Dolce Vita does not create enough wealth to keep everyone at work.
During my days as an academic I used to go to Europe, which I found to be a wonderful museum but awfully expensive. I’d get European visitors and they’d go nuts buying goods in the US because it was so much cheaper here. In those days CDs were very high on the list, and the wives often had long lists of stuff to buy and ship back. They were poor compared to us.
Don’t get me started on how “wonderful” European diplomacy is. The Cold War was the longest period of peace in Europe for the last thousand years. The map of Europe is just a map of what tribes with conflicting cultures and languages could carve out for themselves with many of those divisions going back to Roman times or even futher. The collapse of
Yugoslavia with all its bloody fighting and massacres is more the norm than the exception.
Europe is wonderful as a museum but not much good for anything else these days. Even their days of great science are past.
Just for grins, you can go to Wikipedia and search for, say, the war of the Spanish Succession.
Or Grunwald
Or the Battle of the Dunes
The Papal States
The Two Sicilies
Or see what Seigneur Bayard was up to.
And link one fight, one war, to another, world without end amen.
Europeans have had the overbearing presence of the state for a thousand years (excluding the Dark Ages). They have no conception of American conservatism. Their right wing parties would be considered moderates or fringe kooks here.
My young wife and I spent a year in Germany in 1971 while I was in the Army. It was a beautiful Country and we loved our time there. We rented the upstairs of a doppelheim; Another GI and his wife rented the basement. The owner and his family lived on the ground floor. He was a functionary of some kind at the police department. To make ends meet, he and his wife had to rent out 2/3 of their home. They also had a vegetable garden and raised rabbits for meat. He was some kind of a beer distributor and sold beer out of his basement. He repaired cars on the side. He was absolutely astounded when I got a $2,000 loan from back home and bought a NEW Volkswagen Beetle.
What I am trying to say is that a young kid like me living on $250 per month Army pay had it better than this guy.
I’m pretty sure I saw the video that Neo mentioned – the one where people from various countries tell how they recognize Americans. The video was posted to YouTube, and it went viral with over a million hits. Since then, the person who uploaded the video has made it private.
Here’s a link to a story about the video:
http://www.viralviralvideos.com/2015/06/12/people-from-around-the-world-explain-how-to-distinguish-americans/
Of no great importance, but I thought I’d mention it because Neo said she spent a long time looking for the video. Unfortunately, it can’t be found. Senility has not set in.
I haven’t been to Europe in many years, but when I was there as a student, I could recognize people from the US and Canada by their open faces. Something clear and eager and – what – happy? in the eyes that simply wasn’t there in the more closed and guarded European faces.
I wonder if it would still be like that if I went back now.
I’ve run into that attitude among liberals often too that everything Europe is better. However, I’ve also heard from more than one Italian, for example, that Southern California is very much like Italy – except it works.
Europe however does not work. Much of the social system is supported by and depends on governments being able to continue borrowing. We are starting to see the limits to that and in Greece’s case they’re running out of other peoples’ money sooner than later.
Unfortunately we are very much trending down the same path as the Europeans. The trend away from rural farm/small town upbringing and large families means that government will tend to get larger to make up the diminishing support networks. When a major downturn hit in the 17 or 1800’s people could fall back on farm/family. These days families are smaller, more spread out, and less likely to help out making the demand for a government that will step in more insistent.
And not unlike Europe when government reaches a certain mass it shifts from a passive recipient of compensation to a monster actively demanding ever larger wages and benefits and pensions.
It won’t end well, but there will be a lot of twists and turns on the way.
Interestingly, the stereotypes I have formed growing up tended the opposite way. Europeans (of the Southern/Western variety, where I grew up) as friendly people with light temperaments, great conversationalists, widely educated, loving and affectionate – and Americans, inversely, as grim, aesthetically deprived people, with a disciplinarian streak to them and something “heavy” behind the superficial shiny smiles.
I suppose it depends on what aspects of culture you form your judgment. I realized just how American my sensibilities were only as I grew more politically aware.
Good book:
On Becoming American, Ted Morgan.
I think liberals in the media and politics break down into only two groups- mentally deficient or pathological liars/opportunists. There is no large middle ground, this is especially true in journalism. This blaming of Roof’s actions on the attitudes of white Americans is only going to be successful in its preaching to the choir- otherwise it further alienate whites from the Democratic Party.
I was married to someone rom Avignon and for a while we seriously considered moving to the South of France. However, the more I was over there, the less of a good idea this came to seem.
I don’t think I feel like reliving all that here — suffice it to say I dodged a bullet. Whew!
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/05/news/05iht-france.t_0.html
Frog Says:
“America has always had a bizarre sense of being inferior to Europe, the Continent of bad Ideas.”
These days it’s mostly just the progressives… IMO.
Englishman here – never been to the States but due to the magic of the internet have done some business there. The one big difference I’ve noticed is that Americans want things to succeed. Propose anything new about anything here, and people immediately look for reasons why it won’t work.
And being an Englishman I can’t fight the hectoring arrogance to lecture you about your own culture, so I’ll add that I think Bob Dylan’s When I Paint My Masterpiece expresses the Revd Henry Van Dyke’s sentiments rather better.
“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
D. H. Lawrence.
People should remember that. Save a lot of trouble.
In the meantime, don’t be obnoxious and we’ll be friendly.
Exchange students I’ve worked with have tried to make the case–it’s not easy–that Americans are and can be friendly, more so than people where the students come from. But that’s not the same as being a friend.
The Japanese also do English audio translated interviews about Americans.
I often see comments on FB…usually from friends of friends, but sometimes also from direct friends…to the effect that “Americans are X”, where X is something bad: ignorant, greedy, racially prejudiced, etc. I’m not sure how many of these people have actually *been* outside the US for any length of time, and I doubt that any of them have conducted a comparative study of societies.
What I detect is the phenomenon common among early-stage adolescents–“our family is so Y compared to other families”–extended to the level of the whole society.
and Americans, inversely, as grim, aesthetically deprived people, with a disciplinarian streak to them and something “heavy” behind the superficial shiny smiles.
Many of the people who go to Europe are the Democrats, the Marin upper middle class even. It’s difficult to parse out what people are talking about, when they can’t tell the difference between an American patriot, an American expatriate, and an American of the Hussein, Democrat, upper middle class, lower upper class, mode.
Caedmon,
My view is that the difference between American and English is smaller than the difference between Anglo (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc) and Continental.
Claire Berlinski wrote a book a few years ago, Menace in Europe, that sums up the Eurasian peninsula as being wrapped up in antisemitism and anti Americanism. The title of the last chapter of her book, To Hell with Europe, adequately defines her refreshing and original appreciation of European culture.
I highly recommend Claire Berlinski’s book, which I reviewed here:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/44959.html
…and would like to see her write another one, focused this time on to what extent to malign trends she saw in Europe are or are not also manifesting themselves in the US.
Yes, it is liberals who some how or other think that “European” is superior to “American.”
I can remember when it finally became too clear that Bill Clinton had been cheating on his wife – and there was no way to continue to deny it. One liberal colleague of mine defended him by saying that Americans were too “Puritan” and that Europeans would have look down on a man who didn’t have a mistress!
Yes, that was her defense of Clinton. He was sophisticated like the Europeans by having a “mistress.”
@charles: The whole “Puritan” pejorative is similar to modern liberals using “back to the 1950s” card.
I’m european, so a few thought about all this.
1 – “Europe” is indeed composed of very different places. UK is closer to US than to France. North of Italy is completely different from South of Italy. Greece is a joke. North of Spain doesn’t consider itself as spanish.
In the Sense8 TV series, the father of the mexican character was a flamenco teacher from Bilbao (basque country). I suppose the scriptwriter thought it was logical since Bilbao is in Spain. Well, I’m basque, and you’d rather find a flamenco teacher in the middle of Utah than in my town. Indeed, the stereotype of basque people is tough, hardworking, rude, reserved and without sexual life. Not exactly the spanish image.
What I’m trying to say is that there isn’t a “european character”. Europe is highly heterogenous.
2 – Europe vs America.
Well, you can’t compare, since goals are not the same.
To understand that, you have to understand that WW1 and WW2 were a huge trauma in Europe. The continent destroyed itself. Twice. WW1 was even more traumatic than WW2 (that can be surprising for american people) because of the trench war. Unless WW2, trench war devastated the european population without the frontlines even moving. It seeemed like an endless war that would kill everybody in the continent.
So, if you think that WW2 was a big war, think that from european perspective, WW1 was even bigger and deadlier.
https://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html
After that, Europe renounced to play hard and someway decided to keep low profile. So the goal in Europe was not to grow anymore, but to stay secondary.
Comparing US and Europe is pointless since there’s to race. Goals are different.
However, regarding America, I think some lessons can be learnt from the european experience:
First, some public services are efficient, work well and use low resources. I would say, mainly, power supply, water supply and health. On the other hand, private airlines, for example, are far more efficient than public ones. Rail systems are in the middle, public and private use to have a similar efficency.
Second, social systems work very well in highly civic and homogenous societies. Europe is having a hard learning about that because of the new social groups introduced with multiculturality. Indeed, the countries with the more protective welfare social systems (like France or Scandinavian countries) are the ones where inmigrants are less integrated and hate (really hate) ethnic europeans.
That’s very interesting, since it would seem that the logical outcome would be that the higher the welfare-social protection, the more integrated and grateful the newcomers. What has happened is exactly the opposite.
““The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
D. H. Lawrence.”
Europe did a pretty good job of killing in the 20th century.
I mentioned to my barber that in America he would need a licence to operate. He fell over laughing.
Yann:
If we exclude linguistic variety (as important factor as it be, because – through literature – it conditions the symbolic world), I am not sure that America is any less diverse, within its boundaries, than European countries within theirs and within a larger unity we generalize as “Europe”.
What I really like about Europe is education – in analogous socioeconomic circumstances European schools typically beat the American ones. The “international” (US-curriculum) schools in Europe are often an educationally worse choice than just decent local (even public) schools – ask me how I know 😀 – and unless you move around very frequently or have a child with learning difficulties, you are much better off by opting for them. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but they do the whole education thing better – and with more crowded classes, fewer support services, less “child-friendly” atmosphere, more subjects in less time, and such apparent contradictions. Not sure it is applicable to every European country, but my experiences were very good (I refused to switch definitely to the international school for high school, they could not even convince me to do the last two years for the sake of IB).
On the other hand, the American practical, minimalist, no-nonsense approach to many things can be quite refreshing. Americans also tend to be more resourceful when it comes to applied learning: Europeans know *more*, in a sense that they have more elements to their knowledge, and often better connected (better “systemic” thinking, as they call it), but Americans are often better at *combining* the fewer elements they have – thus the innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit etc.
Most European countries have severe restrictions on abortion after the first trimester, and they consider us barbarians for allowing late-term abortions. I’ll bet we never hear Obama, or any on the left, mention that.
They also cannot swallow death penalty.
Or the second amendment.
FOAF.
Talk to Lawrence about that. He’s talking about the soul. There are other ways to gin up a mass killing.
Switzerland is about the only country the US should be emulate. The traitors and other corruptocrats in the US should be terminated or exiled, as was the case with the Loyalists back several centuries ago.
Also, let’s not forget the concrete European phenomenon. Ethnic cleansing and the reaction to it.
http://www.amren.com/news/2012/05/why-liberals-are-terrified-by-anders-breivik/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/17/anders-behring-breivik-claims-victims-not-innocent
Anna,
How you know?
How do you know?
As I said, I’ve worked with exchange students. One of the things Europe does is track students. We always got kids who were on the local version of college track. That meant, seriously, only those presumed to be prepared for college.
If you compare those kids to our system which measures the progress of NMS kids and deliberate non-learners and kids too dumb to duck the truant officer, we will have some differences.
Eric, I could write an essay about that. I had lots of friends who attended those schools and plenty of opportunities to compare.
Trying to be CONCISE here:
1. In math and sciences they were typically about a year behind.
– This is hard to compare because the programs were always quite different, so it could well be that in *some* parts of the program they were behind whereas in *some other* parts maybe even ahead – but as a *general* impression, there was about a year of difference. For example, in elementary school, times tables were a cornerstone of my second grade, I knew them cold by the end of the year, but they finished them only in the third grade. Over the years, my many little impressions like this one have merged into a *general* impression of my friends being behind by about a year.
2. They did not study anything *systematically*.
– We studied history chronologically, while they seemed to switch from one unit to another with no apparent order.
Our geography program emphasized facts and operated with neatly organized units (the host country, then all of Europe, then other continents one by one, all over several years), but theirs seemed totally divorced from any logic: they would do “unit studies” on specific countries but without any wider context. In fact this is emblematic of how they did things – no context and no system, just improvised projects. They did not even study the grammar systematically (I could analyse any sentence both morphologically and syntactically when I was in middle school – and I knew the difference between the two levels of analysis).
This ultimately translated into a decreased skill at what I called “systemic thinking” – they were great at problem-solving on a micro-level, but not good at mentally encompassing the big picture. They have developed *skills*, but as if in a vacuum.
3. In arts, hey relied too much on “feeling”, “self-expression” etc.
– We were *taught* how to draw, for example: perspective, proportions etc. Our art classes were not – or not *only* – about “expressing ourselves”, there were very specific elements of the craft that we were supposed to recognize and apply. From what I gathered, whenever they had art or music before high school, any formal analysis was taken out of it, they turned it into a sort of “mystical”, “expressive” experience.
4. They were not even that much better at ENGLISH.
– They frequently committed the same grammar and spelling mistakes as my classmates who studied English as a second (or third) language. I spoke English, but I had to be *bribed* to read in it when I was a child, yet they did not seem to have much of a linguistic advantage, not even wider vocabularies. Eventually I grew to speak unremarkable, maybe even objectively bad English – because it was not my dominant language – but with all that, they never seemed to actually have a much better command of it than I did. This is quite telling IMO. I know the languages in which I was educated better than I know English. One is *supposed* to know the languages of one’s education and socialization on a level higher than this.
Which brings us to:
5. Worse literary education.
– They read not only less (comparing anthologies and required readings per year, especially in high school), but also qualitatively more dubious works. Sure, there was an occasional Shakespeare (but then again, so there was for us), but a lot of what they read seemed to be the sort of works I would classify as free time readings rather than school readings.
All of this resulted in a sort of generalized aesthetic deficiency. Not only in literature, but also in other arts.
6. Grade inflation, and I suspect an “everyone gets a trophy” mentality.
– Everyone seemed to have very good grades and very positive reports. I was typically among the best students, yet I never had an equivalent of all As. It just did not exist in any system in which I studied. All of the feedback I was getting was quite balanced, not limited to praise only. Maybe I was an objectively worse student than my friends, but maybe their criteria were less intellectually honest to begin with.
Those international schools are not for people from modest or even average socioeconomic backgrounds. They are attended by children of diplomats, military, international businessmen (often companies pay for the kids’ education as a part of the deal) and some of the local elite that wants an English-language education for their children. And yet, they are quite literally payed insane amounts of $$$$ for an inferior education as compared to the school system of the host country. This is, of course, a generalization that is probably not applicable to every European country and to every international school, but those have largely been my impressions.
The higher up one goes in class, the less competent they become.
Anna,
You should write a blog to record your worldview and affirmative views, as compared to your reactions here, on various subjects and recommend it here so I can find out about it to read it.
A poem some might like better is American Names by Benet