Don't be real, be postmodern......

[anotherusedpage]

I think I must have missed the point of last week's class on Structuralism. I thought I understood it at the time, but this week we moved onto Poststructuralism and Deconstructuralism and I realised I didn't have a fucking clue what any of it meant. And all the terminology's in French, which doesn't help. Neither does the tutor. He's not really a tutor, he's a postgrad student interested in an academic career, and we're his guinea-pig class...
Oh well. Next week is Marxism and Feminism. I can DO Marxism and Feminism.
Only four hundred pages of Dickens left to go this week. And a couple of hundred words of Anglo Saxon.
I'd forgotton what a bastard work actually was.
Still. I only have to survive another two days of hard work and then I'm going to go see Matrix Revolutions...

Comments

[lucy-lupin.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your explanation. It confused me more than anything else, but that's because of my sleep-deprived brain and the school system itself, no fault of yours. But I don't think there can ever be such a thing as a brief introduction to any education, as you're about to see with mine :D

In New Zealand there are School Cs (certificates), which sound similar to GCSEs. You take them when you're in Year 11 (NZ schools have 13 years, one more than Australia and the US) and continue on for two more years to take University Bursaries if you plan on continuing your education. The marks on your bursaries determine what courses you get into at university and different universities have different mininum acceptance marks. My poor best friend in my first year had to leave her boyfriend behind because she had marks that were high enough to get into her course at our university, but not his.

But the closest I've got to School Cs was working as a reader-writer at an all-boys private school near where I used to live in Hamilton ;p. I actually attended an American private school in Singapore. In the American system you complete a certain amount of courses in each subject (it varies from school to school) plus a bunch of electives, and this will give you a core high school diploma. If you plan on going to university though, you need to do more than that. There are two standardised tests you take in your two last years of high school, SATs I and II. SAT Is are verbal and maths tests, while in SAT IIs you pick three subjects to be tested on. Most students do one maths, one english, and then one other subject.

Then there are APs (Advanced Placement courses). APs are basically university level subjects you take while you are still in high school. In May (one month before the high school academic year is finished), there is a standardised exam on each AP subject. If you get a 3 or above (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest), you can get university credit for those courses. I knew a guy who had enough AP credits to go to his junior year in college. The New Zealand universities didn't give me any credit for my APs because they don't recognise them. Bastards :)

In most American schools only the best students get to take them, but my school was really competitive so we were pushed to do them. In my year in particular (which was an exceptionally gifted year), if you didn't take any people thought you were dumb. AP Psychology was the bludger course everyone who didn't want to take APs but needed something for their academic record took. I took that plus AP English and Modern European History.

Well, I haven't talked about the Australian education system yet but my head is spinning enough, as yours probably is by now. I'd better sign off before I drive us both insane :)