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February 19, 2008
Education
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 as well. Normally there would be nothing much to detain one in the frustrated moaning of some academics – nothing that hasn’t been doing the rounds for decades in the west anyway. But this being Poland, there are a few wrinkles.
Among the complaints is that Polish academia is inward-looking. Professor do not publish enough in internationally peer-reviewed journals. There’s a lot of back scratching going on. Fair enough. But “international” means “English language” and some of the letters and articles and appeals betray an alarming linguistic slave mentality. Andzrej Koźmiński, rector of a private business school called – wait for it – the Leon Koźmiński Academy manages to use the word “English” 6 times in a 400 word letter to the paper. He suggests that entire programmes be taught through English – including post-graduate and doctoral programmes. Professors must have English language publications and posts should only be given to people who speak English. When Bismarck tried that it was called “Kulturkampf.”
To prove that there’s no old fogey like a young old fogey, there is an article by Łukasz Abramowicz and Michał Miąskiewicz, two young hotshots who have made it where people speak English. They present their ideal university and round off the article with a ringing false dichotomy – it’s either our way or Rydzyk’s way. Among the ideals of their university is that students would ring their profs at home – that’s how down with it the faculty and the students would be. You might take a course in linguistics because a part of it is devoted to the study of rhythm in the language of hip hop. After finishing this ideal college, they suggest, you might get job in hip hop management! How this article got published would be a mystery if it were not for the fact that it says – without offering any evidence – that the development of good universities without the help of big business is impossible. You press the buttons you get the banana.
A personal favourite, though, would have to be the story of one Joanna Bronowicka, just a regular average schmo, who studied in Harvard, where she got talking to a professor, who hired her as his assistant on ten bucks an hour. Things weren’t so good in Paris, though: there her prof was as distant and uncontactable as in Poland. Obviously, he was cuter than his American counterpart: seeing the ambitious young Bronowicka coming a mile off, he decided he had better things to do than pay the class pain ten dollars an hour to pester him after every lecture.
And therein is the rub. It’s always the lecturers’ fault. No one ever suggests reforming students.
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2008
Free Milk
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 with a quarter of a pint of fresh milk every day regardless of his or her weekly pocket money. The system functioned well for some time but was eventually hit by a combination of a demographic boom and a turn to the right in national politics.
In short, by 1975 there were three times as many low babies, high babies and junior infants as there had been when the free milk scheme was set up and yet the amount of milk being doled out was unchanged. The low babies, high babies and junior infants had not been sitting on their hands while this situation was developing, of course. Over the years they had dug deeper into their pocket money, using it to buy milk in school tuck shops. Others, less fortunate, took on newspaper rounds to earn the necessary money to pay for milk supplied by private dairies exploiting the neglect in public spending. Unfortunately, the quality of the “private milk,” as it became known, was not always what it should have been. Instead of the full-fat, creamy, rich, tasty state-supplied milk, it was frequently watered down and sometimes even sugared, which, along with the toil of working after school meant that the little children on private milk were often poor students: distracted, quarrelsome and sometimes sleepy. Many seemed to think that because they were paying five new pence a week for their milk that they did not have to do any sums or spellings in class. There were other abuses of the system. It was complained that the big children (aged 6 and even 7) were hogging all the creamiest milk for themselves while the small and/or less well off children had to make do with the leftovers.
Primary school demagogues appeared, condemning the “fiction” and “hypocrisy” of free milk. “Since it’s not really free for most kids,” they said, “it shouldn’t be free for any.” Other more sober six year olds argued that if low babies, high babies and junior infants had to pay for their own milk they would not waste it by spillage, dribbling and milk-fights. Still others - mostly ignored - pointed out that by halting the purchase of a consignment of 16-inch pandy bats from the US, the government could easily free up enough money to buy milk for all the little children.
In the end the controversy was ended when Coca Cola generously offered to take over the free milk scheme, renaming it the “carbs for life scheme.”
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2008
100 Days
A momentous time has come to Poland. For my eldest daughter it was time to take herself to the “hundred days ball” – a kind of a disco in gladrags held one hundred days before the school leaving exam. People will tell you it starts with the pupils dancing a Polonez but this is not my memory of the event: the first thing I saw was a bunch of schoolgirls hiking their dresses up nearly to their crotches to flash garter belts (or whatever these 18th century appurtenances are called) for the cameras of their doting parents. I need hardly say that at this point young Pelagia was whipped away from the den of iniquity - well before any pimply scrote could grasp her by the arm for a dance.
Also, the government – or is it the sejm? – is a hundred days old. Nothing much to report there, though.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2008
Attention to Detail - Television
Watching a God-awful soap the other night I saw somebody pay for two or three items in a supermarket. The cost was exactly four zloties, which aroused my suspicions. Those suspicions were confirmed when the money was simply received. If you can't be bothered faithfully reproducing simple things like the fact that everything costs 3.69, the cashier always asks if you have the exact change, you always get handed a receipt (a new, overzealously embraced law) and every transaction is accompanied by the electronic bleep of a scanner, why the hell spend a fortune on mocking up a studio to look like a supermarket? Why not just a bare stage? No props, no make-believe 19th century manors or 200 square metre-flats... Oh yeah, that would require acting.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2008
Beat the Censor
Janusz Głowacki used to smuggle criticism past the censor by dressing it up as extravagant praise, comparing favourably, for instance, the since-forgotten socialist realist book Głupia sprawa (A Silly Matter) by Dobrowolski with the publication of the first Polish translation of Ulysses. He says he got letters from some readers saying: you know, that Głupia sprawa is okay but still I think Ulysses might be a bit better. How would Głowacki fare (he’s still around) in today’s uncensored world? How would he deal with this from Gazeta Wyborcza, the story of the latest in a line of heroic hospital managers held up for us all to admire:
“Strajkujcie sobie, ile chcecie. Nie uległ strajkom, głodówkom, łzom. Połączył trzy szpitale, zwolnił 40 proc. pracowników. Wygrał wojnę z komornikami. W ciągu czterech lat uratował przed bankructwem wałbrzyską służbę zdrowia.”
“Strike as much as you like. He did not give in to strikes, hunger strikes or tears. He joined three hospitals together and sacked 40% of the staff. He won the war with the bailiffs. In four years he saved the Wałbrzych health services from bankruptcy.”
What a guy, eh? He sacked 40% of the staff. What guts! He closed two hospitals. What balls! He did not give in to hunger strikers. What manliness! I don’t know how a Głowacki would deal with this kind of official discourse. Unless he wrote it himself.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2008
More Unions
"Don't worry, trade unionists. The government is not going to change the law to emasculate you."
"What? The government is going to change the law to emasculate us?"
"No, no. You misunderstand. The government is not going to change the law to emasculate you."
"But why would the government want to change the law to emasculate us"
"Because you have so few members that it is unfair that you have so much power. But I repeat: the government is not going to change the law to emasculate you."
"But that's not fair."
"What's not fair? No one is going to change the law to emasculate you. Although you are, strictly speaking, a pain in the neck."
"Workers have a right to organise. To bargain. To withhold labour."
"So you do. Very generous rights, which the government is not going to change, though some might say you have too many rights and that capital-- errr - consumers have rights too. But don't worry. The message is clear. The government is not going to change the law to emasculate you. Tusk said so."
"Tusk?!?"
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)
The Public gets What the Politicians Want
Government by opinion poll is probably not the best way to run a country: bye bye art, culture, education; hello football, soap operas and institutionalized bribery – no wait, that’s not what I was trying to suggest. Hang on…
But surely you can’t ignore the public all the time? For instance, this week’s Polityka reports that Poles, like most Europeans, are skeptical about GMOs. Over 70% of Poles don’t want to eat them, Marcin Rotkiewicz says sadly. And worse: politicians have been capitalizing on this ignorance, this downright wrongness. Politicians could earn “extra points in opinion polls” by appealing to this wrongheaded standpoint. Rotkiewicz doesn’t say it in as many words but that’s the clear implication of his piece: over 70% of people here don’t want GMO foods and it’s a damn shame that politicians are listening to them. At least they didn't listen to anti-war sentiment before invading Iraq.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2008
Unions
Trade union membership in this country which owes its existence to trade unions is 14% of workers. Nie has a cover story this week about Solidarity’s disgraceful behaviour during the recent miners’ strike. In brief, a profitable mine was joined with a much less profitable one where the miners earned more, having recently received a pay rise. The "new" miners wanted their pay raised to the level of their less profitable colleagues. One Solidarity activist called for the state to intervene to stop the strike. As can be expected, membership of Solidarity in the mine plunged.
Meanwhile in the Catholic University of Lublin we have the extraordinary spectacle of the management – Catholic clergy – being more tolerant of gays than the Solidarity trade union, headed by one Alina Rynio. Solidarity – you might want to read this twice – has called for the striking from the work regulations of a clause calling for tolerance. A clause, which, nota bene, is taken nearly word for word from the law of the land.
Hence 14% union membership.
(For non-Polish readers, the title of Rynio's books are:
Raising/Rearing the Young in the Teaching of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński and Intergrated Rearing/Raising in the Thoughts of [inevitably] John Paul II)
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)