Well I can honestly say that I did use that one hundreds or maybe thousands of times- can still recite it too as it used to be a school line "The square root of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides"!. Another line was I think "Alaric the Bold invaded Rome in the year 410". Can't remember any others! Did write a play once that was performed at my school "Theseus and the Minotaur"- had lots of fun with string! Also acted in a play in ancient Greek! Hic Haec Hoc..........education as it were....
I was also taught how to use a slide rule and Logs and Sine and Cosine, but why? I don't know and I have no idea now how either of them work! May be another language to me now.
I'll have a half please.
My youngest is currently working in Cambridge but is looking to return 'home' in a couple of years. He will have limited job prospects due to the tough times but insiste he has always the CAPES to consider if all else fails ! Teaching for him is the last resort albiet a job for life !
Regarding the pole emploi. My ladyfriend works in the service in the Lot and I can assure you she is rushed off her feet. She 'mans' the desk three morning per week, then does 'inscriptions' and completes the working week with targeted RdVs. Each councellor has to reach his or her target of say 12 RdVs (with new or existing clients) per week. each Rdv takes at least an hour she says. She starts at 0800 and finishes at 1730 if she's lucky with an hour for lunch again, if she's lucky. The plus side is the excellent system of days off RTT & hols etc etc She has been in the service for about 25 years and hasn't had a pay rise for about ten years. Retirement in just over two years - yippee !
Thanks David, nice to know I wasn't the only one, and it certainly couldn't be regarded as educational in any way as it was simply looking up tables to get an answer.
On the same subject what or who has uses for the infamous 'square root' - and Aussies stay out this as I know the answer would be rude!
Peter if you noted the Jobs Fair held in Paris(?) a few weeks back it was very clear what the young people in France largely aspire to - to be a Functionnaire!
Who can blame them? Like Civil Servants everywhere they have a very protected life and decent to good pensions after a lifetime of pushing papers around. This seems to be what they want, so the entrepreneurs amongst them head elsewhere and then the Governments wonders why the best have left.
I am still fascinated that all the people in Pole Emploi seem secure, whilst their apparent use is to find jobs and people and match them isn't it? If the jobs simply aren't there, then what exactly do they all do each day?
Oh no John, they are still there!
The migratory route of the retired Capestang Anglophones are as follows...
Come on a market day Wednesday or Sundays around 11:00. They still chew the cud, wreak havoc while mixing the shit nicely. Gotta love 'em. (one day I hope to make this my routine as well, perhaps in twenty years)
Tuesday evening after choir as well, a large group congregates at 18:10 to drink cheap rosé at the Paix.
No one goes to Grille anymore. The owner has been very rude and has a bad habit of overcharging Anglophones.
There is also Fish and Chips night in Poilhes at Les Platanes on Tuesday nights, and Trivia night somewhere too... hmmm in Genestas L'Anise I think
Pretty certain that we were taught, as students of architecture, how to use them, along with slide rules. I seem to remember doing drainage flow calculations- exciting stuff. Was it coefficient of resistance? I did have a book of tables and a slide rule but can't find them any more. When I started studying architecture maths A level was compulsory at some schools such as The Bartlett (UCL) but not others, such as the one I went to (The AA in Bedford Square). I was absolutely useless at maths at school but after I commenced my working career I sort of fell into it and could easily do lots of calculations in my head, and had a very good memory for numbers, remembering hundreds of telephone numbers at one stage (before telephones had memories). Occasionally I have beaten University Challenge maths questions before the teams which makes me feel really good. It's all starting to go a bit now though! Trig we used a lot, but now everybody uses computers. We used to do exciting daylight calculations too, using things called Waldram diagrams. Now that's getting really obscure!
Veronique Dartmoor where the rain comes down horizontally we were in the Plume of Feathers with a group of naval cadets, one girl among a group of lads was in tears and had had a really bad day and struggling to complete the lads had rallied round her each taking turns to carry her bergen as well as their own i never knew if she managed to complete but that experience would bond that group.I remember taking what started of as two mixed parties 24 hours apart. After a week alone on the moor they came off a tightly knit group having joined at sometime, a comment was made some years later to the effect you kick one and they all jump
Capestang , I have spent many a happy Sunday afternoon there at the cafe in the square when there was a large group of Brits who gathered to chew over the gossip when the bar changed hands the large one with the railings around the Brits were firmly removed so moved across the road to the Paix. One by one they either passed away or moved on to different areas or back to the UK must get over one day and catch up
Good thread this one, and leads me to a question (genuine one) that has stayed with me since a pimply youth leaving school.
Who exactly does or did use Logarithms? I sussed out who did Trigonometry. Why did they 'teach' this in a secondary school? What was the point of something that to me at least just meant looking through a list of tabulations in a book.
Never did understand that as anything.
Anyone out there to clarify, inform and educate me on this one?
Hi John, a lot of truth in what you say, but I can honestloy say I was one of the very few really lucky people in this world. I found what I liked to do very early on, fell into my first job (employed) at 15 (1955 plenty of work around then), and I suppose I can't really count the putting up stalls and sweeping out the White Hart Market market in Slough from the age of 11? Oh and doing a bit of being a bookie's runner on the side at the same time?
It was great - I earned ten bob a day for all that bearing in mind a week's wage was about four quid it was good money. All in the family pot of course and made me feel quite grown up!
Then travelled the world doing what i liked, and now revelling in creating books that I like - poster and art books mainly.
The job/travelling was the major bonus as I went to places I never knew I would ever see - or even wanted to see, and loved all of it - even the bad bits - this was both my pleasure AND my education, and if it left great gaps in my grammar and mathematics and even probably common sense, I wouldn't have changed any of it.
The side fact hat it blew three marriages was just the more painful part of it all, but still part of life's experience.
Never had a piece of paper to take me through, but I did envy those with a good education all the time.
Neil,
if you would like some of your car work put into my latest book 'Posters & Graphics - Autos 1970-2014' send me a couple of 300dpi JPEG files and I'll put them in. No charge of course!
Cheers,
Norm
PS. This is the fourth new volume in a set of 4 'era' books. (to be sold separately)
Very impressive stuff Glen!
Very strange for me that my reaction was 'wow' and then 'glad I am out of it all - almost 60 years was enough!'
Still have friends younger than me (and more talented than I ever was) doing the daily fight and struggle. One of my earlier 'assistants' bought my business out in Australia - equipment mainly, and the other day I spoke to him after about 15 years, and was amazed to learn he still hd nearly all the clients I had - some thirty years on! Guinness Book of Records stuff?
I have a good bloke in London who is on the lookout for freelance, should I put him in touch?
You are a better man than I am Véronique!
Nor was I much of a scholar. My sister taught me to read before I went to primary school and from then on it all went over my head. Almost everything I know that I think is worth knowing, I got from reading or experience.
My formal education was finished a long time before Pink Floyd made "The Wall" but that had a resonance for me.
Still learning something new every day.
I wasn't teaching soldiers, I was beasting cadets around the place & had to be commissioned to do it. A week on Dartmoor carrying 40lbs of kit & doing 65 miles on foot, compass in hand, makes a nice change from a stuffy classroom. That said I think teaching people to direct their thought processes is one of the most worthwhile things anyone can do. I also think learning virtually anything is interesting. You were the one who brought up that "there is a difference between useful disciplines and those that are just learning for its own sake" I really see nothing wrong with learning for its own sake, no matter how useless it may seem to somebody else, but that is my opinion - you are entitled to your own.
Köszönöm, Eva.
I know a little bit about multi-culture. Born US. Mother was Dutch, father French. First wife Swiss-German, second wife Spanish-Mexican and now I live with a beautiful Italian lady. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Mexico..Why France? I ask myself that question each day.
I also wonder, as I write my blog about France, how the people within this country can come to change. France is a very conservative country with deep roots especially once one leaves the "center of the World" namely Paris. Many forces are at work in terms of change here. Without entering into political arguments, people have to enter into the Modern World and not remain stuck in the psychology-sociology and past history of the "Hexagone" and its borders. I wonder how anyone can help "good change" along here in France.
Thank you for your response as I enjoyed it.
Brian,
We have had different experiences. I think your definition of academic is quite narrow. There are still plenty of bumbling fools teaching useless courses, the very titles of which would make a sane man laugh - or cry!
Still with me Véronique?
I can imagine you teaching those soldiers to think for themselves instead of just obeying orders. Is what I am doing of ultimate value to mankind? Is the person I am about to kill a better man than I am? Should I put down this weapon and write poetry? Does God exist? Does anything matter?
Hard to define "useful." Depends on your standpoint.
I saw quite the opposite, indeed saw people improving teaching aids. As for people who learn for learning's sakes, they are not academics because they do not need to think to do that. An academic thinks, teaches others to think and sure some great innovators have left university or not even gone, but the unknown 99.99% are in universities. The difference is that unlike Bill Gates who has become the richest man in the world, they remain where they are happiest with modest salaries and often make several key innovations or inventions. They also lay no claim on fame because they are just doing their job to fill their belly like the rest of us. Don't knock unless you really have the substance to do it with rather than hearsay.
That's exactly it Brian - each to each! Different people get a kick out different things and so much the better, being one sort of person doesn't make you better/worse/more or less useful than another. And we are all many different sorts of people throughout our lives anyway.
& Mike the 2 years I spent as 2lt the Glosters (TA) were spent being exaggeratedly 'practical' to overcome the anti-academic biais among HMs soldiery ("f*cking graduates, as much use as a chocolate ashtray" etc etc) & dragging cadets over Dartmoor - & as I said being able to strip down & rebuild an SA80 is a fat lot of use to me now in itself but has helped when I've been taking other bits of machinery to bits. Transferable skills, what education is all about.
btw: define useful disciplines, please ;-)