<p>What's it like? Has anyone here attended one for any amount of time? I've heard that much of what comprises an American collegiate liberal arts education is present in a European "high school" curriculum (I know the name is different), and thus the equivalent of an American "college" in Europe tends to be highly specialized and vocational.</p>
<p>There's A levels and O levels, which I don't really believe exist (they sound made up). Also, based on the movies I've seen, they wear robes all the time and write on parchment.</p>
<p>I heard they make sure you can apply the info instead of memorizing it. I've never been.</p>
<p>yes, you get to pick which track you want to go on. few clubs and stuff at school too, most are out of school.
oh, did i mention how, on average, they're happier?</p>
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I heard they make sure you can apply the info instead of memorizing it. I've never been.
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<p>It's actually the other way around.</p>
<p>A levels and O levels exist - they are not made up. They are a British thing (each European country has it's own system).</p>
<p>O levels are taken at age @ 16. They are based on a 2 year curriculum (so you start the curriculum at @ age 14) and the exam is on much of what has been covered in that 2 years.</p>
<p>O levels are followed by A levels. Again a 2 year curriculum. For A levels you usually start specializing in the subjects related to you potential future plans - maths/sciences for instance. </p>
<p>There is not the 2 year gen ed system in college there - you go in studying your major subject from day 1.</p>
<p>ECs are not the big deal they are here. A level scores are very important for college acceptance.</p>
<p>Judging by what the French exchange program students have told me...</p>
<p>1) Colleges are VERY specialized
2) ECs aren't that much of a big deal, as most students spend their time with academics.
3) Classrooms are also much more different. The exchange program kids who came had a scary level of discipline in class. I think that students were generally not allowed to speak at all during classes</p>
<p>You're right, Aristotle. </p>
<p>We have several types of high school. Some are vocational, some more technical but still academic and some are purely academic high schools. At the end of 8th grade, we have to choose which high school to attend. Some that didn't like studying (have bad grades) go to 3-year vocational ones (like hairdresser, car mechanic, etc.), while some others go to technical ones (like "economy high school", "tourism high school", "medical high school" etc. they're all 4-year schools) or academic ones (widely known as "gimnasium").
At the end of 8th grade depending on grades from 7th and 8th grade, we get points (oh, and doing some ECs for certain number of years or winning 1st, 2nd or 3rd place in a competition adds more points). The higher the points, better. The highest number of points were usually needed for gimnasiums but nowadays many pick some other schools because they could get a good education but not be as overworked as in gimnasiums.
And the schools that have "liberal arts curriculum" are gimnasiums.
There are many types of it, but most popular are general (focus on everything equally, but really, more on humanistic courses and social sciences), math (focus on natural sciences, and offers computer sciences, known as the toughest kind, harder tests in science courses), and language (focus on languages, known as the easiest kind, they have easier tests in science, math and generally all the other courses). We can't choose courses the way you do it in USA, but we choose our courses by entering certain high school. So if we want more math oriented classes we go to math gimnasium, if someone hates math oriented classes goes to language school because they don't have Physics after their sophomore year etc.
We have to study around 15 subjects in average over one school year. We study everything from English, another foreign language, all three high school sciences, etc. for all 4 years, but courses like sociology, philosophy, psychology etc are studied for 1 or 2 years. So we basically end up covering twenty something subjects upon graduation.
Major difference is that kids at US high schools study one whole high school curriculum of one subject in one year (eg. Physics - forces to waves), while we strech that in 3 years (because we have for eg. Physics twice a week instead of 4 or 5), and in our senior year we study what American kids study under AP class curriculum (in Biology it would be genetics, I think, Physics - theory of relativity, quantum mechanics etc.)
But I am not so sure about how much of that American AP curriculum we go in depth. Math gimnasium certainly goes in depth the most.
Also, we don't divide our native language courses into "grammar one year, literature the other" (like in US) but we do a bit of all in one year. For example, in our freshman year we had it 4 times a week and we covered ancient greek and roman texts+part of the grammar. Sophomore - middle age, renaissance and baroque. Junior - I didn't spend it here so I'm not sure but there are russian writers and everything after baroque until the end of 19th century. Senior - avantgarde era (expressionists etc) to present. And we do grammar and literature do tgether (eg. twice a week literature, twice grammar OR one week literature, the other grammar etc.)
Same goes for math. I think we cover most of the materials in one year (like in USA) but not geometry. We do bit of geometry in every grade.
Oh, and lgimnasiums are believed to provide the best preparation for college.</p>
<p>Colleges in Europe are highly specialized, yes. Exactly because we don't need EC's but only grades and knowledge to enter college (college entrance exams), EC's are not really encouraged at my school. Most of the kids who have interests in things other than academic ones, go do it out of school.
What sets gimnasium apart besides the academics is that other technical and vocational schools have set hours of mandatory "internships" every week. Depending on employer they're either paid or unpaid. (Hairdressers have to go to hair saloons, merchants have to go to stores etc.)</p>
<p>Other major difference I'd like to point out is interaction between teachers and students. American teachers seem to want to get to know their students more but in Europe, teachers and students don't really interact and it's basically "you (students) study, I (teacher) will teach and we have nothing else to do together" unless you're involved in some EC lead by a certain teacher. But even then, students and teachers don't get as close as in US. </p>
<p>I don't know if you managed to understand my jumbled writing but I hope I managed to covey European school. I probably didn't explain it well, so please ask the unclear things. If you were patient enough to read through this loooooooong post, that is ;)</p>
<p>PS I'm not sure if "technical" is a good description for those kinds of schools, but that's how they seem to me.</p>
<p>PPS I attended a school in US for a year, so I experienced both of school systems.</p>