It sounds lovely, Gud.

Gud, you are a truly wonderful man. Don't you forget it.

Thanks all. I think the card will go over well, but I also think my wife will still think I'm a jerk overall. No end in sight for the troubles for the time being.

Go, CaBil!

Also, hoping Jilli is as pain-free as possible.

Robin, that's a very good suggestion, about the storage bins. Daniel has made similar suggestions in the past. Dunno why I haven't tried that.

Raq, does you experience include other rich countries, or only nations that were a lot poorer than the U.S./French/UK/W. European standard. Cause I admit you have a lot more personal experience than I do.

Nope, just poorer countries. My British friends are very well educated, and come from both types of schools, but I have no direct experience of the British schools, other than a bit at the university level. My German and Turkish friends are also well educated, but I don't know where they attended school.

My experience with state-funded (vice private) schools in the other countries has been that state agendas are frequently promulgated under the guise of education. You would not believe the kinds of things included in Romanian textbooks from the Ceaucescu period.

In Malaysia, one of the problems that we encountered over and over, and had many teacher meetings on, was how to handle students coming into the International (private) school from a state-run (Koranic) school at the high school level. They were very far behind the other students in terms of ability to think. They were great at rote memorization.

OTOH, I had several Chinese-Malay friends who were extremely well educated, but they'd attended private schools in Malaysia, Korea, and England.

I don't have enough experience with Greek schools to speak, but this is the richest country I've lived in (US excluded).

And, on a different topic, this is done to be funny, but is actually a really good analysis of what happiness is, and how to maximize it: [link]

(From a hardcore economic journal)

Raq, random question I could google but am google broken. What was Ceaucescu's first name?

wheee! yay for CaBil !

My experience with foreign schools probably has more detail than my experience with American schools. Not having been to one here. But from helping kids with homework, etc, accounting for time slippage, the average expected level of kid education seemed higher both in the UK (richer, natch) and in Jamaica (third world, and why do people try to argue with me on that point?). I'm not pointing at the schools, so much, though. More that the attitude to education, the pervasive attitude, was different, and I don't know if the school structure, even before you get to quality, was cause or effect.

In Jamaica, school's important because it can get you from too poor to wear shoes every day to the floor of the UN, or professor.

Like it did with my parents. I don't know if the US recognises or encourages that sort of potential mobility.

Kat, Nicolae.