PISA terror
The natives are completely up in arms about Germany's poor results in a recent PISA assessment. The Program for International Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardized test (OECD) that was developed jointly by the participating countries and administered to 15-year-olds. It is supposed to measure how well students are "prepared to meet the challenges of the future". Germany ranked somewhere in the last third, well behind the United States.
This is a good thing. For me it is, I mean. Up until recently, it was common to hear how, well, how dumb Americans are. The United States is supposed to be backwards in areas like this, you see. Europe is Europe and America is America and, well, This thinking has come to an abrupt stop - for the time being, at least. We now have it black on white that this isn't the case. Our "dumbness" is now relative.
This wasn't supposed to happen. And things that aren't supposed to happen, well, they aren't supposed to happen here. The natives hate it when something is black on white, when something is on paper. They believe it if it's black on white. Its official if it's on paper, you see, whether it's true or not.
Everyone is panicking and trying to get their children into private schools and talking about suing the government and even discussing the possibility of actually changing their antiquated education system (won't happen). Marriages are on the rocks, families are breaking up and there are lots of native kids with hurt feelings out there right now.
And I just have to say, relatively speaking, that this is a really dumb reaction.
