On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:47:54 +0000, Larry wrote:

John H. wrote in
:

http://tinyurl.com/5hvyum

The first child we had will be graduating high school this year and
then attending the University of St. Petersburg in Russia. Very bright
kid. After his first visit he went home and began taking English five
days a week in school. He also talked his parents into paying the
English teacher to come to his house one night a week for tutoring. He
absolutely loved this country.



The young people in the whole region are becoming unisolated by lots of new
TV stations in the region. There is MAD TV:
http://mfile.akamai.com/45346/live/reflector:59936.asx
which is just as American and British as MTV....and FREE on the net!

There are many others. My little Linux tablet has over 600 stations across
the planet from broadband. About 20 are Russian.

The rapper crappers are on Mad TV as I type this...(c;

Larry, you can't include Belarus in generalities about the 'whole region'.
Belarus is still your basic Communist dictatorship without many of the
freedoms found elsewhere in the region.

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:56:49 +0000, Larry wrote:

John H. wrote in
:

We had one boy from Belarus who could say a few things in English. He
was from Minsk, his parents had money, he was on a dance team that
traveled internationally, and he'd picked up a lot of English in his
travels. But he was the only kid I've seen in the program who could
speak any English. They do, however, all know how to say 'no' and
'Coca Cola' upon arrival!



In the Middle East, all the Moslem kids know how to say Chevy and PEPSI,
not Coke. There are no Fords or Coca-Cola which are JEWISH companies. One
of my neighbors in Tehran was an Iranian lawyer of some stature. He had a
Ford station wagon about 15 years old and was so proud of it because it was
such a rare car, sold to him by some Americans when they left for home.
Parts to fix it were awfully hard to get. Every place you go, they serve
Pepsi in Iran or the Arab countries like Bahrain. Israel, of course, is
just the opposite.

English was taught in Iranian schools. Kids entering high schools were
taking courses in chemistry, physics, liberal arts Americans would be
teaching in the 2nd year of college! It was amazing to see the high
standards and hard work Iranian kids were doing to stay in school. Failure
was not tolerated. Those unable to cope or too lazy were moved out of the
schools to apprenticeships in industry or used as laborers. Unlike
America, the Shah didn't waste his energy on those who refused to take
advantage of the excellent education the Shah provided. The poorest
Iranian was afforded the best education, just like the lawyers' kids,
unlike here. Shahanshah used education, unsuccessfully obviously now, to
thwart the religious brainwashing of the Mullahs trying to drag the kids
back into the stone age to become their slaves. How awful.

In the public high school in which I taught, kids were taking Multivariate
Calculus, normally a 4th semester calculus course. They didn't have to be
lawyers kids, or wealthy. They simply had to work.

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:47:02 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:


"hk" wrote in message
...



These kids need to be adopted, not taken for a vacation.


My understanding is that they *have* families. They are here in the States
to get radiation sickness treatment.
At least that was the case with the friend I mentioned involved in the
program.

He and his wife were the kid's sponsors while they were here. They stayed
at their home and enjoyed participating in his family's activities in
between the treatments in Boston.

Eisboch


I don't know where he comes up with his ideas.

You are correct. They have families, and we normally get letters from the
parents introducing their child and, once they return, thanking us. The
children bring pictures of their families. That is not to say that no
problems exist in the families, but we have the same problems here in the
USA.

The kids we get are not in a radiation treatment program. These guys have a
cancer free bill of health. The goal is to help prevent them from getting
cancer. Thyroid cancer is a big problem over there. The biggest health
issue we normally see is bad teeth. Apparently there is no fluoride in
their water, and toothpaste seems like something new to these guys. They
arrive with a mouthful of cavities. One of ours, this year, had a root
canal. One little girl was almost blind, but the church folks got together
and bought her some glasses. That was a real treat, seeing her lit up face
when she could actually see something again.

But no. This is not an adoption program, nor was it meant to be.

John H. wrote in
:

Larry, you can't include Belarus in generalities about the 'whole
region'. Belarus is still your basic Communist dictatorship without
many of the freedoms found elsewhere in the region.



Oh that's pretty easy to see, even in Russia, where just a different set of
Mafioso warlords run the country than the Soviet warlords.

Nothing much has changed. They all still rattle those sabres....

John H. wrote in
:

In the public high school in which I taught, kids were taking
Multivariate Calculus, normally a 4th semester calculus course. They
didn't have to be lawyers kids, or wealthy. They simply had to work.



I taught Electronic Technicians in a technical college, not exactly the
cream of the crop, in SC for 8 years. The high school graduates from
the local high school were about 7th Grade, 6th month in the social
promoted school system back in the 70's. We had to test them upon entry
and had an entire department of remedial education to bring these 18-
year-old grade school students up to a level so we could, at least,
communicate with most of them in simple English and help them learn
basic arithmetic so they could stop counting on their fingers doing
simple computations.

I was called into the school president's office where I was confronted
with a full bird colonel USAF, flight commander's wings and all. "What
have you done to my son?", he wanted to know. "My son has flunked every
math course he ever took. The other night he comes to me watching TV
and wants to buy a SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR! I spilled my Scotch all over
my shirt!" I told the colonel we had no time for math for math's sake
at TEC, so concentrated study on real life mathematics, not theoretical
math the high school tried to spoon feed them with...without showing one
PRACTICAL use for it.

Case in point is a capacitor in series with a resistor across an AC
source. If you add up the AC voltage across the cap to the AC voltage
across the resistor in series with it, like you would in a DC circuit,
you get MORE voltage than the source. How can that be? The students
tried it themselves in the electronics lab, FIRST, then came to me in
the classroom unable to figure out why this PRACTICAL measurement was so
wrong. AT that point, and not before, we set the electronics books
aside and started learning aircraft navigation, field surveying and,
very quietly so as not to panic them, (tiny type here) trigonometry,
necessary to figure out what voltages to expect and measure the phase
between voltage and currents and how to correct it (resonance). Trig
had MEANING when I got done. Stealing the surveying equipment from the
civil engineers was lots easier after a few years to measure off the
property, flagpole, angles of the sun, etc. We even ended up in the
dark out behind the auto shop near midnight to measure our lat/long
with.....gasp....a sextant! Trig takes on a whole new meaning when it
has a REASON...instead of "We study Trig because the state board of
education educrats tell us we have to pass this requirement to get a
diploma." I stole this trick from the Navy who used it on me when I,
not a great math mind, needed trig.

Spherical trig wasn't needed, but when you get 'em cranked up you can't
stand to just drop a hammer on them and say "we don't need that for this
course", so that was part of the clandestine navigation course.

The colonel was a great contact, by the way....He was a constant source
of new aeronautical charts I used to backdoor teach a little trig to the
masses...(c;

I did it for 8 years before I came to the realization TEC wasn't going
to pay me enough to be very comfortable. I made $7200 on a 12 month
contract in 1972. By 1979, I was all the way up to the breathtaking sum
of $14,600...OVER DOUBLE my salary 8 years earlier. I quit and took a
job at triple that back in the defense industry working in a calm, cool,
airconditioned calibration lab without all the pressures.

Teaching kids was wonderful, even adult kids. I loved it. Working with
the vast array of professional educrats to get to teach kids is like
being sent to Hell by an angry god....very painful and unavoidable, no
matter how you try...