When you misread the Rotterdam lyrics by The Beautiful South
This could be Rotterdam or anywhere
Liverpool or Rome
'Cause Rotterdam is anywhere
Anywhere alone
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They’d WISH! 
We are making Rotterdam great again. Of course it is THE capital, not only of the Netherlands (or should I say Rotterdamlandia? 
) as it seems on the map, but of the whole of Europe (Ye lowly lands that are blessed by surrounding and serving the mighty Rotterdam).
Maybe it should be most capital in all capitals and the original one should only be written as ROTTERDAM! (yes, with the exclamation point included).
It’s all in good fun, until land owners price hike the rents in Rotterdam since it is now so much more important
@yebellz
I was reminded of this:
Incredible. Farting (furthermore online!) is that much a crime?
Right on time!
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Countries don’t teach history—people do.
Countries decide on a program though, what to focus on and how to approach certain subjects. There are material differences beyond the individual.
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Countries don’t decide anything. “Country” is an abstraction representing a group of people.
Ah that’s what you meant. Sure, but obviously that was a metonymy.
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I had a quick look at the French official history program in 11th grade.
It says that motivations of colonization should be studied, but doesn’t say in detail which motivations to insist on. So the teacher has some freedom.
It says 1975: legalization of abortion, a landmark for womens’ rights.
I’m wondering how differently the subject is presented in history classes of other countries.
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You know you’re getting old when the year you learned to play go is mentioned in a history curriculum for schools.
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My children found it funny when they realized I was born during the Cold War. It seemed like prehistory to them.
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Yes, but I call it out because people hide behind the abstraction to avoid taking responsibility. Also, even at the “country” level, the implication that the country necessarily dictates curriculum is false.
In the U.S., the Federal government does not dictate curriculum (at least, not yet). The Constitution doesn’t even mention education, which is consequently under the authority of the states. Even then, a state curriculum can be taught in a wide variety of ways. Admittedly, this has been undermined in recent decades by the creation of the Department of Education and the subsequent leverage obtained from the granting or withholding of funding (i.e., the usual means for corrupting any system). The winner in this tug-of-war is still undecided.
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In 1917 article 23 was added to the Dutch constitution, stating that providing education is a responsibility of the government. We have freedom of education (anyone is free to teach), but education is supervised by the government to ensure that basic criteria are met (like a convicted pedosexual shouldn’t be teaching children).
Compulsory education started earlier, in 1901 for 6-12 years old. The compulsory age range gradually expanded through the years, and currently it is 4-18 years old.
Education has its own department since 1918 (before that, education fell under the State Department). We spend about 5.5% of our GDP on education.
Schools are basically financed by the government, largely based on the number of students a school has (with some possibility of extra funding for schools with special needs). With such an egalitarian funding system, I don’t think the government has much financial leverage on specific schools.
I don’t think our Department of Education dictates curriculum in detail, but there are school inspections and students need to pass some standardised nationwide tests and exams to make progress in their education. In practice that means that even Evangelical schools will have topics like evolution and cosmology in their curriculum (to allow their students to pass the central exams), but they can also teach Intelligent Design and Young Earth Creationism if they want.
Though some Islamic schools did get in trouble for alledgedly spreading very fundamentalist religious views while rejecting our secular democratic system and rule of law (and thus posing a potential safety risk for society, which is also a responsibility of the government).
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If we’d like to be accurate, then I think a more correct title could have been “How history is being taught, in each country”.
But it is a comedy skit, so there is no reason to be that exact.
Just for the cultural exchange, which I always find interesting, this might be true and reasonable for a large federation, but most countries do not have such issues with scaling, so they tend to have at least a defined “bare minimum” curriculum.
That system, of course, has its shortfalls, but it also has its good parts. For example, in our country, it supposedly gives the opportunity for everyone to receive a good standard of education.
Of course, in practice, that doesn’t really work (funding and good teachers are not spread as equally as the curriculum 
), but it is a good idea. Just not very well implemented.
I think ours does, but even if it does not, the law says that there is mandatory education until the middle school classes. This law was passed to prevent parents from pulling kids from school and sending them to work the fields (so no homeschooling is allowed), in order to combat illiteracy in the post World War 2 era. It worked on that end for most cases.
On every public school the curriculum and the textbooks are ordered and printed by the ministry of education. I think the only exceptions are private schools who can have their own different/extra books and extra materials/lessons added.
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Now, I don’t want to pick that low-hanging fruit, but
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Well yes, it seems https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/ sees a lot of traffic these days. I count 10 new posts from the last hour alone.
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I’m calling this the “Brexit regret” effect.
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I thought marrying got you a green card 
ETA: It totally does lol, so they were just lazy with their paperwork 
whoops
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